‘To tend the world in silence and keep the world safe from lethal storms.’
- Sara Maitland
‘Cowardice asks the question, Is it safe? Expediency asks the question, Is it political? Vanity asks the question, Is it popular? But Conscience asks the question, Is it right?’
- Martin Luther King
Some of us in the Commons Group have gone along to a dance performance called ‘Plan B for Utopia’ (which subsequently featured at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival). One of those attending is Joanna, the woman with the guitar who had made up songs with me on that day of the silent walk and the final rice pudding. I suggest we might go for a cup of tea to talk about the Plan B performance, and she agrees.
I was very short of money in those days. However, I’m an old-fashioned kind of person and still feel it’s a gentleman’s prerogative to buy for a lady. Every woman is a descendant of the Queen of Sheba, I’ve since told Joanna on many occasions, and the Queen of Sheba doesn’t pay for her own chai and chowder. (I think I learnt this fact from pop legend, Sister Sledge.)
There is an anxious moment however, as Joanna considers having a salad. It costs more than I have in cash and I don’t know if any of my bank cards will work. Luckily, she settles instead for a slice of lemon drizzle cake along with her tea. I have enough for a cuppa myself, with only pennies left.
Joanna seems anxious and before long a story of recent troubles in her life starts to unfold. I glance nervously at the time as Joanna’s story continues. Eventually, I must apologise and step out of the café to phone my Dad and say that the evening meal will be delayed. This news is equivalent to telling him that he must lose an arm. I suggest that he visits the biscuit tin to tide him over until I return home.
Back in the café and Joanna is sobbing heavily. I find myself tongue-tied, so try simply to make encouraging grunts. Somehow, Joanna interprets this as reassurance. The trauma passes. Joanna’s face brightens. It seems like talking things through has been cathartic.
I reach home and dinner is delivered one hour and ten minutes late. Dad appears distraught. He had found the biscuit tin but been unable to open the lid. Soon though, he settles, and the normal routine of dinner and watching the news on TV is re-established. When I find time to myself I have a long think over the story Joanna has told me. What is most striking is that she seems to have no condemnation or judgement against the people who have wronged her. On the other hand, perhaps she is silently fuming and just not admitting it. Perhaps she secretly longs to smash a guitar over the heads of her antagonists. Or perhaps, as the Queen of Sheba, she might wish to sell them into slavery, have them put into cages, slung over the back of a camel and carried off to some unknown fate.
Maybe, I think, it would be better if she was really angry — although best not with the smashed guitar or the selling into slavery. When it comes to situations like this, the feelings get complicated.
I send an email off to Joanna to check she has reached home safely. Then it’s tea and biscuits with Dad and off to bed.
The third of four chapters exploring the themes of nature, place, compassion and pleasure. Once again, only suggestions.
How a government cares for its people is the most important question for any society. So questions of compassion should be paramount for any governance system. Principles then, are required in giving voice to those who are most marginalised in society and in need of the most care. We touched on Gandhi’s social sin of Politics without Principle in Chapter 6, Community on a Large Scale. Politics without Principle is also relevant as a check on our discussions in this chapter.
Sympathy, Empathy, Compassion
Let’s start by looking at the meanings of ‘sympathy’, ‘empathy’ and ‘compassion’. Different authors have different ways of defining these terms, and meanings have also shifted over time in how these words are understood in common parlance. To clarify how I am using the words in this book — I am essentially building from the ‘feelings only’ of sympathy and empathy, to a ‘feelings with action’ definition of compassion.
Sympathy is to feel for the circumstances of others — usually meaning sad when others are sad — but not really to fully identify with the other’s circumstances — to ‘walk in their shoes’. We could say that sympathy is the emotion at the root of empathy and compassion.
Empathy goes a bit further, and is about a more genuine sharing in the joy or pain of others. Empathy means to be able to imagine ourselves in another’s circumstances, and therefore to understand their feelings, and not simply feel happy or sad on their behalf. So empathy is to ‘feel with’ rather than just to ‘feel for’.
Compassion goes one stage further still. Compassion is rooted in empathy; it is about identifying with feelings in the first instance, and imagining ourselves into another’s circumstances and then to act on those feelings. Ken Robinson said: ‘I think of compassion as applied empathy, so to speak, the executive wing of empathy. It’s one thing to empathise … something else to do something about it… Compassion is the … cultural glue that holds us together as communities.’ Earlier authors referred to ‘sympathetic imagination’ or, ‘intelligent kindness’. So compassion means to be actively involved. This might be by way of helping out in times of difficulty, and it may also be in terms of sharing in another’s joy. Compassion is as much about ‘rejoicing with’ and ‘laughing with’ as it is about ‘crying with’. Compassion has been described as justice with celebration.
