Power,
Organization and Community:
The
Complex Components of Compassion
By Ed Democracy
Compassion
is not derived only from emotion. Compassion can be derived from
logic. In fact, unless compassion is understood both emotionally and
logically, it cannot be sustained. Logic and emotion must have
compassion for each other. Logic and emotion must love and
understand each other. Logic and emotion are biological components
of human anatomy. In some people logic is more developed. In others
emotion is more developed. In still others it is nearly evenly
balanced.
Why should this be
important for people who are thinking about the relationship between
the individual and the community? I can give three reasons. First,
compassion, in the philosophical tradition, is a central bridge
between the individual and the community; it is conceived of as our
species' way of hooking the interests of others to our own personal
goods. ... Second, some modern theories - liberal and individualist
moral theories in particular - have treated compassion as an
irrational force in human affairs, one that is likely to mislead or
distract us when we are trying to think well about social policy. ...
Third, this simple opposition between emotion and reason has also
been invoked by communitarian critics of liberalism, who have
suggested that if we are to make room for sentiments such as
compassion, which do not seem to be much honored in liberal theory,
this will mean basing political judgment upon a force that is
affective rather than cognitive, instinctual rather than concerned
with judgment and thought. ... If we want a compassionate community,
we can have one without sacrificing the Enlightenment's commitment to
reason and reflection - because compassion is a certain sort of
reasoning. (Nussbaum (1):28)
To
keep reason and emotion in constant opposition in the individual will
cause the individual to be conflicted and divided against itself. A
community of such individuals will inevitably be divided against
itself. A divided community is a conquered community. A conquered
community is, by definition, powerless.
Power
is at the heart of compassion. When one finds oneself in a context
which calls for compassion, power is invariably a factor in the
context. "[D]ifferences in class, race, gender, wealth, and
power do affect the extent to which the sense of helplessness governs
the daily course of one's life." (Nussbaum (1):45) I submit
that the essential difference between pity and compassion is the
effect on one's balance of power. Pity is a false emotion which
exacerbates a loss of power while compassion is a true emotion which
restores power. In discussing Nietzsche's anti-pity, Stoic argument,
"against cruelty and in favor of self-command," Martha
Nussbaum writes that, a "suffering person whom one respects
will, if an enemy, be regarded with admiration for the fortitude with
which he bears his suffering; if a friend, he will be regarded with a
delicate respect for his pride and a concern for his ability [or
power] to continue creating himself." (Nussbaum (2):150) A
potential target of compassion finds oneself facing a significant
threat to one's balance of power. A potential source of compassion
seeks to help the target regain one's balance of power.
An
individual finds oneself in a context. No individual exists purely
qua individual. "Man is by nature a political animal."
(Aristotle, Politics, c.343 B.C.E.) Even a hermit depends
upon nature. Likewise, it is impossible to achieve a pure community
with absolute uniformity and synchronization of all members. Even if
the difference is only being one individual as opposed to another
individual. There is still a distinction between individual number 8
and individual number 9 even if the difference is only in
serialization. To be a true individual requires a true community.
Man is by nature a
social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not
accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human.
Society is something in nature that precedes the individual. Anyone
who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as
not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either
a beast or a god. (Aristotle, Politics, c.343 B.C.E.)
Only
another can offer one a different perspective on oneself and, hence,
opportunity for growth. Only another can help to create novelty in
one's context. Only novelty can create choices. Only choices can
create power. An individual must choose from among choices oneself.
In so doing one defines oneself. One can only define oneself in a
community.
A
true community requires organization. A true community is composed
of true individuals. A false community composed of false individuals
is not sustainable. False individuals cannot think independently of
the community. True individuals can think independently and as a
group. An assortment of individuals independent of a group
approximates chaos (the many). Order (oneness) can be imposed from
the top down or from the bottom up. Order is organization or
complexity. In biology, the more complex the organism, the more
energy it can contain and the longer it can maintain itself.
(Garrison:304) The most harmonious is a self-organizing, stable,
chaotic system. This would be considered a "middle-out"
system versus "top-down" or "bottom-up". These
systems are said to exhibit negative entropy. Entropy is a measure
of inefficiency. It indicates how likely a system is to dissipate or
maintain energy. Negative entropy represents a gain of energy
generated from within.
