As I get older, I think more about anger - about how there’s too much of it, and about compassion, which always seems to be in short supply. This subject always reminds me of the claim that Watanabe’s character makes in Kurosawa’s legendary Ikiru (1959), “I can't afford to hate anyone. I don't have that kind of time.” As I get older, it seems to me that no one has that kind of time. Ikiru is an awesome film, but in the end Kurosawa seems to suggest that compassion is grounded in existential insight about death. That may be one route to compassion, there must be other ways.
One intuitive (and typical) response suggests that increasing compassion and reducing hate and anger requires seeing others and oneself as human beings with a special status. Seeing a person in their “full humanity” would recognize the nature of that special status, lead us to respect them, feel compassion, and reduce negative feelings towards them. It’s an old view, but I’m no longer convinced it is right. In fact, I wonder if it’s actually the problem itself - and that we have things backwards. Perhaps what we actually need to do is dehumanize ourselves and others, and not see ourselves as having any real special status, in order to make progress.
I’ll explain.
Humans as Super-Beings
Obviously a call to “dehumanize” people is radical. To see what I mean by this, let’s look first at what it usually means to say that a person has “full humanity” and then work back from there. Standardly, this view suggests that humans are special because they have a unique power, commonly called “free will” - and it involves the ability to determine one’s own path of action into the future among live real-time options that present themselves. Looking down at my pen, I could pick it up, or not pick it up. At the moment of choosing, both options would be available to me - they both “lie open” as real, live possibilities. The future is literally undetermined.
This view of free will (there are others, this is just one), and of humanity, transforms us into truly extraordinary types of entities. Animals, plants, rocks - when they move there and in that way we don’t say real-time options were available at the time - the future is very determined in those instances. In fact, we look to science to explain what made the object do precisely what it did. Since we have a special power, and our futures are not determined, we see ourselves differently. I move this way and not that way because I willed to, and I could have willed otherwise at the time. This “will” is private, opaque, mysterious, and it grounds our idea of our “full humanity”.
I admit it - it feels nice (comfy actually) to think you’re a super-being. Unfortunately, as it turns out this view of the human is very likely false. One might think - “Ah, so what. What’s wrong with a little fiction? Not like it hurts anyone to think it.” Well, that’s the issue - perhaps it is hurting people. Perhaps thinking that you have a super-power like this produces all sorts of bad unintended consequences for yourself and for others. The idea that our fictional view of ourselves as free, a view that grounds our ultimate value and worth, comes with real negative costs has been pointed out by many writers such as Nietzsche1 and recently by Galen Strawson2 and Sam Harris.3 It is worth a look-see.
The Dark Side of Free Will - Resentment and Anger
So, negative consequences like what? What could possibly be bad about viewing oneself as the ultimate causal driver of one’s own future? Well, the bad consequences of this are lying in plain sight, but we don’t see them as consequences of a belief in free will. So we don’t connect them. To see the link, let’s start by considering how we tend to approach ourselves and others, as free agents, when action goes wrong. When the action is bad enough, we get angry or resentful. We tend to spend a lot of time blaming the person (or ourselves) for doing the action. In fact, you might notice that the anger you feel at the person far outstrips the anger you felt about the act occurring.
If it helps, let’s do a thought experiment. Think of a situation in which someone steps on your foot by accident, and another in which someone does it on purpose. In each situation, you likely get immediately angry, but in the first case your anger quickly dissipates and subsides, whereas in the second case it grows. Why? Well, in the first case you disassociate the act from the person, because you see that the person did it accidentally. In the second, you connect the two, and since you think the agent is free, you add to this the belief that the agent could have chosen not to do it. This makes things far worse. Such an agent is wicked, bad, and/or malign. Anger is the right response.
And there’s half of our problem.
If you see the offending person (or you yourself) as “free” only one causal variable really matters - the person’s special power of will. After all, the person could have employed that power to do otherwise, but didn’t. So the person, embodied by their power of will, is responsible. We talk this way all the time. We beat ourselves up for failing to choose then what now appears to us the right option, and beat others up for the same. Politically, we angrily rail against people on public assistance who “could just get a job, if they really wanted to” and demonize lawbreakers as evil, deserving pain as “just desert”. Wickedness and wrongdoing go together, like two peas in a pod.
It’s pretty dark stuff, if you ask me.
Finding a Place for Compassion
I said that wickedness and wrongdoing “going together” was half the problem because there’s also not much room in that “volitional space” for expressions of compassion. That’s the other half. To see why this is, we’ll need to dig a bit deeper. Once we do so, we’ll see is that the root components of compassion - a combination of imagination, desire, and understanding - do not fit easily inside a conceptualization of what happens when a “free agent” engages in wrongdoing.
