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Victims, Villains, Compassion, and Anger by John Enright, Ph.D.
It’s easy to feel compassion for the victims in a situation and God knows there are plenty of environmental victims around. Indigenous peoples, forests, the disappearing species, and our children are some of them. When we see what is being done to them, compassion seems natural. Compassion is not the same, however, as "feeling sorry for." To feel sorry for something or someone distances us from them. Compassion unites us with them in oneness. However, for the perpetrators of these horrors, for the villains in the story, anger accusation, and vengeful feelings are appropriate and right. Right? Who wants to be united with them in oneness? I am going to suggest that as much as possible, we feel compassion for and united with the apparent villain as well. The Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh tells of a boatload of Vietnamese refugees captured by Thai pirates. A girl, raped by one of the pirates, committed suicide. If you feel more compassion for the girl than the pirate, says Thich Nhat Hanh, you don’t fully understand what is happening and cannot have an effect on it. The "villain" – the pirate, the forest despoiler, the polluter – is caught up in a thought system of habit, insecurity, and perceived need or threat that seems very real and leaves him blind to the full consequences of what he does, and unaware of alternatives. Given the world as he sees it, what he has done seems good and right; indeed, justified and inevitable. Just about everyone in her heart of hearts believe she is doing right most of the time, and when she knows she isn’t, she wants to, and would but for some consideration that seems overwhelmingly important to her. Many loggers love the forests more deeply than the city dwellers who attack them. But they fear change and fear for their children more than they love the spotted owl. We can – and I do -- disagree with them about their behavior, and see them as shortsighted. But villains? No. Jekyll and Hyde are alive and well in everyone, and which of these sub-personalities emerges in behavior most often depends in part on how the person’s behavior is seen and reacted to. What you see is largely what you get. If you see and respond in a hostile manner to the evil Mr. Hyde, you’ll see more of him. If you stay focused on Dr. Jekyll, that’s who you’ll see more of. If we stay in righteous anger, tempting as that my be and virtuous as it feels, the only way we can get Mr. Hyde to change is to join him in hatred and use on him force of some kind, physical or moral. Then it’s the Hyde in him versus the Hyde in us. If we can possibly hold him in compassion as Dr. Jekyll, knowing his intentions are ultimately good, and recognizing the horrible effect on him of what he does, there may be some chance of his changing. There are no guarantees that he will change. It may not be until the very moment of death that he will see fully the horror of what he has done, and experience repentance – metanoia. He may not even then; I don’t know, although I want to believe that he will at some point. But if there is any chance at all of his changing, it is more likely if we provide a mirror instead of a club. In our silence, he may hear himself. With no external reproach, his own inner self-reproach may be audible. Remember the times in your life when you felt driven to do something you knew was harmful to others, but could see no other way. The Thai pirate and the polluter are human, too. Anger polarizes. It drives "the villain" into defending and justifying instead of seeing his behavior more deeply. If we point the finger and say, "You should feel guilty!" Mr. Hyde can only leap out to defend and counterattack. There is no way he then can hear his own inner voice of remorse and repentance. So busy defending himself, he will have little free attention to re-think (repent) what he has done and thus be able from inside himself to see the horror he has perpetrated and experience the healing moment of metanoia. If, instead of attacking, we can continue to see him as a fundamentally good but misguided human being, it will be more likely than that Dr. Jekyll will emerge to listen to his own inner voice. It is from this place that he could possibly change; that is, he could find and support the good, well-meaning human within himself, one who is capable of caring for others and the Earth, and would act from this caring place if only his current insecurity could be assuaged. To cling to anger reveals our own projected unforgiveness of ourselves. If you can’t forgive him, inevitably you will not be able to forgive yourself. All of us in the United States have done much damage to the Earth. Not intentionally, not knowingly, yet much damage. We could easily be accused by almost any Third Worlder of being despoilers of nature, and mistreaters of Third World people. And the accusations would be accurate. Jeremy Rifkin says in Biosphere Politics (New York: Crown Publishers, 1991):
"If we were to stop for a moment and reflect on the number of creatures and Earth’s resources and materials we have expropriated and consumed in our lifetime to perpetuate our existence, we would be appalled at the carnage and depletion that has been required to secure our existence. The sense of guilt and indebtedness runs deep in the human psyche and stretches over the expanse of human experience."No, we don’t personally thrust the Penang off their land, but we do buy the wood products that encourage the Japanese to evict them. We don’t cut down the rain forest with our own little hatchet, but we eat the beef for which the forest is cut to make room. We feel innocent, and we are innocent of bad intention. We are simply living the way we learned from our parents. It seemed to be working for them and we haven’t looked up recently to notice that the world is different and those behaviors are now seriously destructive. Our intentions are innocent; our actions are not. When do you find it is easier to change; when the innocence of your intentions is accepted while your behavior is challenged, or when you are blamed and attacked and your goodness, small as it is, ignored? People can far more openly listen to the details of the indictments against them, and see and make appropriate changes, when the innocence of their intentions is accepted. I submit that what is so obviously true of us applies equally well to many of the villains we see. Compassion is not an intellectual "strategy" to be adopted as a "technique." It is only possible for you if it is possible. If you can find in yourself the experiences that support this view and make it possible to see the world this way, give it a try. "But wait!" you might say. "You mean, just be a doormat and let these greedy villains get away with murder?" No; in behavior, don’t let them get away with anything. By all means oppose vigorously and effectively what they do. Just don’t attack who they are. Be fully outraged at the action without converting that anger to the person. Anger = Outrage + Assumed Intentionality. When you begin to see the essential innocence of the polluters, you can keep the vital, white-hot energy of impersonal outrage without the energy loss and distraction or personal anger.
