Compassion is an extraordinary moral gift. It consists in the ability to be moved by the weal and woe of another in just the right ways. The compassionate person is not overwhelmed with the suffering of another. The suffering in question does not incapacitate her or him. Rather, the compassionate person often exercises considerable self-command in helping the individual(s) in need. On the other hand, the compassionate person is not simply driven to help others, where the helping proves to be more about making the person feel good about herself or himself than helping another. We can give when we should not give, just as we can be indifferent to the suffering of another when we surely should not be.
We have all made the mistake of helping when should not have done so. But in recent years it seems to me that compassion has become something of a performance art—a kind of performance meant for public consumption. That is, displays of compassion have become a way of saying that one is a good person in some way or the other. In particular, compassion as a performance art is often a way of saying that one is a good parent. This is to turn a virtue into a vice.
Most of us want to be seen as good people. And compassion is a kind of trump card in this regard, in that compassion seems to make-up for other moral deficiencies. As the famed story of Robin Hood shows, even the wrong of stealing can, in some way and to some extent, strike us as less wrong when it is linked to compassion for others. It is precisely because he gave to the poor, that the moral image of Robin Hood is not that of a bad person.
We live in a world in which parents have become ever so busy. From womb to day care center seems to have become the normal course of things. Dr. Laura Schlessinger often observes that what parents asks a child to put up with in terms of their absence, they would never put up with in a lover. Parental love in absentia for most of the day is no more satisfying than food in absentia for most of the day. It is too obvious for words that the initial forging of the parent-child bond actually requires the constant presence of one or more parents, just as the initial forging of friendships and loves does.
This is where compassion as performance art comes into play. I maintain that the seemingly unbridled compassion that parents now have for their children—the silly sense that their children can do no wrong—is inextricably tied to trying to make sure that the feeling of being inadequate parents never rises to the surface.
In time’s past, parents certainly loved their children; yet, it would have been unthinkable for any parent to suppose that their children could do no wrong. Nor, again, did parents typically feel the need to prove their love for their children by acceding continually to every demand on the part of their children. Better still: When children did not get want they wanted, it did not occur to them to retort “You don’t love me”.
Needless to say, it is not plausible to suppose that parents love their children more now than in time’s past. Accordingly, the explanation for the seeming need on the part of today’s parents to accede to their children’s every desire has to have a different explanation.
The explanation, I maintain, is that far too many parents are engaging in compassion as performance art with respect to their children. Parents give in order to sustain the façade of being good parents. This constitutes misplaced compassion, which is a vice. This vice would not be so bad if such parents harmed only themselves. But the real harm lies in the damage done to the children. The façade will crack under the strain of reality, as the children grow up with an emotional thirst that cannot be quenched.
Compassion is a virtue. Misplaced compassion is a vice. The virtue of parental compassion for a child is a moral excellence that resounds ever so fully in the life of a child. Alas, the vice of misplaced compassion towards a child often does irreparable damage to the most needy of all human beings, namely a child. Compassion as performance art has given children a power against their parents that they should never have been given.
