the book I am reading, “Upheavals of thought” has
given me new thoughts about such matters as
compassion and kindness and empathy……….
I am not by nature a compassionate person…
whereas my wife is always a compassionate person…
to a fault actually…
I am forced to come to grips with my “viewpoints” on
such matters…
I see injustice and I become mad… I want revenge… on those
who practice injustice… but it calls into question why?
I want revenge more then I want those people to receive justice…
it calls into question my own understanding of who I am…
am I a “kind” person… perhaps, am I a “just” person?
I like to think so, but if I demand revenge before justice,
am I really a 'just" person or am I just someone looking for revenge?
I have been “wronged” in my life and my response has been
to dream of revenge… I’ll teach those “idiots”… but in the end,
what exactly am I thinking about?
what is the value of the pursuit of revenge as oppose to the pursuit
of justice?
is pursuing “revenge” really a pursuit of justice?
somehow I don’t think so…have I actually been able to get my revenge?
once, and frankly, it wasn’t as much “fun” as I had hoped it would be…
to engage in the pursuit of revenge instead of the pursuit of justice says
something very fundamental about me……….
am I a “kind” person? I would like to think so, but and this is important,
I can see myself and have done things that wouldn’t by any stretch of
the imagination be considered to be “kind”……
I am a typical human being whereas I have some sort of self image
but at times, at times, I even conduct actions that confirm my
own self image, but what about the other times?
what about those times, I don’t conduct myself in accordance to my own
self image? I usually consider myself the smartest person in the room,
and usually I am, but what about those times, I am not?
emotionally, how do I handle this? do I deny, do I make excuses?
do I just pretend that I am still the smartest person in the room?
well, emotions are the same thing…I see someone being kinder then
me, which frankly is just about everyone, and how do I see that
being reflected back to me? I don’t… and that is the point…
I don’t…it becomes two distinct and separate acts… my kindness
becomes one distinct and separate act and other people kindness
become another…I don’t make the equation at all… and by doing so,
I can still maintain the pretense that I am kind and loving and all that stuff…
and in the end, it is about maintaining the pretense that I am still what my
ego demands of me…my ego wants me to believe that I am a “kind”
“decent” “warm” “humane” “lovable” “justice seeking” human being…
but what is the reality? am I who I “believe” I am? the honest answer is
sometimes, sometimes…….
and the question becomes, am I ok with being the person my ego wants me to
be “sometimes”?
but let us take this even further… should I make being a “kinder” person
a value to be achieved? in other words, what values should I pursue?
“Kindness”? “humane”? “just”? “loving”? “decent”? among the thousands of
value’s possibilities? which values should we engage with and why?
why should I desire to become more “kind”?
for whose benefit does that desire help? me or the society?
in other words, what is the goal here? to what end does my pursuit
of “kindness” involve? why should I want to become “kind”?
what is the end result of my increased “kindness”?
that will depend upon what sort of society we are aiming for?
if we want a cold, angry, mean society, then “kindness” is not the goal,
for “kindness” doesn’t get us our cold, angry, mean society…
but if we want a kinder, more loving, a gentle society, then we
should and must emphasis “kindness”………
should the bottom line becomes this, what kind of society do you
want to see and more importantly, why this type of society?
you have to be able to justify any type of choice you make in
deciding why type of society you are working toward…
so the question is asked, what is your vision of what a human being is?
ultimately, what are we working for? what kind of society should we have
and why that society? and if we are working toward a certain type of society,
then what type of people should we have in that society?
Kind? mean? angry? loving? happy? just? honest? responsible? insightful?
dependable?
what values are we really trying to become?
what values are you striving for?
and why?
as always, comes the question of why those values and not another set of
values…
strip away your ego driven idea of who you are and come to grips
with the person you actually are…few, few if any can begin the
honest search for the “real” person that lies within us…take away
your ego and see the person you really are…
do you like what you see?
Kropotkin