And he coming forth saw a great multitude,
and had compassion on them, and healed their sick. (Mt 14: 14)
A glance
at almost any daily media broadcast will readily show anyone who doubts that
many in the world have forgotten the virtue of compassion that this is
certainly true. Occasional secular commentators have suggested a variety of
sociological causes for this lack. Our holy Spiritual Church Father Nikitas
Stithatos notes accurately that lack of compassion is directly connected with
our separation from God. He tells us that:
A soul receives either blessings or penalties
and punishment according to its inner activities. If it concerns itself with
things divine and tills the ground of humility, tears fall like rain from
heaven, and it cultivates love of God, faith and compassion for others . . .
attracting [others’] attention with the
rays of its virtue . . . . But if the soul devotes itself to the mundane and
merely human matters, stirring and agitating the fetid waters of sin, it
nourishes hatred and repels what is good and beautiful. (Philokalia IV, p. 87-88).
The exact
connotation of the word mundane is: a lack of direct connection with God. In
today’s information technology (IT) world much can be found that not only
disconnects us from God, but also actively fosters the disconnection. When this
happens, as St. Nikitas so aptly puts it, the “good and beautiful” are repelled
and loss of compassion for others is a major consequence.
The Etymology of compassion
The
English word ‘compassion’ has its roots in both Greek and Latin. In the Greek,
we trace the usage back to the related
word for ‘suffering: pathos. In
Latin, we can see the root word cum, meaning ‘with’ and passio, or suffering,
and patior, I suffer. In English, the dictionary meaning of the word
encompasses: “A deep awareness of and sympathy for another's suffering,” as well
as “understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it”.
Individuals who have an illness and disease are called patients due to their
suffering. In a sense, those with compassion co-suffer with them. The dictionary
understanding of compassion correctly identifies three essential
psycho-behavioral aspects: an emotional component: co-suffering, .i.e. feeling
with the patient; a cognitive component: understanding; and a behavioral
component: actions to alleviate the suffering.
Compassion: The Psychological Component
Compassion
differs from empathy. The critical element in compassion that differentiates it
from empathy is its behavioral component. Empathy is thinking and feeling what
others are thinking and feeling. Compassion combines the deep awareness of the
sufferings of others with a desire that leads, eventually, to an action to
relieve the suffering
The Developmental Sequence
In terms
of human development, natural empathy is the foundation of pro-social behaviors
such as altruism. (Lewis and Haviland, 1993) Compassion is a component of love
(the practice of agape, as it is known in patristic literaturei). Love is what
we do, not just what we feel, for the good and welfare of others. Psychologists
would ask: how can we love, how can we work for the good and welfare of others,
if we are not aware of their suffering nor have a desire to relieve it? We love
others only if we can first sense their needs. Empathy, then, may initiate the
compassion process.
A Spiritual Caveat
However,
as I discuss later in this article, we have to be spiritually predisposed to be
empathic in order to practice altruistic-compassionate behavior with a specifically
Godly ethos. This means that the compassion sequence should be of Divinely
inspired agape indwelling in the heart.
Such heart-centered agape would propel the mind to engage in both empathy and
the compassion action steps. This would be the fullness of compassion because
it would be enlivened by Godly love.
Understanding compassion by considering
indifferent and/or malevolent behavior
One
approach to understanding compassion is to consider its polar opposite:
aggression, an anti-social component. One promising research endeavor on this
aspect is the Dynamic Systems Model discussed by Granic and Patterson, 2006.
This model uses coercion theory that was mainly developed in the research laboratories
of the Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC) by collecting and analyzing
parent-child interaction data over various naturalistic settings. (Patterson,
1982; Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992; Reid, Patterson, & Snyder,
2002).
