How to bring compassion to a world filled with transgressions

I've been watching a few dramas lately on Amazon Prime to see if I can watch them without deconstructing the plots. I tend to deconstruct plots because I've become convinced that humans are not inherently evil. There is no "Original Sin". and "evil" is just a supernatural explanation for challenging behavior in children and adults. It's interesting to note that for much of recorded history, adults considered children to be less than human and believed that evil must be "driven" from the children.

So for centuries, even to this day, certain cultures still believe that it is OK to harm children in order to "instill discipline" in kids or to "drive the evil" out of kids. All of this suggests an adult lack of compassion for kids. Many adults exhibit an inability to comprehend the experience kids have as they grow up, learn new skills and apply them. More specifically, most adults exhibit an inability to consider the possibility that challenging behavior in kids arises not from lack of motivation to do better, but from a lack of skills to do better.

So I watched The Tick and had a few laughs. I watched Bosch and saw the typical lonely workaholic detective plot. I watched The Man in High Castle based on Phillip K. Dick's counterfactual history novel of the same name. As entertaining as that was, no matter what I watched, I saw the same thing over and over again. When one person is angry and does a mean thing, a transgression, against another, I kept asking myself, how does someone do that?

How do we get to the point where committing a harm against another is ever justified? I believe that there is a certain process that goes on. I've seen it in myself and now I catch myself as it happens and interrupt my thinking. And when I say harm, I mean something as subtle as a common meant to get the other person to change. I've been studying my behavior for decades, and every year, I seem to dig deeper. I am plumbing the depths of the sources of anger or resentment, to know them not as my enemies, but as symptoms of a greater disease in our society.

I am dedicated to erring on the side of peace. I write these articles in the hopes that by sharing the ways I have found to live in peace, I can help to create a peaceful world for my kids. I have two darling little kids and they are my greatest teachers. They have taught me what it means to have compassion, and in turn, to have compassion for myself and the traumas I sustained in childhood.

Without knowing it, I have spent decades preparing to be a parent by exercising introspection, working with professionals and learning how my mind works. I created a foundation for discipline of my mind that I did not think was ever possible. I have learned not to inflict the same harms upon my kids as my parents did to me.

Don't get me wrong. I had great parents, Dad gave me a work ethic that still serves me well, and Mom gave me compassion for myself that Dad could not give.

All of that has led me to the conclusion that it is not possible to harm someone if you have compassion for them. Once you have compassion for another, it makes no sense to harm another. And in order to have compassion for someone else, you must have compassion for yourself. There is no other way. From physical to mental to verbal abuse, it doesn't really matter. People who commit harm against others lack compassion for their targets, and therefore lack compassion for themselves.

What does it mean to have compassion? That means to be able to comprehend suffering of oneself or another. It means being able to see that people are already suffering at their own hand and that they need no assistance in suffering more. When people are suffering, they usually suffer from a lack of skills to do better.

I've been thinking about what I've seen in popular culture. Most dramas are like a game of "Top This". The plots are typical: antagonist commits mean act or awful crime against another, reprisal from victims ensue. Back and forth like ping pong, the melee continues until finally, the antagonist is overwhelmed by force from the protagonists. Force. Every single time.

Tom Cruise in "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" is instructive. Cruise is an expert in this kind of entertainment and he's great in this movie. But the pattern is obvious. It starts out small from the antagonist, and the conflict escalates with each volley between antagonist and protagonist, until finally, at the climax, the antagonist is "justly" overwhelmed by the protagonist.

There. I used very neutral and general wording so as not to give away the plot. But that is really what passes for entertainment these days. That is pop culture. All dramas, all action movies and a few comedies work this way. Conflict, escalating melee, followed resolution with the dispatch of the antagonist. In every case, there is zero compassion for the antagonist. The antagonist is not even human, really, and is justly rewarded with punishment for his crimes, without trial.

So I watch my language and the language of others. Am I about to say something truly helpful or am I going to say something that is meant to discourage behavior I find irritating without expressing how I feel about it? God knows I don't want to be vulnerable. Am I saying something to make someone feel bad so that they don't do that again, or am I going to explain the natural consequences of that act? Am I willing to share how I feel?

I have seen how subtle this can be and I have been on both ends. I have seen my share of put downs, snide comments, subtle innuendos, a litany of tiny offenses designed to do one thing: relieve the offender of the feeling of being vulnerable, of showing weakness. I was this way myself and spent years in therapy and support groups to understand this about myself.

I can feel the feelings and let it pass before taking action. That is self-compassion. Knowing how I feel is half the effort required for interpersonal peace. The other half is knowing how someone else might feel if I did X, Y or Z. I consider how I might feel on the business end of what I'm about to say. I consider that first and all of my experience in the past having tried that before.

Take for example, criticism. Criticism is just arsenic for the mind. Small doses over long periods of time works just like arsenic with the same gradual results. Even if one is one's own worst critic. Criticism is always intended to put the focus on someone else. Criticism is always intended to make someone else change to one's liking, and we all know how well that works out with people we love. Criticism is not love. Criticism is an attempt to change someone else, not oneself.

So I focus on changing myself, not others. Criticism gives others power that I never had anyway. All the recipient of my criticism needs to do is defy my criticism and they win. I get peace of mind when I change myself. I get love when I let others be. I let them know that I love them just the way they are. They don't have to change for me, change is automatic. They will grow older, wiser, and apply what they've learned to their way of living. It is not for me to decide. Acceptance is love. There is no other way to put it.

I have also found that if I allow myself to be vulnerable, to say, "Ouch! That hurts!", I am allowing others an opportunity to have compassion for me. In other words, I could strike back in response to a petty offense, and give cause for the other to deny their own feelings too, by giving them cause for retribution. I can prolong the cycle. I can keep it going.

This tit-for-tat becomes addictive, and repetitive. It's not intimacy, for being offensive to others is not intimacy. Under anger there is always vulnerability. But the moment I express vulnerability, I am opening the door for compassion. Mutual compassion. In that moment, I will find out if the other is willing be intimate with me. And when I say, "intimate", I'm not talking about physical affection, though that could be included.

Intimacy is me being me and letting you see me. That's it. There is nothing more to it.

Intimacy leads to compassion. Compassion leads to collaboration and problem solving. Problem solving leads to durable solutions that both parties can achieve. Problem solving is a skill. As we allow intimacy and collaborate together, we not only build lasting solutions, we build the skills we need to live together. Now multiply that times 7 billion. What do you get?

World peace.