Let’s start by examining the three parts of compassion and how they should be directed at those who do wrong. First, compassion contains understanding - an “aha, now I see why that happened” moment. It’s an uncovering of variables that, if not present, may have led to a different outcome. Second, compassion involves a desire not to see the other person suffer, and a belief that failure to do right is a state of ill-being. So compassion inclines you to alleviate that suffering through mindful correction (the “aha!” moment comes in handy). Third, compassion requires an imaginative act - to see yourself as the wrongdoer, doing the same deed, in those conditions.
When we think of wrongdoers as “free” there’s nowhere to insert compassion. Since you blame the person’s will for the act, there’s nothing for you to reach out and “understand” - no “aha, now I see!” moment to have because nothing is hidden from view. The agent willed the wrong thing and could have done differently. Second, there’s no imaginative act - unless you see yourself as wicked, you see the other person, insofar as that act is concerned, as a foreign “other”. Surely, you would have willed differently! Lastly, since the “other” acted wickedly, they did want to do that. So the person deserves punishment for the act, but also for being who and what they are.
Now, this doesn’t mean a view of the agent as free precludes any response other than negative attitudes such as anger and resentment. One could engage in acts of mercy, grace, or forgiveness, each of which easily fit in with the notion of a person as free. The problem is that they have nothing to do with the wrongdoer - they are gifts bestowed by a magnanimous responder. The wrongdoer doesn’t deserve grace, but is gifted it. Compassion is not understood as a gift. People should be compassionate because it correctly reflects the true nature and condition of the wrongdoer, whereas people should show grace because it is better reflects the true nature of the responder.
So, if we’re are thinking of the right way to respond to a wrongdoer who is also free, there’s just no space for compassion at all. You can be angry, and you can be merciful. But compassion just doesn’t fit. So if compassion is something we seek to develop, we have to change our conception of the true nature of the person, because it is clearly in the way.
Dehumanizing - or Rehumanizing? - Ourselves
We’re now ready to circle back to the original idea - that to change the view of the person so that it coheres with compassion means dehumanizing the person. It should be evident that “dehumanizing others” doesn’t mean “treating others badly.” Instead, it means not viewing humans as super-beings with special powers of will. As Tolstoy says at the end of War and Peace, “it is necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.” If we can follow Tolstoy’s advice, we can dehumanize ourselves and others, and in so doing open up a route to engaging them (or ourselves) in compassionate ways.
Obviously this dehumanization requires a view of action as caused by background variables - the agent’s own past, habits, ways of thinking, and the unique situational factors at play. Choice is the culmination of a myriad of forces, none of which is a will. The agent decides, but whatever choice made, the agent had to choose, given the variables in play at the time. The future may look open to the actor, but it isn’t. If this is the reality of the human, our approach to wrongdoing must change. Marcus Aurelius (ancient Roman Emperor and Stoic) comments that once we recognize the inevitability of a person’s behavior, getting angry about it is entirely misplaced. He proclaims:
In the gymnastic exercises suppose that a man has torn thee with his nails, and by dashing against thy head has inflicted a wound. Well, we neither show any signs of vexation, nor are we offended, nor do we suspect him afterwards as a treacherous fellow; and yet we are on our guard against him, not however as an enemy, nor yet with suspicion, but we quietly get out of his way. Something like this let thy behaviour be in all the other parts of life: let us overlook many things in those who are like antagonists in the gymnasium. For it is in our power, as I said, to get out of the way, and to have no suspicion nor hatred.4
Aurelius is not claiming that we can’t help those persons to change - he thinks that is entirely possible (he advises it). He’s just pointing out that whatever happens in a situation was going to happen, because of whatever variables were in play. So anger about acts is simply misplaced. When he tells us to “get out of the way” what he really is saying is, “understand the variables that constitute the situation before you, and adjust your behavior to what is appropriate”. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist, says the same, but he focuses more on assuring that such “adjustments” are focused on helping to change the variables that lead to wrongdoing. In Peace is Every Step, he says:
When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look into the reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments.5
Aurelius and Nhat Hanh are making related points. The first is that blaming and anger have no real role given the nature of the human, and that engaging in anger simply diverts our attention from the real causal variables at play. The second is that once we’ve redirected our attention to the real causal variables, we can now be effective in terms of making the changes that need to be made. In Aurelius’ sense that means learning to “get out of the way” and for Nhat Hanh it means engaging compassion to sense suffering in the wrongdoer and motivate oneself to change the variables needed in order to alleviate it. Of course, neither seeks to justify bad behavior. Instead, they ask us to see the human for what it really is, and to then act accordingly.
