Compassion, as I see it, should not be about making one feel good about being compassionate, but would follow the same notion Aquinas had about love: to will the good of the other.
This insight is not always easy. As Michael Novak says, “It suggests to the lover that he (or she) must be wary both of the illusions of the self and of the illusions of the other. It means that the lover must not be led solely by desire, pleasure, or the wish to please, but must attempt to activate a more difficult capacity for realism and judgment. The question a true lover faces is not What do I want? and not What does my beloved want? but What is the good of my beloved? In this way, true friends give each other correction, lead each other beyond their own infantile fantasies, and grow together in wisdom and friendship.”
And while this is a noble practice for all our intimate relationships, it should be also be true as to how we manage policy for the larger populous. Yet, it would seem we can't care for the abstract as we can for the particular. Even being pure at heart, we can intend the best outcome for those in need, but we can't guarantee it or be overly committed to it.
The issue is the rules often change in abstract from the particular — in the same way when we leap from Newtonian to quantum realms in the physical world. We are dealing with complex systems, unintended consequences, and effects that are not proportional to their cause. You pull a lever here, and it drains a swamp way over there. I suppose that is why the Church knew subsidiarity would work best: empower institutions at different levels of society to address those problems for which they are best suited.
My girlfriend recently lent me Hillbilly Elegy — a beautiful read about white working-class America and their struggles in today's climate. I'm also in the midst of The Fractured Republic, which lays out the illusory appeal of nostalgia-driven politics in our ever changing, fractured country. When I read about all these structural changes we have going on with globalization, automation, specialization, fragmentation, etc., it makes me realize we are over our heads. I feel for the hard working soul in the Rust Belt who never got a modern education and is surrounded by opioid addicts. But I also would have little fruitful advise knowing that he has probably been ridden with an unfortunate fate.
That does not mean to give up hope. We may not be able to solve complex problems well, but we do need to do humility well. Jim Manzi says, “When we do [social] science, we reject the Aristotelian idea of "essence," but when we think about what we love, essence is everything. So, we need to think strategically while remaining aware of our ignorance, and we need to exploit the power of trial and error while remaining aware of the essence of what we are trying to protect.”
I sometimes wish our science was in service for the essence. But that's a topic for another time.
The bottom line is our politicians, institutional experts, and academic thought leaders don't have it all figured out. They can speak with confidence, statistical facts, and flourishing anecdotes, but in truth, they're often grasping at straws. We can't be certain that our abstract reasoning or principled rules will work in every context. Yet, there is a deeper reservoir of human experience and tradition that we can pull from in those times.
As David Brooks notes, “The humble person has an acute historical consciousness. She is the grateful inheritor of the tacit wisdom of her kind, the grammar of conduct and the store of untaught feelings that are ready for use in case of emergency, that offer practical tips on how to behave in different situations, and that encourage habits that cohere into virtues. The humble person understands that experience is a better teacher than pure reason. He understands that wisdom is not knowledge. Wisdom emerges out of a collection of intellectual virtues. It is knowing how to behave when perfect knowledge is lacking.” And when has knowledge (about ourselves or the world) ever been perfect?
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(Or we may want to take a thing or two from one of the greatest indie songs: “I am a scientist / I seek to understand me / All of my impurities and evils yet unknown.”)
(Or we may want to take a thing or two from one of the greatest indie songs: “I am a scientist / I seek to understand me / All of my impurities and evils yet unknown.”)