Coercion
theory uses the processes of cognitive-behavioral psychology to study how
family members mutually interact in such a way as to shape aggressive behavior
in children and to simultaneously
decrease parental influence over the child’s inappropriate belligerent
behavior. As described by the researchers, it initially starts with parental
demands that their children perform appropriate pro-social behavior. As I point
out in an earlier article (Morelli, 2007):
As
parental coercive attempts increase they are often also accompanied by
escalation of a harsh strident tone of voice [speech pragmatics). (Morelli,
2007]. A child (or any person for that matter) being coerced may feel
controlled and resist the nagger. One
reason may be that the person being nagged (child or adult) needs to maintain a
sense of healthy self-worth (Morelli, 2006a). The child may view the coercive
tasks as symbols of a power struggle between a greater power and himself with a
resultant loss of freedom and sense of being boxed in. A coerced child may want
to avoid compliance as much as possible. Also, such a child may follow this
avoidance with oppositional behavior to reassert his power and sense of
control, to maintain some sense of control, and thus asserts himself by acting
contrary to what he perceives he is being coerced into doing. As Granic and
Patterson (2006) point out, this “finally [leads to] the parent's
capitulation.” The researchers conclude: “. . .coercive interactions are the
fundamental behavioral mechanisms by which aggression emerges and stabilizes
over development.” This pattern is likely to be repeated in different settings
over a lifespan. It should also be noted that the parents are simultaneously
modeling coercive behavior, which means they are teaching their children to be
coercive.
Malevolence generalizes
For example,
the first encounter many children have with a social institution outside of
his/her family home is nursery school. The coercive interactions first learned
at home are likely to be repeated and reinforced by the reciprocal behaviors of
the child with the other students. Patterson, Littman, & Bricker, 1967
point out that “When victims of aggressive behavior cry, give up their toy, or
leave the disputed territory, the aggressive child “wins,” and he or she is,
therefore, more likely to use the same aversive strategies in the service of
future goals.” This then continues throughout a lifetime. Both early and later
patterns of anti-social behaviors (including failure to empathize and act
compassionately) are conceptualized by researchers as also being influenced by
child-parent similarities or differences including: cognitive appraisals;
emotions; global personality structures, and neural underpinnings of these
emotion–appraisal feedback cycles and
processes (Lewis, 2005).
The role of appraisal processes
Appraisals
of cognition and emotion play a key role in developing anti-social
patterns. As Lewis (2005) posits, a
complex interaction exists between cognition and emotion. Reinforcement of
patterns [between cognition and emotions] forms the structure of
self-organizing interpretations of events in real time and accounts for
personality patterns over development. Over time, and with repeated
experiences, cognitive appraisals emerge in relation to their accompanying
emotions, which then serve to amplify or constrain behaviors. Such cognitive
appraisals serve the purpose of guiding an individual’s attention to elements
in any situation that are relevant to their goal. Granic and Patterson (2006)
conceive of these as cognitive-emotive-behavioral biases. These appraisal
processes are similar to the pre-potency of automatic thoughts that elicit
cognitive and behavioral dysfunction as described in the work of
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) researchers and clinicians. (Beck, A.T.
1991, Beck, J.S. 2011, Burns, 1980 and Morelli, 2010).
A concrete example of coercion enhancing
malevolence
One
researcher (Forgatch, 1989) found that anger and contempt are the major
emotional effects for parents and children in coercive situations. This could be conceived of as an escalating
synergistic process in which the total effect is greater than the sum of the
effects of the two (or more) interacting individuals. An example illustrating
this process is provided by Granic and Patterson (2005) and is worth quoting in
full:
A mother
asks her son to comply to a vague request, for instance, “Help clean the
house.” Just before her request, she is feeling anxious, thinking about the
many things she needs to get done by the end of the night. The child, playing a
video game, hears his mother’s request and begins to feel irritated, thinking
that his mother always picks on him rather than his brother. As these low-grade
[dysfunctional] emotions and appraisals coalesce, he rudely refuses his
mother’s request (e.g., “Go clean it yourself!”). Her attention is now fully
tuned to her son’s defiance and, through [favorable] feedback, her anxiety
increases with the expectation that her son will force them into a
confrontation. She also begins to feel irritated with his defiance. In an
attempt to regulate her anxiety and her irritation, the mother suggests that
they could go out to a restaurant afterward if he would just help her.
Perceiving his mother as a nag and an obstacle to his goal (i.e., to continue
to play video games), the child’s irritability grows into anger, expressed
through loud complaining. In turn, through continued [favorable] feedback
processes, his mother’s irritable feelings become amplified into anger,
overriding her anxiety, and coupling with appraisals of her child as “selfish
and nasty” and an obstacle to her goal of eventual rest. Her hostile
emotion–appraisal amalgam motivates her to begin threatening her son with
extreme consequences or to denigrate him in retaliation. Perceiving her rage,
the child likewise escalates, becoming angrier while his appraisals change from
mother as nuisance to mother as monster. Soon, these reciprocal interactions
among appraisal components, emotions, and harsh words stabilize through [unfavorable]
feedback processes. The child goes on playing his video games, ignoring his
mother pointedly and angrily, while his blameful perception of her stabilizes.
