Compassion and the Evening News

Did you ever notice how natural catastrophes and political scandals make great conversation fillers? Picture yourself at a social gathering: family, friends, co- workers, whatever. Conversation begins to lag – what to do? Just mention the latest airplane crash or cover- up (“isn’t it horrible that…”) to arouse eloquent soliloquies of sympathy or indignation. It’s so easy and requires only an occasional glace at the headlines. Many, if not all of us, crave for a public forum to reveal the depths of one’s social sentiment – one’s “compassion” – for others.
One evening I was sitting with someone and they brought up the recent mining disaster in Utah (our conversation must have been lagging): “How about those poor miners in Utah?” I confessed that I hadn’t been tracking the story very closely. I was apparently missing out on the rescue operation that was beginning to resemble a Hollywood thriller. Furthermore, to my companion’s bewilderment, I was forced to admit that I hadn’t been following any of the headlines closely for quite some time. She informed me that things were quite intolerable in Chile, Texas and Bermuda. While my apparent indifference to these tragedies would have shocked most, she knew to take my exaggerations with a grain of salt.
But honestly, I am not terribly interested in learning of the dead coal miners, let alone the hundreds of disasters that plague our world every day. How then, can I avoid the accusation of apathy? The key, I believe, in distinguishing between real compassion and mere sentiment for its own sake.
In book three of his Confessions, Saint Augustine decries the vices of the Roman theatre: “I was carried away by plays on the stage in which I found plenty of examples of my own miseries and plenty of fuel for my own fire.” I thought to myself, “Stolen pears, bad behavior in school and the theatre; is that really the worst you have to give us?” But Augustine has a particular knack for drawing the most profound lessons from seemingly trivial events.
Augustine begins his reflection on the theatre with a question: why do people pay money for others to make them feel sorrow over misfortunes that they would not want to suffer themselves? In fact, the play would be deemed a success or failure precisely on its ability to arouse one’s feelings for the “misery” of others. Playgoers, suggests Augustine, want the experience of feeling “compassionate” without the undergoing the actual suffering that would accompany tragedy in real life: “A man listening to the play is not called upon to help the sufferer; he is merely invited to feel sad.”
This desire to feel sorrow for the misfortune of others is not in itself evil, of course. There are times when it is very appropriate. The real problem of the theatre, claims Augustine, is its radical separation of that desire from actual suffering with those involved (real compassion). He argues that tragic plays indulge sorrow for its own sake, rather than moving one to help bring about an end to that suffering: “This was the origin of my love for sorrows- not sorrows that really affected me deeply, for I did not like to suffer in my own person the things which I liked to see represented on stage, but only those imaginary sorrows the hearing of which had, as it were, the effect of scratching the surface of my skin.” One might object that Augustine either watched very trashy plays or is being a bit too harsh with the performance arts. Don’t the best of the tragedies, after all, have the potential to inspire us to leave the theatre and do something to alleviate suffering? But even if we grant this, Augustine’s primary point stands: If we are not careful, simulated tragedies will carry our emotions away from reality.
What does Augustine’s reflection of the ancient tragedies have to do with the today’s headlines? While Hollywood is the modern day equivalent to the Roman theatres, it could be argued the most immediate source of packaged and polished tragedy comes to us in the daily paper and evening news. Advances in technology enable us to know what is going on in all corners of the globe almost instantaneously without stepping one foot out of the comfort of the home. Have you ever considered why news agencies choose to report almost exclusively on negative events? They are catering to that same human need to feel badly for others. Genocide in Darfur, earthquakes in Peru, religious persecution in China - at any given time there are dozens of tragedies at our disposal. But if we seek this information without a corresponding movement to get involved, we are pursuing sorrow for its own sake.
It is an undeniable fact that there is little or nothing we can do about most of the tragedies we are bombarded with in the news. I say most because, from time to time, there is something we can do about this or that disaster through charitable organizations. It is possible that one could be moved by a news story to give one’s resources (or person) to help alleviate the tragedy. Or one could keep the sufferers in his or her prayers. But this is the exception rather than the rule: we would like to do something to help everyone who suffers in this “valley of tears”, but our radical finitude prevents us from doing so. Feeding on and fretting over news stories over which we have no control could easily lead to a divorce of sentiment and “suffering with” that comes with true compassion.
It seems that excessive knowledge of tragedies “out there” and the emotional resources we expend on them often serve as a convenient substitute for or distraction from localized tragedies that are open for our involvement. If one lives in authentic relationships with others – family, friends, neighbors, church community, etc… - one will always have a superabundance of “opportunities” for real compassion. The people around us: those we can touch, see, smell and interact with – all of them are wounded beings in need of healing love. If you don’t see their tragedies, you simply haven’t looked hard enough. So if I will not remain up to speed on Hurricane Dean’s path of destruction, it is only because I am trying (and often failing) to find or remain committed to the tragedies that God has called for me to play a part in.