Compassion vs. Snark

[sarahmichigan]

A personality trait I have struggled with for a long time is self-righteousness.

Even when I manage to kick myself in the head about one issue, I find myself being rigid and judgemental in another. First, I was a self-righteous fundamentalist Christian. I've been a self-righteous pagan and feminist, and I'm pretty judgemental, now, about those I see as being fuzzy-headed New Agers or head-in-the-sand creationists. I probably skirt the edges of self-righteousness about Size Acceptance and Fat Activism issues as well.

I've been thinking, for a while now, about the ideas of Compassion and snarkiness. I posted a quote more than a year ago from the book "The Hours":

"These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody's little display of genius."

Don't get me wrong-- I love a good snark. I read dotpolysnark for a giggle quite often. I snark on people in other venues. I understand how fun it is to snark. But sometimes, I see people being snarked (or even downright attacked) who are somewhat socially clueless, but not malevolent. These people would drive you all over town if they found you broken down on the side of the road. They would let you cry on their shoulder when your dog dies. But they say clueless, offensive things sometimes, or do clueless, insensitive things occasionally, and get raked over the coals for it. You don't even have to be actively offensive or insensitive to get snarked, though. Often, people don't get any credit for being basically good at heart if they're not hip, up on the most recent cultural tag lines, and good spellers.

So, anyway, I struggle between the impulse to look down on other people with scorn and the feeling that I need to cultivate more compassion.

I certainly don't believe in some fuzzy, abstract idea that we should never judge people. I also think it's more than fine to point out places where people are not thinking or arguing clearly. I think it's fine to make fun of stupid ideas. I think perhaps the middle ground is to separate people from ideas. "I think that's a stupid idea, but that doesn't make you a lesser human being." It's hard to do, though. I mean, at what point does a person have enough stupid ideas, collectively, that you start to lose respect for them?

Perhaps I just need to start doing some of those Buddhist meditations on compassion and see what my subconcious decides it needs to tell me on how to balance discernment and criticism of bad ideas while still having compassion for flawed human beings (and myself).

Comments

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

I mean, at what point does a person have enough stupid ideas, collectively, that you start to lose respect for them?

Immediately; I don't see why there would be a threshold to *start*. On the other hand, just because a person has lost *some* respect, that doesn't mean that I don't respect them overall, and willingness to go out on a limb can be worth more than a few ideas that don't work out.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

Do you tend to look at a lot of things in life in a sort of cost/benefit analysis?

For instance: "This person has personality traits X, Y, and Z that I find annoying, but they also have these common interests and positive personality traits A, B, C, and D, so the good outweighs the bad with this friend."

or: "This person has kooky ideas that blow up in her face sometimes, but her wacky ideas turn into something bordering on genius enough that it's worth it to listen to her ideas most of the time."

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely.