Compassion: Innate or Taught?

This is a bit off topic, but I don’t really agree with this.

Compassion is a learned thing, not an innate thing. That human beings are ignorant of their truer capacity is not at all surprising. There are many things that we don’t know about our own capabilities.

[quote]
Great job bokgwai. Believe me it’s not a hopeless battle, just an uphill one. Take comfort in the fact that you’re not alone and take pride in the acts you’ve committed. You have saved lives and stopped suffering.[/quote]

I agree and join in commending you. Compassion is taught. Why not teach kids and adults about what happened to your dogs as you walk them, and how you helped them, and why?

jdsiddhartha

This is a bit off topic, but I don’t really agree with this.

Compassion is a learned thing, not an innate thing. That human beings are ignorant of their truer capacity is not at all surprising. There are many things that we don’t know about our own capabilities.
[/quote]

Going to have to call you on that one JD… Compassion is in fact innate, to varying degrees, in humans… Studies that I haven’t the time to Google up, but are out there if you’re interested, have proved this instinct in human infants, some studies even claim to have isolated an altruistic gene, although I’ve got to admit I’m a little skeptical about that part… Anyway, given controlled research situations with hidden observants, and unknown participants infants will instinctively share resources, show concern, and offer “help” to participants that feign distress… The instinct to be compassionate and value the wellbeing of others is a key component to the primordial social glue that have kept humans relatively successful social animals for millennia… obviously the application of this compassion or at least it’s underlying motivators are not exclusive to fellow humans…

if anything I’d say that the learned part of the equation is the human capacity to overrule this innate compassion with good old fashioned “look out for #1” narcissism… in Taiwan obviously we have a society where selfishness and narcissism rule supreme and from birth compassion and altruism are at best “not encouraged”… I find it pretty easy to get a very jaded impression of humanity if you base too much of said impression on the Taiwanese… that said to paraphrase/bastardize someone or other’s saying, you should judge the caliber of a given group by the worst of it’s members… :s

Hmm, well, to go a bit more off topic, I think that truly observing human innate compassion is impossible.

It is taught, and or neglected based on society/cultural mores.

Basing your POV of humanity on the Taiwanese would be jaded to foreigners, just as Taiwanese basing their POV of humanity on selfish, materialistic, obese Americans would be jaded to them.

:slight_smile:

I still say compassion, for all intents and purposes needs to be taught and nurtured.

:slight_smile:

Now agree with me or I’ll punch holes in your tires! :fume: :wink:

Totally agree with your disagreement, Plasma.

I believe what is ‘socially acceptable’ plays a big part in what people do in these situations. If anything, the ‘learning’ that has gone on here has been that it’s acceptable to treat animals like shit.

Truant wrote:

[quote]Totally agree with your disagreement, Plasma.

I believe what is ‘socially acceptable’ plays a big part in what people do in these situations. If anything, the ‘learning’ that has gone on here has been that it’s acceptable to treat animals like shit.[/quote]

Well, that’s one of my points, one can be taught to NOT have compassion too, or not use it, if you want to state it that way.

Wow, I am going to have to think about that one for a day or so.

BRB

[quote=“shifty”]Wow, I am going to have to think about that one for a day or so.

BRB[/quote]

It was a deep morning.

I’ll have to go with jd on this although he seems to be sitting on the fence more than anything. :wink:

I think compassion is learned. While people may indeed have inherited traits, I think that it’s not logical to assume that our life experiences, starting in the early stage of our childhood, doesn’t have a greater inpact on our compassion level if compared with the effect our inherited genes may have. Both experience and genes may or may not have an influence on someone’s ability to feel compassion but by far, experience would have stronger cause-effect-reaction.

I have no proofs BTW. Just me “logicalling” about this. :wink:

bobepine

I believe compassion is innate, to some degree or another, but so is selfishness.

I think we all basically have a desire to do right and be right. But conflicting with that is the limitation of our vision and understanding to the confines of our own organism and experience.

Learning compassion is not really so much learning to want good for others, it’s learning to look beyond ourselves. It’s more a matter of awareness than morality. Of course, we can also learn to subordinate compassion for other to self-interest and become worse than simply ignorant or unenlightened.

You have a conflicting post there RDO. One one hand you say compassion is innate and on the other you say this:[quote]Learning compassion is not really so much learning to want good for others, it’s learning to look beyond ourselves. It’s more a matter of awareness than morality. [/quote]

I’m sure it’s my interpretation of your post that’s flawed but it seems to me that “awarness” about things such as compassion is most likely aquired through experience and a far cry from innate. No?

bobepine

Like any nature v. nurture theory, I am of the belief that it’s a combination of both, and the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. That said, I’d be inclined to say, if it came down to it, quantitatively I’d definitely go with nurture, but that foundationally, there is compassion naturally.

For nature (ie inherent)
Compassion vis a vis other humans, I might put it down as natural instinct for group survival. That is, if someone else in my group survives, the group has a better chance of surviving, and hence, I can a better chance. Before you say, gee, this total stranger isn’t in my “group”, I will say that it’s instinct, and can’t be rationalized like that.

The bigger question for me, is do we as humans have natural compassion for all life? for dogs and cats? for cute-looking and not-so cute looking lifeforms ie not just pandas and dolphins and whales, but spiders and caterpillars, etc. Is what Buddha taught as part of his revelation an inherent human trait that needs to be brought forth? or something culturally created?

Remember the movie “Groundhog Day”? When the main character, Phil Connors, sees the homeless man who was dying he instantly tries to help him. But he had failed to notice that guy for who knows how long.