His mother, feeling beaten and unable to continue the fight, shifts from anger
to contempt, which stabilizes along with an appraisal of her child as “useless”
and “always bad.” Both dyad members remain in this seething state for the rest
of the evening. (p. 108)
One way
of interpreting this scenario is that the response of each person is guided by
self-focus and thus blocks taking the perspective of the other. The child’s
mother feels she has the right to force her son to comply with her will. The
boy perceives his mother’s nagging behavior as “an obstacle to his goal.”
Anonymity of Social Media fueling
indifference and malevolence
Numerous
studies show that another psychological variable that influences the lack of
compassion and the corresponding open display of anti-social aggression is
anonymity. Anonymity is growing due to the proliferation of social media
(Suler, 2004). One group of researchers (Postimes, Spears & Lea, 1998)
suggests that individuals who share a common social identity (so readily
prevalent in contemporary social media), may be more susceptible to group
influence, social attraction, stereotyping, sex-gender typing, and
discrimination in anonymous Computer Mediated Communication (CMC).
Compassion as an Emotion
Some of
the early studies on compassion were focused on understanding compassion as related
to empathic concern (Davis, 1983), sympathy (Eisenberg, et. al. 2007) and pity
(Fiske, et al., 2002), which involves appraisals of concern for less fortunate
individuals. In one study, Campos et al. (2009) found that compassion and
sympathy were grouped together with similar words for pro-social emotions such
as “kindness, tenderness, warmth, and caring.” Some studies have investigated
compassion as a state (brief reaction-response to a specific situation or
context) versus an ongoing trait or disposition over time (Shiota, Keltner,
& John, 2006).
Critical Variables in Compassion Research
There are
various theories concerning the critical variables that make up
compassion. Researchers Goetz, Keltner,
& Simon-Thomas ( 2010) suggest that “. . .within the concepts of appraisal
research, this analysis suggests that compassion will be shaped by: 1) the
relevance of the sufferer to the self; 2) the sufferer's blameworthiness for
the [unfavorable] outcome; and 3) the individual's ability to cope with the
situation at hand.” These appraisal
processes are summarized in Figure 1.[ii] It could be hypothesized that the
anti-social malevolent effects of the Dynamic Systems Model and the ascending
anonymity factor now being actualized in social media, as discussed above,
would influence any appraisal processes. Initial research investigating such
variables as culture,(for example, differences in how compassion is facially
and bodily displayed and communicated), gender differences, psycho-neurological
variables such as age, evolutionary change and sex differences remains to be
further explored.
Compassion-Love?
Goetz et
al (2010) make a distinction between compassion and love: “Compassion responds
to suffering and negative [unfavorable] events, whereas love antecedents are
primarily positive [favorable]” (p.363). However, this distinction is not made
by Christ, and this distinction is not understood as such by His Church. In
psychological terms, love, as taught to us by Christ, is congruent with what
George Kelly (1955, V. 2, p. 57) would call
a superordinate construct – it
encompasses all. It derives from the “organizational corollary which states
“each person characteristically evolves, for his convenience in anticipating
events, a construction system embracing ordinal relationships between
constructs." Then Kelly goes on to say that “one construct may subsume
another as one of its elements” (p.57). This could be understood as an
hierarchical organization in which higher-order or abstract superordinate
constructs influence individuals’ perceptions of the world around them. Kelly
also considered superordinate constructs as "core-constructs" that
significantly contribute to our identity and to how we perceive ourselves
interacting in the world.
However,
Goetz et al. (2010) do cite one study that they call an “intriguing
possibility:” that love is, in fact, a core factor underlying compassion. They
point out that the work of Greitemeyer, Rudolph, & Weiner (2003) suggests
that compassion can be “moderated by love and valuing of the other person,
probably through appraisals of self-relevance.” This research also extends to
appraisals of blameworthiness and the extremity of the need of the recipient
for compassion.
“Love” the ultimate superordinate construct
Christ
Himself has given us the ultimate “superordinate construct.” He said: “And that
he should be loved with the whole heart, and with the whole understanding, and
with the whole soul, and with the whole strength; and to love one' s neighbor
as one's self, is a greater thing than all holocausts and sacrifices.” (Mk
12:33). This is certainly the understanding of the Apostle Paul who writes to
the Galatians (4: 14): “For all the law is fulfilled in one word: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself.” Thus compassion without love is meaningless in a
Christ-like sense. As St. Paul tells the Corinthians: “And if I should
distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be
burned, and have not charity [love], it profiteth me nothing.” (1 Cor 13:3).