Compassion can be about caring for oneself as well as caring for others. If we can be aware of our feelings, then that allows us to understand what is needed to take care of ourselves and to extend care more thoroughly to others.
For the most part, I’m running with compassion in this book, and hope that the reader will keep in mind the broad definition of the word that I have explained here.
Why Compassion?
Why be compassionate? The most basic answer to this is to say that it’s about a natural instinct to care for others and also about a sense of fairness — of equity. As with hierarchy, we might have a lengthy discussion about whether the sense of care and the sense of fairness are innate to human nature or whether they are socially-constructed. Either way, these things are deeply ingrained. We see our own vulnerability and somehow that makes us a bit more human. We see others’ vulnerability, and — if we make the connection — it reminds us of our own vulnerability and we want to set things right.
Perhaps it is not necessary to look beyond questions of equity in order to decide on matters of compassion. Fairness, we might say, is the immediate reason for being compassionate. But remember what we said about compassion above. It is as much about celebration, shared pleasure and laughing with others, as it is about caring for needs. We are part of a wider world, and our pains and pleasures reflect, and are reflected by, the whole community of other people and of nature. Our shared life with others and with nature is the underlying concept. This, in turn, is the deeper reason behind compassion. It is interbeing, a re-connection with the wild nature that we all share.
Back in Chapter 4, on Polity, we noted that one definition of what government should be about is to protect us from things that might go wrong. To be ‘free from’ things that may do us harm. In later chapters, we have added the idea of being ‘free to’ — in particular, the freedom to make and to re-make are identified as ways that we may flourish as human beings. That is a freedom to shape our own story — ‘Each life is a fable of freedom’, as Theodore Zeldin reminds us. A wider vision of compassion then, takes into account these more positive elements. Along with others, (see for instance, Marjorie Kelly, Owning Our Future) I want to suggest pleasure, emotion, imagination and creativity as the value system that is the real undergirding of society, as we will explore below and in the next chapter.
The ‘feel’ of a society is very much about its level of compassion — between people and between government and its citizens. It would not be too much of a stretch to say that the story of a nation or a society is really a story about its compassion.
Compassion for Self
In Chapter 8, on Nature, we looked at how nature is not something just ‘out there’, but starts with ourselves — our own bodies and minds. As we share in the world of nature, so too, we share in nature’s joys and pains. The place to start with this is to have compassion for ourselves. This is not such an obvious policy to adopt. Looking out for ourselves in a largely selfish manner is not compassion.
I’d suggest that compassion for self means taking a broader view of what our lives might be about and what might really be good for us, rather than just what might make us superficially happy in the short-term. Are we going to be people with a bit of wisdom, a bit of maturity, a bit of soul? When we look back at our lives from our old age, will we think that we have lived a worthwhile life in some way? Were we brave enough to try things? To strike out with new ideas of making things, creating and imagining new ways of being and of doing in the world? We can aim high and perhaps be some use to those around us, or we can aim low, settle for our own Privatopias, and let the rest of the world get on with its own business. As we will explore further in the next chapter, this all loops back to the body. Our physical selves know what is really going on within us. Our bodies know when our minds are frustrated and our hearts’ desires are not being realised. Likewise, our bodies respond in deep pleasure when we find fulfilment in our work, in our relationships and in our communities. So we are taking the ‘long view’, if you will, about what might make for a good life, and this is what I am calling compassion for self.
This section on compassion for self is the closest I’d wish to approach the idea that we might need some kind of personal change, and indeed spiritual change, in order to effect change in society. I recognise the suggestion of spiritual change might be unpalatable for many readers. An alternative might be to consider the Greek word eudaimonia — that is, flourishing — or go for a more modern term, ‘generative’. Both of these terms include the ideas of growth, development and fulfilment.
Another aspect of compassion for self is being able to forgive oneself. Whilst shame serves as a warning against behaviour that may hurt ourselves and others, holding on to shame, guilt and remorse is ultimately destructive.
Compassion for self is the starting point for compassion for others. ‘All friendly feelings for others are an extension of man’s feelings for himself’, Aristotle told us. This is the idea of philautia — that if we are comfortable with ourselves, we can be comfortable with others.
