In Praise of Compassion

Ladies and gentlemen,

Greetings! I am writing a few words about much celebrated concept often used by so called progressives in defence of "pluralism". Another popular term from a culture which claims to be a defender of European rationalistic culture and its liberal values. The celebrated word is "tolerance". In popular parlance, literally, it signifies an attitude to accept the difference, "the act of allowing something", or "sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own" (Merriam Webster). Noble vision indeed! But the real question doesn't belong to here. What makes it so imminent to envision a culture of own and a culture of difference? Behind the imagination of difference there is an attitude to envision self and other. The attitude of "otherisation" itself is a subtle form of narcissism. The central point is ego facing the world at large, conquering nature, self, or others. Ego with its intellectual gaze conceives a world of its own and a world of others, whereas the world of self is appreciated as homogenous reality and anything alien to it is unwelcome. This attitude has resulted into multiple devastating wars and mass cruelties in the name of narrow identities and fickle differences.

Selfhood and enlightened self-interest have established its own castle of intolerance that from there moralising attitude asks and searches for its opposites. Tolerate others' cultures, opinions, or values is the moral sermon of those who value "possessive individualism" at the cost of promoting the value of strife between me/us versus others. On the contrary, the value of compassion is not caught in a dichotomy of me versus others. Compassionate attitude about treating each sentient element of Universe as the whole living-being, expressing lives in many forms, but substance is the same consciousness, which is flowing everywhere, inside and outside since eternity. This vision is missing in the attitude of popular culture, which often passes the sermon in defence of toleration. Perhaps, this is the reason why I choose to be compassionate about each and everything about the Universe instead of being caught into a conflict of self as social identity versus others.

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