Certainly, for Christ-like compassion, any differentiation of individuals based
on such appraisals must be rejected and/or modified. Did not Christ tell us:
And whosoever will force thee one mile, go
with him other two, Give to him that asketh of thee and from him that would
borrow of thee turn not away. You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt
love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do
good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate
you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh
his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the
unjust. For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not
even the publicans this? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you
more? do not also the heathens this? Be you therefore perfect, as also your
heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt. 5: 41-48)
The need to discern real need
As
Morelli (2009) points out, appraisal of the criterion for helping (in this case
having compassion) is “that it be for the good and welfare of the individual.”
Such an appraisal must be guided by discernment, or what our Church Fathers
call diakrisis, the virtue of being able to discriminate between Godly and
un-Godly thoughts. For example, dependent individuals not being provided with
the opportunity to learn functional behaviors they need and that they are
capable of learning, would not be for their good and welfare. Thus the need for
a Godly appraisal of their real need.
Since the
Vietnam War I have visited Spinal Cord Injury units of Veterans Administration
(VA) hospitals. Hospital staff and even visitors were instructed never to do
any action for a paralyzed veteran that they could do themselves unless they
specifically asked and you determined they could not perform the task. This was
personally difficult for me. I was brought up, for example, to open doors for people, pick up something
they may have dropped and give it back to them etc. Now I had to watch a
paraplegic or quadriplegic veteran struggle to perform such simple tasks.
Truly, however, this was for their good and welfare. They had to learn to do as
much as they could do for themselves in order to maximize being
self-sufficient. Even now as an on-call Orthodox Chaplain for the local VA
Health-care Center, I have to and do abide by these instructions.
Consider
what St. John of the Ladder (Moore,1979) says of pride in his spiritual classic
the Ladder of Divine Ascent:
Pride is denial of God, an invention of the
devil, the despising of men, the mother of condemnation, the offspring of
praise, a sign of sterility, flight from Divine assistance, the precursor of
madness, the cause of falls, the foothold for satanic possession, a source of
anger, a door of hypocrisy, the support of demons, the guardian of sins, the
patron of pitilessness, the rejection of compassion, a bitter inquisitor, an
inhuman judge, an opponent of God, a root of blasphemy. (p. 138)
In
today’s terminology we would rightly say that pride is the mother of all other
passions. It is the perfect storm in which all the other passions can
develop; self-love, presumption,
arrogance, and vainglory all can be seen to stem from this root. St. John even
specifically relates pride to “rejection of compassion.”
Reflecting
on St. Maximos the Confessor’s counsel (Philokalia II, p. 274) may also help
provide a connection between lack of compassion and the anti-social aggressive
behaviors described above. St. Maximos, although specifically talking about the
passion of gluttony, includes a caution against “self-love [as] it severs the
natural bonds of compassion.” This understanding is further developed by our
holy Church spiritual father Nikitas Stithatos who first points out that
“nothing so prevents someone newly engaged in spiritual warfare from practicing
the commandments as this pernicious vice of self-love, (Philokalia IV, p. 86)
and then suggests a spiritual basis for a solution: “If it [the individual]
fills itself with things Divine and the ground of humility [overcoming
narcissistic self-love] . . . it cultivates love of God, faith and compassion
for others.”
A modern
example of the vacuousness of compassion without love is given to us by a saintly contemporary spiritual father of the
Church, Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain (2008). First he tells us:
This is the most important thing of all: to
have true love among yourselves . . . not false love. Always, when there is
true concern for each other, compassion and love, one can act correctly.
Kindness and love are empowering. (p. 234)
Then the
saintly Elder goes on to make the connection between Godly-love and compassion
even more explicit with a concrete example:
Love is a divine attribute and informs the
other person. Even in hospitals, when the doctors and nurses feel genuine
compassion for their patients, this is the most effective medicine of all the
medications given to them. The patients feel they are being cared for with love
[emphasis mine] and have a sense of certainty, security and consolation. (p.
347)
By Fr. George Morelli
Source: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/compassion-the-forgotten-virtue1
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