Compassion for Others
We can apply what was said above in the previous section to how we might respond to others, on a personal level. From the little story at the head of this chapter, we saw some of the tensions that can exist in our dealings with others. For instance, in our relationships, we can just seek to fulfil the immediate needs of those around us. We can do whatever pleases them, just to keep them quiet. Parents, of course, face this dilemma through many years of a child’s wants, and know that to give in will mean a happy child in the short-term, but probably a spoilt, selfish and self-centred person in the future. We face similar dilemmas when we are a carer for the elderly or the impaired. And when we are wronged in some way, we can be angry, or we can try forgiveness, and maybe both of these things will fail.
In Chapter 5, Community on a Small Scale, we looked at the governance system called Sociocracy. There we noted in passing the benefit of having a bit of maturity as people in order to cope with all the stuff that is going on with others when we meet up to run a group, an organisation or a business. We can take the short view, just seeing people’s demands at face value, and try to deal with them literally. But actually, the people we are meeting with have broader needs. All of us have that need for the type of compassion I have described above, and most of us are not that good at providing this to ourselves. So we need others to fill in the gaps of our own blindness. To take a broader view of others then is to recognise that they too are struggling to realise a wider meaning and a greater depth in their lives. So applying a bit of wisdom, we will take them seriously, respect them and honour their needs.
Physicist David Bohm, as well as writing about physics, took time out to explore the interactions between people. He wrote about this in his book, On Dialogue. Bohm’s style of dialogue has since been adopted by a great many organisations as a tool for exploring relationships when straight-forward discussion might seem difficult or even impossible. The spirit of dialogue is just to talk, and see where that leads. The hope behind this is that people start to connect, and eventually see that there is more that unites us than divides us. There ceases to be a need to argue things out, debate things, deploy policies or schedules or committees. It may not always work, but the idea taps in to what we discussed above. At a deeper level, we are all connected. The things that divide us are only ever superficial. The poet Rumi summed this up well. He said:
‘Out beyond the ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.’
Families and small groups often manage this quite well. Our development as a species has been in small groups. Charles Darwin seemed to touch on the importance of groups (what Peter Kropotkin called ‘mutual aid’) as part of evolution, but elsewhere deems to contradict this with the more familiar ‘survival of the fittest’ story. It is when we get to larger organisations and more formal relations that things get more difficult. That is why the suggestion in this book is to start at the small scale and to keep things small. Big politics could still be about a few people in a room, and that is where compassion has the best chance. Once again we need to remember the importance of forgiveness.
We can note here, from Chapter 3, Massimo d’Angelis’ definition of the commons as ‘multiplying the gifts of others’. This is reflected in Hannah Arendt’s phrase, ‘Amo: Volo ut sis’ — literally, ‘I love you: I will that you be’, but taken to mean more exactly, ‘I want you to be all that you can be’. Compassion is responding to the beauty in others (their worth, their intrinsic value) with more beauty in return.
Government and Compassion
Some authors distinguish between ‘emotional empathy’ and ‘cognitive empathy’. The first recognises the feelings of another person, and may prompt us to respond, but our response may be just to alleviate immediate suffering (or share in immediate pleasure). It is cognitive empathy that is the more measured kind, taking the longer-term view that I have discussed above. Compassion — and especially the compassion prompted by cognitive empathy — has a more formal aspect to it when it comes to government. How then might governments go about administrating for compassion (setting aside for the moment the question of what sort of governance system is in place)? The usual approach is by way of a ‘welfare net’. John Rawls (A Theory of Justice) for instance, asks us to imagine that we are to be citizens of a society in which we have a ‘veil of ignorance’ about our circumstances. Given a choice, therefore, over welfare arrangements, we are likely to decide on very substantial help, in case, once the veil is lifted, we find ourselves as one of the more unfortunate citizens of this hypothetical state.
A welfare strategy, however, is always going to be something of a one-size-fits-all affair. If we throw enough money at it then it will be reasonably effective, but people’s needs are often very specific. The welfare net is a minimum standard. Paul Radin identifies an ‘irreducible minimum’ of food, clothes and shelter. He says: ‘to deny anyone the irreducible minimum [is] equivalent of saying that a man no longer exists, that he is dead.’