Community
is simply the biological, human organization of groups of humans.
Other species exhibit degrees of communal behavior -- wolves, lions,
dolphins, whales, etc.. -- but, here, we are concerned only with
human community. Community can be considered from the local to the
global levels. Energy, or power, is generated by individuals and
either dissipates or is collected and held by community. An
individual has only a finite capacity or potential to store power.
However, a community can store power greater than the sum of the
power of its parts. If power is not collected at one level of
community then it dissipates and is collected in the next nearest
community it encounters.
When
a given community fails to collect power, another community gains
access to that power and the resultant differential in power
increases the probability of actualization of that power by one
community against the other. One must consider the various degrees
of community in various contexts. In the state of nature, one is
closest to the elements and other species. A small group of humans
in the wilds constitutes one degree of community. A minimal degree.
Each member carries a larger portion of the overall load of
maintaining a community. For example, if one member is careless and
cuts oneself or breaks one's leg the rest of the community must
decide whether to carry the individual and to care for the
individual. This slows the community down and poses a threat to the
community by possibly attracting predators to the smell of blood.
The negligence of the individual threatens the entire community.
They become more vulnerable to either elements, predators, or other
communities of humans. It is possible that by bearing the risk of
carrying this negligent individual, the community benefits from the
mutual commitment to each other forged by this effort. However, they
must weigh the risk against the potential benefit.
As
communities establish themselves against the elements and predator
species, the only internal threats are from negligent individuals or
groups of individuals. The only external threats are from other human
communities. There may be conflicts over resources or direct
physical conflict. The strength and cohesion of one community versus
another depend upon its organization and maximization of resources --
human and material. Internally, conflicts may occur over various
issues. The greater the disparity of power from group to group the
less stable the overall community and the more vulnerable it is to
attack from without.
Any
discussion of submitting to the risks of life's vicissitudes and
opening oneself up emotionally to human relationships (Nussbaum
(1):43) only becomes viable in the cave (the community) where the
women waited with the children for the men to return from hunting
sabertooth tigers and woolly mammoths. This possibility of humanity
or compassion can only take place in community. The hunters in the
wilds cannot afford to risk humanity and compassion except in very
limited and controlled measure. Perhaps anyone - male, female, or
other - when faced with a context which is potentially emotionally
overwhelming and paralyzing and is forced to suspend social emotion
and engage in an instinctual, animal, fight or flight mode of
operating.
Yet,
community is not possible without compassion. Compassion can only
take place in a protected context. Ironically, at least at one point
in human development, compassion in some humans posed a threat to
community and compassion in others. Some humans had to move from
worlds where compassion meant life to worlds where compassion meant
death and back again. Somehow sense had to be made of this. It
seems that to this day this same confused dynamic is yet to be
resolved. For some, the comfort of compassion and the safety of
society represent a baited trap. Nietzsche seemed torn between the
wildness of our animal nature and the compassion of our mammalian
nature. He struggled mightily against the biological and social
pressures to abandon our animal nature in favor of our compassionate
nature.
Lacking external
enemies and resistances, and confined within an oppressive narrowness
and regularity, man began rending, persecuting, terrifying himself,
like a wild beast hurling itself against the bars of its cage. This
languisher, devoured by nostalgia for the desert, who had to turn
himself into an adventure, a torture chamber, an insecure and
dangerous wilderness-this fool, this pining and desperate prisoner,
became the inventor of "bad conscience." Also the
generator of the greatest and most disastrous maladies, of which
humanity has not to this day been cured: his sickness of himself,
brought on by the violent severance from his animal past, by his
sudden leap and fall into new layers and conditions of existence, by
his declaration of war against the old instincts that had hitherto
been the foundation of his power, his joy, and his awesomeness. (GM
II:XVI)
To
his credit, he had the courage to wrestle with this problem in his
cerebral cortex, the uniquely human section of the brain. In this
sense, and, no doubt, many others, Nietzsche was Human, All Too
Human. The cerebral cortex is the seat of both creativity and of
reason. This human part of the brain is where problem-solving takes
place. (Restak:417) To be human is to be a creator, a problem-solver,
compassionate, and an animal. Additionally, to be human is to be
communal. To be compassionate is to recognize this fact. Noone can
transcend oneself without the community of others, not even
Nietzsche. For the individual to transcend, the community must
transcend. This requires organization. It is a major logistical
problem to get the community across the bridge of transcendence.
