Modern people are exposed to the suffering of others primarily through the media, but this creates emotional distance and undermines compassion. The need for compassion grows in the safety of modern society and the complexity of relationships, and true compassion can be realized through solidarity.
Modern people experience the suffering of others primarily through media such as the news and movies. Every day, we see disasters and tragedies happening around the world on our screens, and we take them in as if they are somehow detached from reality. Media plays a dual role in conveying suffering and diminishing its reality. This second-hand experience makes it harder to fully understand or feel deep compassion for the suffering of others than it would be if we were face-to-face. Modern society also strictly enjoins us not to invade the private sphere. Respecting people’s privacy and keeping our distance has become an important virtue. While this culture of respect originally started with positive intentions, there is a danger that it can degenerate into an excessive indifference to the suffering of others. As a result, modern society seems to have become a comfortable but desolate sanatorium for anhedonia sufferers who are incapable of feeling even simple compassion.
While definitions of compassion vary across time, culture, and geography, many scholars agree that compassion occurs when two conditions are met. First, the suffering of another must be an accidental tragedy, not the result of one’s own fault. Second, you must believe that the tragedy could strike you at any moment. In light of these conditions, the emotion of compassion is likely to be dulled in the modern world. We often perceive the suffering of others as an inevitable consequence of their bad choices or actions. This way of thinking places ourselves in a position of unrelatedness to the suffering and reduces the need to feel compassion. We tend to believe that we can prevent such misfortune, and we tend to keep it out of our own lives. This can rationalize our indifference to the suffering of others and lead to further social distancing.
However, compassion is still important in the modern world, and its value can increase. First, while the modern world may seem safer than in the past, dangers lurk around every corner. Natural disasters, epidemics, and economic instability are threats that can strike anyone at any time. This reality suggests that instead of becoming numb to the suffering of others, we should be more compassionate and recognize the need for social solidarity. Second, happiness and unhappiness are more dependent on people’s relationships than in the past. While the intimacy between individuals has decreased, socioeconomic relationships have become much more complex and dense. As a result, we are deeply intertwined in each other’s lives, and it is more likely that someone else’s pain will lead to our own. Third, advances in transportation and communication have made it possible for modern people to be aware of the misfortunes of people they never knew before. Even disasters on the other side of the world can have an immediate impact on our daily lives. Even if it is difficult to feel compassion from second-hand experience, the need for compassion is growing as we are more often confronted with suffering. In this context, compassion is needed and valued more than ever.
True compassion often leads to solidarity. Solidarity is acting together to eliminate the cause of suffering. Those who shy away from solidarity and only cry out for emotional compassion are secretly building a wall that separates the two groups so that they and those who suffer don’t mix. This wall is both a firewall to keep their own misery out and a castle wall to keep others who are suffering out. Just as a “castle with no entrance” has no exit, they do not venture out into the danger zone outside the castle. Compassion that is self-sufficient, throwing some of what we have within the safety of the castle over the walls, is a worthy form of compassion. But true compassion is about breaking down walls and standing in solidarity. It starts with recognizing the suffering of others as your own problem and actively working to solve it. Furthermore, solidarity creates a culture of shared social responsibility and caring for one another as part of a community. Through solidarity, we can move beyond indifference to the suffering of others and gain the strength to build a better society together.