There are lots of reasons why a person might object to the viewpoint that I’ve laid out here. I won’t cover them all, but instead will focus on the one that lies at the heart of the post - that this view dehumanizes us. It cheapens us, makes us like all other things. I’m not sure that it does cheapen us, but it’s true that it makes us similar to other things around us. Maybe that’s a good thing! In addition, it may be that the best way to think of this is that it’s not a dehumanizing, but a rehumanizing. Perhaps what is truly amazing about the human is not a super-power, but simply the ability to self-program.
When Aurelius says we need to learn to “get out of the way” it is clear to the reader of the Meditations that the one agent who I most need to learn to “get out of its way” is our own self. How? Only through understanding our own behavior, our thinking, the ways in which we get stuck in traps of bad behavior, and by understanding how the unique situations around us affect us - only through understanding these variables do we stand any chance at meaningful self-correction.
But this requires not thinking of ourselves as Gods but as humans - rehumanizing ourselves. Only when we succeed at getting out of our own way can we stop beating ourselves up, engaging in self-hate, and instead extend compassion to ourselves. We see why we make mistakes when we do, we know that we’d do the same given the same conditions rehappening again, and we sense the suffering associated with wrongdoing. And we want to help to fix it, by making things different next time through mindful reprogramming. And as the Buddhists will say - the road to compassion for others starts with compassion for oneself.
And that means, dehumanization. Or rehumanization. Either works for me.
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Nietzsche, Friedrich. Genealogy of Morals, (1886) Essay 1, “Good and Bad, Good and Evil” section 13
Strawson, Peter F., “Freedom and Resentment”, (1962) Proceedings of the British Academy, 48: 1–25.
Harris, Sam. Free Will (2010), pgs. 50 - 75.
Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations, Book VI, number 20.
Nhat Hanh, Thich, Peace is Every Step (1992), “Blaming Never Helps”, pg. 78
Thanks, Chris. At one level, then, we fail to find compassion when we commit to a particular view of the culpability of agents who possess free will, that is, to the view of "just desserts".
I wonder if there isn't also an affective state that is deeper at play here than what I see as a more cognitive or ideological process that you highlight in the just desserts view. What I am thinking of here is resentment. Briefly: A few months ago, I was riding my bike along the South Creek trail and, moving at a good pace, startled a woman who was walking in the same direction with her dog. When I looked back to wave an apology, I was met with an expression first of shock then anger and, as I sensed it from her deep scowl, arriving at resentment. The dog had jumped too when I passed, but then went right on sniffing the pavement. It seems that, unlike for the dog, I had not only surprised this woman but, within a few moments, deeply offended her by my actions. Had she the power, I suspect she might have had me fined on the spot or at least have me put into the gallows somewhere along the trail due to my crime.
Of course, maybe I deserve such a punishment. It can be dangerous to bike so quickly past people on foot. What would have bothered me was not so much to have been fined for my behavior (in this hypothetical) but that the person who I offended was indeed so personally offended at my actions, as if I had woken up with the idea in my head to ride past her and startle her and her dog. And here is where I think resentment is more caustic and elemental than the cognitive/ideological process of assigning due blame, and that such an affect is especially dangerous in its potential to motivate such higher-level thinking.
I am reminded of Nietzsche's views on pity. If my take on N's view is right here, pitying someone does as much harm to you as to the one you pity - it reflects a desire to "take possession" of that person under the guise of compassion when in fact you are using the opportunity to service your own flailing sense of self-confidence. Similarly, when we resent someone we feel has wronged us, we project a noxious internal state, whatever it is that sources our resentment, onto a convenient target, say, the first person who cuts us off in traffic.
Of course, this analogy does not track as well onto situations of abuse or injustice in which a strong emotional reaction is clearly proportional, or at least highly understandable, in relation to the wrongs committed. Though I suspect that a person wrongfully convicted of murder will, are they able to muster the fortitude, prefer the state of confident resolve to that of bitter resentment as they go about challenging their conviction or merely serving their time.
Where I think this leaves us is an ability to better elucidate a world in which compassion and punishment can co-exist. As you remark, making compassion a priority does not have to mean justifying poor or harmful behavior. Yet I am not entirely convinced of a world in which we assume less agency upon people as a means to ensure their compassionate treatment. (That said, I am at the same time wholly convinced that crimes are often the product of people's circumstances and should be treated as such.) What my admittedly incomplete reflection here suggests is that people may be held responsible for their actions, so long as judgement is only be applied by those who can be shown to be acting free of resentment. (I am, again, immediately suspicious of this conclusion, as a dispassionate meting out of the death penalty does not seem to have any moral advantage over a murder motivated by burning resentment.)
In sum, I suspect that our views of culpability as a factor of free will are the waves on a deeper surface of affect which drive our judgements and thus are worth a fuller examination. Of course, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for the thought-provoking post.