No Pity

 

One of best reasons for guarding ourselves against doing harm to anyone is to preserve our capacity for compassion. For we cannot pity those we have wronged.”

 

My response: This entry is chilling. People are born wicked, so if they as individuals or worse, as a mob, harm anyone without cause—especially the blameless—they deaden their consciences, and are capable then of doing anything, absolutely anything to anyone. And doing evil is an addiction: to continue to get a thrill by being cruel, unjust, sadistic, or violent, one has to become more and more hateful and vicious towards targets.

 

Not only can we not pity those that we have wrong, but our lies to ourselves, justifying our nasty treatment of them, become the truth in our minds, so now we can really hurt them, even kill them. We have not pity upon those that have done us no damage. The more innocent they are, the worse we treat them. The more unreasonable our treatment of them, the more likely the maltreatment will be likely to continue and worsen.

 

When we forsake the duty to feel compassion and pity towards others, we have taken the first step, likely irretrievable, down that slippery slope to becoming moral monsters.

 

Individualists may seem selfish, and perhaps they can be, but, more likely and more often, an individualist—and especially an individuators—because he sees himself as a person of worth, he will treat himself with dignity and respect. His ability to recognize himself as a human being of worth will also implant in his conscious state of mind a keen, appreciated awareness of the individuality and worth of every neighbor, and the concomitant requirement to treat them with compassion.

 

It is the nonindividuator who attacks and degrades himself, treating himself as an object, not a noble, autonomous subject; he will treat others as things, as mere stones to be kicked, because he has objectivized himself first.

 

 

Hoffer: “          139

 

Compassion is probably the only antitoxin of the soul. Where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses are relatively harmless. One would rather see the world run by men who set their hearts on toys but are accessible to pity, than by men animated by lofty ideals whose dedication makes them ruthless. In the chemistry of man’s soul, almost all noble attributes—courage, honor, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, etc.—can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.”

 

My response: Only compassion or love can blunt or conquer our desire to do evil to ourselves or to others, and hurting ourselves or others is hating ourselves and others.

 

Hoffer is pointing out that non-intellectual burghers, farmers, blue-collar workers, and laborers are naturally more rational, wiser, kinder, more moderate, and individualistic because they are temperate and non-fanatical, setting their hearts on toys, not lofty ideals.

 

It is the intellectuals, the men of words and men of action, animated by lofty ideals, which are the concepts and arguments comprising their adored ism. The ruthlessness and cruelty of such zealots is without limit once it gets rolling. Their zeal is pure hatred aggressively, violently on the march.

 

We need idealism and idealistic fervor, but these abstractions can be transmuted into ruthless, evil isms so easily. We need a generation of individuating supercitizens, idealistic and yet practical, making money and being artists, running the government and living their own independent lives, enjoying personal power with no desire to deprive the neighbor of his legitimate share of power and property. He is moderate, loving and non-coercive: he remains fairly compassionate.