Is there more that government could achieve on the compassion front? Let us go back again to the reason why there is government. Firstly, it is for the sake of protecting citizens against misfortune. But arguably it is also there to promote human flourishing, allowing everyone to meet their full potential. It is the accountability, and the rights of everyone to have a say at every level of government, that might afford us the best chance for these aims to be achieved. As such, a genuine Parapolity, where there is engagement from the smallest to the largest level of governance, offers an opportunity for more tailored compassion. In simple terms, neighbours can take on some of the responsibility of making sure that those with problems have those problems adequately addressed. As things move out to wider circles of governance, these smaller arrangements are the key to how the larger arrangements are organised. Of course, some people will always need professional help that the local community cannot provide directly. But then the local community can still feed into the wider circles of governance, to seek the right help for such folk, so again there is the opportunity for needs to be met more effectively than just with top-down big government.
As we’ve highlighted above, compassion is about shared pleasure as well as shared needs. So the community can also help to make people feel welcome and celebrated in the place they live — helping to address issues of loneliness, stress and depression, and adding to a sense of well-being. I recognise that such engagement can easily tip over into interference and patronising people who may prefer to have their independence and privacy. But as things stand just now, we have the balance wrong, with neighbours often hardly speaking to each other, let alone caring for one another’s needs or sharing in pleasures. If we could get the balance right, between seeing the needs of others, but respecting their privacy, things could be very much better.
Business and Compassion
Businesses need to be rewarded for their imagination and creativity. We can celebrate the know-how and technical skill they bring to our lives through their products and services. This might seem a strange point to be making — after all, the business is getting paid — but somehow it seems appropriate that this too should be considered part of compassion. At the same time, businesses need to take responsibility for the wider world and see themselves as a service to their communities. We saw in Chapter 6 that, as part of a Parapolity, business owners would be invited to take part in local governance, so there will be a great deal more accountability. Businesses may also be actively engaged in their local communities by way of participatory economics — Parecon. Businesses need to look at enhancing their locality, so far as this is possible. Considerate use of the natural commons needs to be a priority for business, and in particular, a business’s use of land will be something under close scrutiny by local residents. Careful use of materials and the opportunity for repair and/or recycling of their products is another consideration. (See, for instance, William McDonough and Michael Braungart‘s, Cradle to Cradle.) The key point from all this is the point about giving a service. I think that is where the social commons meets material capital. If businesses and business leaders were more determined to see their work in this way, then we would be making progress. Once again, we might change systems — forcing some of the changes that we would like to see in society onto business and others — through legislation. But the better way is for people to want to make changes — to see changes as a responsibility, but also something in which they take a pride and a joy.
Okay, so the reader may be thinking, this is pie-in-the-sky. Businesses are out for all they can get, and if they don’t keep chasing profit then they will go under, and then what use will their moral high ground have been? But to take this view is to say that business, and indeed, humans generally, are inherently selfish and cannot change. Or, as the ardent anti-capitalists would have it, the nature of the system forces business into ruthless competition in order to survive. But these views seem to close off hope, and in a way, it is a means by which people shut out the need to try to make changes themselves. If everyone is selfish, after all, then what is the point of even trying? But no, I think we have to reject that message. We have seen above that we can have compassion for ourselves without this being selfishness. It is certainly self-interest, but not the kind of destructive motives that the pessimistic view of human nature might take. In the next chapter, on pleasure, we will see similar reasoning. Granted, there are people who are badly off the rails, but the very fact that we point out such people and condemn them suggests that we already know better — that we see a better way to live.
Wider Circles of Compassion
In the wider circles of Parapolity and Parecon there are a few policies that relate to compassion on a much broader scale. We looked at business above, and noted that the ideas expressed there might seem to many a bit naive, or, at best, only appropriate to small-scale, local concerns. Big business, critics might say, would not adopt such policies. The bigger the business, the more ruthless and the more reflective of the worst forms of capitalism. Business at the large scale tries to act independently of national government. This is what big business often means by ‘free trade’ — the freedom to do whatever it wants with impunity. At the same time, big business may lobby the support of governments where it can, to get policies adopted that will be favourable to its profits and to protect its markets — particularly against foreign competitors. Neo-liberalism is not really about no regulations, it’s about regulations that favour business. It’s also in the interests of neo-liberalism to encourage poor countries to have ‘free markets’ because their fledgling industries can therefore never develop to compete with the richer Western world. It keeps them in the place of supplying cheap labour and raw materials. So, poorer nations suffer by the protectionism of the big business of wealthier nations — that is the modern-day form of colonialism.