It
is also a major psychological problem to get the community across the
bridge of transcendence. One way people adapt to suffering is
internalization of oppression. By accepting one's suffering as
inevitable, one learns to live with suffering. One eventually forgets
that one's context is to be transcended.
Suffering and
deprivation are usually not ennobling or educative; they more often
brutalize or corrupt perception. In particular, they often produce
adaptive responses that deny the importance of the suffering; such
adaptive responses are especially likely to arise when the
deprivation is connected to oppression and hierarchy, and taught as
proper through religious and cultural practices. (Nussbaum (1):32)
To
reverse this requires organization and community. To introduce new
information, new experience, and new culture cannot be established or
sustained without organization and community. Absent this, other
parts of community will prevail which have the power, organization,
and community to sustain themselves and the ability to impose
themselves on weaker communities.
The
members of the weaker community may have long ago lost the concept of
having the power to organize itself and create itself. Worst of all,
whole new slave communities can be created by master communities.
The master community can dominate the slave community by creating it
upon an entirely blank slate. The slave community is thus made
entirely dependent upon the master community. As power dissipates
from the slave community to the master community so does the humanity
and the compassion. Members of the slave community are reduced to
their animal natures. Basic needs drive the culture of the slave
community -- hunger, thirst, shelter, sex -- basic instincts.
Internally, the slaves live in the animal base of the brain where
fight or flight instincts, aggression, territoriality, and the
willingness to follow leaders blindly also reside. Externally, the
slaves live in a herd, corralled as it were. If the herd stampedes
it could kill the masters directly, but the herd is only reactive and
cannot control and direct its own stampede. The masters would starve
without the herd to prey upon. Hence, the masters and the slaves are
codependent.
According
to Harold Lasswell in Power and Personality, there are five
basic human needs: survival, security, social, self-esteem, and
self-realization. (Lasswell) Maximum love and understanding of
oneself require all needs to be fully met. Compassion requires love
and understanding of oneself and others. The five basic needs can be
grouped to reflect the basic biological structure and development of
individuals and of society as a whole. An individual can be said to
consist of three essential elements: animal, mammalian, and human.
The animal element corresponds to survival and security needs. The
mammalian element corresponds to social needs. The human element
corresponds to self-esteem and self-realization needs. Similarly,
power relates to survival and security needs; organization relates to
security and social needs; community relates to social, self-esteem,
and self-realization needs. The relationship between master and
slave is inherently about power. Similarly, the ability of the
creator type to create oneself and one's context is a function of
power. If master, slave, and creator are the three essential classes
of society, then power is the essential factor in social dynamics
since each of these classes can be defined as a particular power
dynamic within the overall social context.
Power
manifests itself in three essential forms: numbers, organization, and
resources. A community is a collection of a number of individuals
organized into a set of classes around a set of values and
decision-making procedures which determines the macrocontext for the
flow of power and resources. The decisions of individual members of
the community determines the microcontext for the flow of power and
resources. The level of power of an individual or group of
individuals is a major factor in predicting the likelihood of that
individual or group of individuals becoming a potential target of
compassion. Other factors, such as natural disasters, would fall
essentially at a constant level over all classes of individuals.
That is, "the difference between the vulnerabilities common to
all human beings and those constructed for the powerless by the
empowered." (Nussbaum (1):41) Without power, organization and
community -- the complex components of compassion -- one is simply
naked, alone, and at the mercy of nature and predators.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Nietzsche, Friedrich.
The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals. Trans.
Francis Golffing. New York: Anchor Books, 1956.
Nussbaum (1), Martha.
"Compassion: The Basic Social Emotion," Social
Philosophy and Policy. Cambridge University Press (UK). Winter,
1996. Pp. 27-58.
Nussbaum (2), Martha.
"Pity and Mercy Nietzsche's Stoicism," Nietzsche.
Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals.
Ed. Richard Schact. University of California Press, 1994. Pp.
139-167.
Restak, Richard. The
Brain: The Last Frontier. New York: Warner Books, 1979.
Lasswell, Harold D..
Power and Personality. New York: The Viking Press, 1969.
Garrison, Tom.
Oceanography: An Invitation to Marine Science. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1996.
