Compassion and Understanding
- Martyn Foster
- Sep 5
- 3 min read
Going too far or not enough?
When I returned to writing at the start of August after a break, I began with, “why we’re as crazy and confused as we’ve ever been”, and then I shared again this week, “the derangement of the modern human”, much to do with the current state of affairs, not only around the world, but at home – for me here in Australia.
The marches, the protests, the cop killings, the general animosity and hostility between people…it all makes me rather sad. As I’ve written before, punishment and condemnation have their place, but with this week’s article I wanted to frame this discussion around compassion and understanding rather than how it’s largely been viewed. Sadly – I’m very sad this week, evidently – a significant number of media have largely become nothing more than opinion bloggers or agents of agenda setters, people who don’t really help the situation. I discuss this at greater lengths in my article, “the media-tations.”
Before we go any further, I’d like you to have these questions in mind:
At what point do you stop having compassion for people?
At what point is redemption impossible?
Does compassion ever go too far?
What is the point of a protest? Is it a sign of people not feeling heard and understood, or is it people trying to stoke disharmony, disunity and hate? I like to believe it’s mostly the former, but there will always be bad apples – independent of politics. We saw this with both the pro-Palestine and “March for Australia” marches. One of the things I’ve tried to do, both directly and indirectly, is pull people back from the extremes, or to prevent them for getting there in the first place – and that takes compassion and understanding.
“How much understanding do we have to do? Are there people who we shouldn’t bother trying to understand? And therefore, show no compassion and empathy to?”
It’s easier to pick your side and have your enemy than to try and genuinely understand why some people are the way they are. You have your team, you get to belong, you get praised for supporting your team and condemning the opposition. You get to feel good about yourself, sometimes for little to no effort. For me, I don’t have any team – and it doesn’t feel like I’m a highly sought-after free agent neither lol – but it gives me the flexibility to observe things from a multitude of perspectives.
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The realities and responsibilities of the present are forever tempted by an escape to a false nostalgia. We see this with a yearning for a return to Stalinist (or even Leninist) Russia, the continuing adoration for Mao by the Chinese Communist Party, and the never-ending Aryan allure of Hitler’s Nazi Germany – of which a number of Neos rocked up at the March for Australia protests shouting “Heil Australia”, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, C.G. Jung (a favourite of mine, regular readers would know), alluded to this by what he called a “regressive restoration of the persona”, essentially, a return to the state of blissful ignorance having failed to learn from the painful experience.
So, where do we go from here?
An advocation for hospitality (in the fullest sense), social interaction, and reciprocity as an antidote to the hostility, enmity, and lack of cohesion. There has to be a superordinate uniting principle or goal. The thing is we’re struggling to agree what that is.
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