Two Models of Compassion
Two Models of Compassion
AOTA’s new president marked her inauguration by discussing the importance of compassionate care. Since that time I have been contemplating how people with various perspectives conceptualize compassion. One of the problems inherent in discussing issues of policy and philosophy is that different people will often use the same words to mean very different things. One of the common themes in debates over social justice is that those who oppose the idea are regularly considered uncaring by those who support it. This view is especially surprising to those opponents of the dominant conception of social justice because they donate thier time and money generously to charitable causes.
In order to make the ideas expressed by different uses of the term compassion more clear, I have tried to make explicit the premises guiding differing perspectives of compassion. To that end I developed two competing models of compassion and submit them here for exploration.
The first model is what can be called Compassion Action. Compassion Action uses an active and direct approach to helping those in need. In this model, if someone is in need, you directly and actively take action to help him or her either through volunteering your time or donating your money. This is Compassion Action's fundamental feature: the direct contribution of one’s own time and one’s own money to people in need.
A competing form of compassion can be termed Confiscatory Compassion. This view of compassion posits that the way to help others is to support government policies that either directly or indirectly require the government to confiscate the money of some and distribute it to those one is claiming to have compassion for. The practice of lobbying and advocacy that call for government money are the heart of Confiscatory Compassion. In such a model, when dealing with a social problem, one does not donate one’s money and time directly to help those one wants to help. Rather, one’s money is donated for lobbying and advocacy groups to use it to persuade politicians, and one's time is used to persuade politicians or to persuade others to get involved in persuading politicians; the goal of all the persuasion through money and time is to get politicians to pass more laws involving confiscation and redistribution.
In such a model of compassion, the expectation is that people’s needs will be met by having the government confiscate whatever money is necessary to meet those needs, rather than looking for solutions through voluntary social interaction. It should be remembered, because it is so often forgotten, that the government can only pay for things by taking someone’s money, taking it either now or later, in one way or another.
A compassion premised on one’s own voluntary contribution to help others directly will have a different set of dynamics than one premised on persuading politicians to pass laws promoting the confiscation and redistribution of money.
In practicing Compassion Action, one comes to recognize that there should be limits as to how much of one’s money and time should be devoted to meeting the needs of others. The concept of limits is important because our time is limited and our money is limited. Recognizing these limits is important because we have the right to pursue joy and pleasure in our own lives. We have our own families and friends who we want to spend time with and use our money for. Failing to acknowledge this and saying that the needs of others have an unlimited claim on our time and money is to say that we should be the moral servants of the needy. Compassion Action seeks to help others directly with the understanding that we each have the right to pursue happiness in our own lives.
The dynamics of Confiscatory Compassion (1) tend to ignore the importance of limits, (2) tend to be disrespectful of people’s right to their own lives and money, and (3) tend to lack the ability to put the needs of others in perspective. If someone is in need, the solution for Confiscatory Compassion is easy: call for even more confiscation. It also tends to give one an inflated sense of one’s compassion. The reason for this is that there is no cost to concluding that one is compassionate; all it takes is an opinion about a confiscatory policy. In this form of compassion, the dynamic is to focus on problems in such a way that they can only be solved by the government. The tendency then is to ignore the choices one makes with one’s own money in choosing to indulge in luxuries and conveniences versus spending one’s own time and money to create solutions directed at those one wants to express compassion for.
I believe these are the two paradigms of compassion at play when discussing social justice and a whole host of issues on policy and philosophy.
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