Real free trade — as we have seen in Chapter 7 on Economics — is something very different. Free of all tariff barriers, business could flourish in poorer nations, creating more employment there. Wealthier nations would benefit from cheaper goods. Granted, some industries and jobs would lose out in wealthy nations in the short-term. But the businesses of wealthier nations would adapt in time to provide goods and services that are, for instance, more specific to place. The governments of wealthy nations could help out where particular industries are under the more serious disadvantage. Again, I recognise that this might appear a very naive suggestion. I only invite the reader to step back and consider this. If we are really interested in ‘development’ for poorer nations, then we wouldn’t be giving them charity and loans on the one hand, and then blocking the import of their products on the other. It’s often said that poor nations pay more back to wealthy nations in terms of interest on loans than they receive from the wealthy in aid. Are we serious about alleviating poverty? Are we serious about everyone, the world over, being given an equality of opportunity as well as social and political equality? If we are, then we desperately need to think about the way we trade. Compassion, on the big scale, is again not about little bits of help to address short-term needs. It is about treating poor nations with dignity and respect and working with them for their best long-term interests.
What about big business that operates in poorer nations, exploiting cheap labour and sometimes having poor standards with regard to pollution and safety, so as to massively profit from their markets in wealthier nations? I’m not going to say that businesses should not set up on foreign soil. However, it is a question of accountability. The business needs to be responsible to its home government for what it does overseas. The business should respect and work with host governments to ensure that fairness prevails. The host government should not be lured or bullied into accepting poor standards from the guest business. The business needs to look to its ethics. On the broadest scale of Parapolity, the world should stand up for poorer nations and hold those who exploit them to account. It could well be that national governments are just no longer large enough to deal with these issues. We may need the strengthening of world institutions — and the establishment of a world government — to keep big business in check.
These discussions lead us to the related topic of the free movement of people. Similar arguments to the one made above apply here. If we are serious about helping the poor, then open the borders. Until we do, then all talk of overseas aid and development is simply nonsense. I recognise, of course, the chaos that would be unleashed in the wealthier nations that would be the likely hosts of vast numbers of refugees and economic migrants (and often it is difficult to tell the difference?). I am only wishing to point out a possibility, which could, after all, be partially implemented rather than adopted wholesale. Governments — whilst sometimes adopting a stance of regulating immigration — often secretly welcome it, as it gives them a cheap, biddable workforce. So the issues around immigration are complex. We will see how this plays out in the Conclusion, as we go back to the concern over the polarisation of politics that was raised in the Introduction.
Free trade and open borders would, if they were ever adopted, ease the problems of poor nations quite considerably. But there remain some concerns. One is the question of development in poor nations that is often badly served by lending. The borrowing often goes towards large-scale infrastructure projects that benefit the wealthier citizens of the poor nation and might even harm the very poorest. The further concern is that open borders may mean the younger, cleverer citizens leaving to seek their fortunes in wealthy nations, whilst the poor nation is left with the older and less able citizens. It is difficult, of course, to be too prescriptive here. Poor nations need to make their own choices, and with that comes the possibility of making mistakes. However, sometimes people need to speak up for the poor, whose voices are so often drowned out. Maybe then, we need to lend our skills and knowledge rather than our money. A further alternative is for rich nations to simply give money directly to the citizens of poor nations, as a step towards Universal Basic Income (see below) in the recipient countries. Their spending would in turn boost the economies of the poor nations and allow them to develop under their own terms. There are already some very pragmatic methods being adopted to help poorer nations find their own ways towards happier and more prosperous societies. A balance of measures, agreed internationally, might be the best way forward. Compassion should be our default in our dealings with other nations. It should not be suspicion and having ‘interests’ (just meaning, what will benefit us).
If a genuine system of Parapolity were in place then any decisions on immigration and free trade would be open to public scrutiny. People might choose the opposite to these proposals — closing up trade and borders, and if we were to accept that a Parapolity is a better form of governance than a representative democracy then we would have to accept such decisions.
A further suggestion along compassionate lines is the adoption of a Universal Basic Income (see also Chapter 7), or UBI. A basic income for all adult citizens takes away the stigma of unemployment, allows people to explore options of more education and allows people to follow their hearts towards a vocation, rather than working to pay bills just to survive. UBI is not a replacement for the welfare state. There still needs to be a welfare net for the most vulnerable, as explored earlier in the chapter. But it is a system that would be easy to adopt, popular and fair.
Let me stress again that these are only suggestions.