Had he known the man had been dying before I don’t doubt he would have made every effort to save his life. It was just that Phil didn’t see the guy before.

I think if someone were to point out to us how poor someone else is, we’ll have compassion for them. The compassion is already there. We just need to recognize the need. It is learning to recognize the needs of other that is most critical in our development, not so much the response to those needs.

But I’m not totally on the side of it being purely innate. Our innate compassion can be either deepened or blunted through experience. But I believe we do have some innate compassion within us.

[quote=“R. Daneel Olivaw”]

But I’m not totally on the side of it being purely innate. Our innate compassion can be either deepened or blunted through experience. But I believe we do have some innate compassion within us.[/quote]Now I’m with you. That makes perfect sense to me.

bobepine

Where are these links to research and how does it related to dogs? I would assume that the research would show that humans would be automagically compassionate to other humans, but not just any animal.

Stepping on ants was fun until my mom told me not to. Hitting dogs with scooters probably would have been fun too, if my mom hadn’t screwed me up at such a young age.

Edit: I’m agreeing with the questions in the quoted part :slight_smile: I started writing my response, then noticed Jack had already voiced the same thing.

yep, wholly agree with the inevitable duality of the nature/nurture elements… my previous post was really only to point out that as humans we are genetically hard wired to at least have the predisposition for altruistic behaviour and that we don’t arrive in a state of cognitive tabula rasa… naturally there isn’t much in the way of innate or instinctual human behaviour that can’t be displaced by a sufficiently crap upbringing… which brings us neatly back to where we started with the “why people treat animals like sh*t in TW…” question…

JackBurton and Miltownkid brought up the interesting point of whether or not the innate component of this compassion for others carries over to other animals or is it strictly humans only?.. it seems fair to assume that the learned and nurtured components of human morality would most likely extend to include all/most/some living things on the basis that such “lofty” and learned moral principals are unlikely to be so easily tainted by crass species-ism (pass the bug spray :astonished: )… but does the innate altruism that we are at least in theory capable of apply to other animals?.. I’d say “maybe to yes” :wink: human’s attraction to small, cute, fluffy animals, whilst kind of motivated by a displaced “care for your own young” instinct would seem to at least show that our genetic compassion circuitry is not strictly limited to fellow humans…

any thoughts?..

I still wonder about this. Did you find the links?

Compassin may just be a great passive defense mechanism. If someone likes and or respects you they are less likely to do you harm.

Not many assassination attempts on the Dalai Lama these days eh?

And to add something else to the mix:
Assuming compassion, either innate/genetic or learned, occurs, there is still the action of ‘acting’ on that compassion.

One can feel or experience compassion - but one still must make the decision to actually act, do something to express that compassion, or not.

I think that here is where learned or societal programming comes into play.
The actual physical expression of that felt compassion.

just 0.02 more in the pot…:shrug:

Where are these links to research and how does it related to dogs? I would assume that the research would show that humans would be automagically compassionate to other humans, but not just any animal.

Stepping on ants was fun until my mom told me not to. Hitting dogs with scooters probably would have been fun too, if my mom hadn’t screwed me up at such a young age.

Edit: I’m agreeing with the questions in the quoted part :slight_smile: I started writing my response, then noticed Jack had already voiced the same thing.[/quote]

I’m pretty sure compassion is a component of an innate part of being human. Why? Because it’s largely an emotional response. Being unique individuals, we all have different “amounts” of innate compassion, I would guess; like the fact that some people have really short tempers, some people are extremely patient, some are laid back, some get stressed very easily, etc etc.

Of course nurture has a lot to do with whether this capacity gets developed, or on the other hand suppressed/retarded. This is where society, individual upbringing and culture come in. Taiwanese culture is definitely not geared towards developing traits like compassion, unfortunately. Neither is Western society, on the whole, but there are a greater variety of ideologies present in Western society than in Taiwan which seems to be largely culturally homogenous, and dominated by a single philosophy.

With regard to this, [quote]Stepping on ants was fun until my mom told me not to. Hitting dogs with scooters probably would have been fun too, if my mom hadn’t screwed me up at such a young age.[/quote]

I can’t say that I agree. Personally, when I was a little kid, one of my earliest memories was seeing a dying bird that one of our cats caught, and just feeling so unbelievably sad, watching it die. I stepped on ants once too, when I was a little, but felt bad about it afterwards, without having my mom catch me or scold me. I never felt the desire to hurt any animal, and despite having an air rifle lying around the house (my dad’s, I knew where he kept it hidden - he never told me “don’t shoot animals with this” because he didn’t know that I knew where he kept it), I only shot (when my parents were out and I was home alone) at tin cans and my neighbour’s roof tiles and never shot, or felt the desire to shoot birds, like some of my friends did. I always felt really bad and depressed when other kids would tell me about the animals and birds they had shot with their air rifles.

Nonetheless, my mom did a lot of volunteering for animal charities, and certainly that kind of upbringing helped to develop and reinforce whatever innate compassion that I did have.

My 2 cents.

Is it really a learned response, though? Anti social behaviour (psychopathy) is defined as a lack of compassion in individuals. The condition, apparently, isn’t something brought about by environment or learning. The definition seems to presuppose the innate existence of compassion in normal individuals and that those who don’t possess it are abnormal.

Part of the contradictions we see in different human behavior comes from the existence of competing emotions- some learned and some most likely innate.

fear, self-preservation, a desire for power, a need to display manliness or compete, these all interfere with and affect our natural compassion. We generally turn off our compassion when our own well-being is threatened.