the case for intellectual nonviolence

[flamingsword]

Our national rhetoric is suffering from a poverty of compassion. Our unspoken belief that one must earn the empathy of peers through financial accomplishment is deeply flawed. Mercy that comes at a price is not mercy at all.

We have been seeking to balance our need to care and be cared for within this flawed system by collectively overproducing and overconsuming. But money is a limited resource, and we map that system of scarcity onto respect and affection which are infinite. We have been mislead by our expectations for so long that we have become intellectually dishonest in order to compete with one another in the belief that we cannot all be cared for, but that brings us no closer to balance than our complicit silence in the face of imbalance.

When we, the 99%, deliberately put people we disagree with out of the bounds of our respect, we are making enemies of our opposition, making them defensive, entrenching them further in their view that compassion is not a necessary part of public life. We must meet their cynicism with sincerity and their anger with our honest grief at the injustice that we have all perpetuated by participating in this sham of fairness.

Respect the 1%. Most of them thought they were making good policies and intervening for the best. They honestly thought they could have our best interests at heart in the absence of understanding our lives and the compassion that  creates. Any action in advance of compassion is flawed, theirs or ours.

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Comments

[kadairk.livejournal.com]

This.