Have I succeeded in holding compassion with
everyone I’ve met or heard of? Of course not; I’d apply for canonization if so.
However, when I’ve been able to hold it, some people have made some remarkable shifts
in attitude and behavior. And I find the internal climate of compassion and forgiveness a
much more pleasant place for me to live. by Christopher James Collier
Surfing through the number of many electronic windows I soon come upon a news report. It is on this report that a "perfect" anchorman with "perfect" teeth reports on a: 1) murder, 2) rape, or 3) robbery. You can choose any to describe the assault on the person of ___________ (fill in the blank with any name, for crime seems to touch everyone regardless of race, age or gender). I, like so many African-Americans, find myself doing that chant we have done so many times when we have seen such reports. "Please don't let it be a black man..." He continues his report...describing all of the gruesome details of the crime... "Please don't let it be a black man..." Then comes the payoff... The "perfect" anchor with "perfectly" capped teeth says with some irony, "The perpetrator was a young black male..." If you listen carefully he seems to take to his reporting of the crime with some glee...it is sure to be a ratings grabber to hold the attention of skittish, paranoid news watchers everywhere. I can almost hear them commenting to the report in the privacy of their living rooms. "God...that poor, poor ____________ (fill in the gender). "At the hands of those savages..." I add sarcastically. Knowing that my prayers have gone unanswered, I quickly turn the channel, not wanting to hear the rest. I go channel surfing, trying to escape the reality that my mind witnessed on the news affiliate... A video channel... Some overweight rapper is speaking on the virtues of "packing gats" and "smoking chronic." Women are dancing around him in an act of sexual heat. It's like watching some warped mating dance...Cash flows like water in this video; others that follow... Flick...the surfing continues... Another news report...another crime...Another announcer describes to the viewing public the details of a family shot during an attempted robbery in their hotel room. The unfeeling eye of the camera shows gruesome pictures of broken glass, empty shell casings, and crimson stains of blood. The prayer rockets from my lips again, but the announcer cuts me off. "Police are currently looking for two black males..." Back to the music channel...a skinny bald-headed rapper tells me of Westside "playas" and his love for California. My mind starts to wonder what makes someone commit a crime...what forces them to attack without mercy many of their own kind and many of other colors? Is it the environment? Is the government? Then I remember the videos... ...the cash... Hundreds...Thousands... ...the clothes... Hilfiger...DKNY...Armanii... ...The rappers talking about being Big Poppa...The Ill Nanna...Escobar... and so many other criminals they make my head swim... Then it dawns on me...Money is power...it makes the world go ‘round or as it was said in the 90's "Cash Rules Everything Around Me." Flick... "...Got my mind on my money and my money on my mind..." According to some, brothers today have nothing to look forward to... if you look at television you think that most of us are predators...hunters...stalkers of men and their families. Of course the facts speak differently...One out of 4 black men are in jail...yet we never hear about the other 3 men who are doing something with their lives... "...If it Don't Make Dollars...It Don't Make Sense..." So now you have the paradox...you have a world that loves money and all the power that it gives (Just ask O.J.) but you have a society that is at the bottom of the food chain. They wait for trickles of cash to reach them as if they where fish in a barrel. C.R.E.A.M.... When money is placed of the hands of the forgotten it gives them power once undreamed of...Power to fight wrongs...end poverty...make them men in a society that treats them less as such...Some feel that they have no choice. However they are wrong... Our perception needs an adjustment... Money does not change the way America looks at you...unfortunately you go from being a poor "nigger" to a rich one. Much needs to be done...but that first step to change the perception against the reality is the first thing. Until our fascination with the almighty buck is removed from the American Consciousness we as African-Americans will cringe every time that news report breaks in with a special bulletin. "Please don't let it be a black man..." "Please don't let it be a black man..." "Please, God, don't let it be a black man!!!"
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Sitting in the comfort of my living room...my eyes
are affixed to a television. It tells me of things that are happening in my town and,
thanks to the glory of cable, a glimpse into the world itself.