What expanse of suffering guarantees a compassionate response?
The Mythos of Chaos and Compassion
THE CHAOS THEORY, otherwise known in scientific terms as non-linear dynamics is teaching us that the limiting vision of seeing things for their quantity or formula is ending. In its place, a more complex, holistic way of seeing will be embraced where “the understanding of pattern [will be] crucial to understanding the living world around us.”
Austrian-American physicist Fritjof Capra explains that mathematical theory deals with quantities and formulas whereas dynamic systems theory, such as fractal and chaos theory, deals with quality and pattern.
Scientifically, one principle of the Chaos Theory is often referred to as the Butterfly Effect, which became theory when a mathematician and meteoriologist, Edward N. Lorenz, came upon a three-dimensional system to explain this interconnective effect based on logical equations from physics’ field of fluid dynamics. Philosophically, centuries before scientific thought, folklorists may have understood the Butterfly Effect to be interpreted like this:
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of horse, the rider was lost;
For want of message, the battle was lost;
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost!
Systems theorist Joanna Macy asserts that scientists in the 20th century shifted their perspective when they began to look at wholes instead of parts, at processes instead of substances:
What they discovered was that these wholes—be they cells, bodies, ecosystems, or the planet itself—are not just a heap of disjunct parts, but dynamics intricately organized and balanced systems, interrelated and interdependent in every movement, function and exchange of energy.
In other words, “when part of the body is traumatized—in the sufferings of fellow beings, in the pillage of our planet, and even in the violation of future generations—we sense that trauma too.” Hence, what is being called for is akin to the original meaning of compassion: “suffering with.”
ARE WE SENSING THAT TRAUMA? OR,
ARE WE UNDERESTIMATING THE HORRORS HUMANS WILL ADAPT TO?
Ezra Klein1 would probably say no to the first question and to the second question, he boldly wrote it as a statement in his Opinion article for New York Times. He asks the question, “What expanse of suffering guarantees a compassionate response?” His sobering conclusion is that politics are not being transformed fast enough; not in response to climate-induced tragedies that people are experiencing worldwide, nor in response to the wreckage of the coronavirus, even with the devastating aftermath that resulted in the perhaps countless deaths of family members, friends and neighbors that we are still counting. Instead, in many places around the world people are fighting over even the smallest of adaptations, like the wearing of masks. His immediate question—How to force the political system to do enough, fast enough, to avert mass suffering. He does not know if there is an answer. He affirms that there is no point at which giving up makes more sense than fighting on. One of his readers from New England replied, “it’s not really an issue that can be addressed by individuals, is it. You may feel good about your personal choices to not travel or to drive an electric car, but without large-scale global government action it means nothing.”
I agree with Klein’s reader and as an individual filled with oscillating despair and hope, I just cannot give up. Individuals can make a difference. If giving up does not make sense to you, Macy encourages us to start, or begin again and again, with our own experience:
If we are brave enough to confront it [the pain] and own it, it has much to teach us. It tells us that we are alive and capable of suffering with our world—that we are by nature compassionate beings […] This capacity to suffer reveals our caring and our depth interconnections with all life-forms. From that “interbeing” arises the power to act and the power to heal […] it emboldens us to walk out into the world as into our own hearts.
“RADICAL COMPASSION” is described by Alfred Ziegler, author of ARCHETYPAL MEDICINE, as both a magic wand and an autochthonic, ethical attitude. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for instance, felt that all human beings are subject to pain, that they carry “le triste tableau de l’humanité” in their heart and in compassion they join each other. And, Shopenhauer wrote: “Compassion is the principle and foundation of ethics and that faculty that perceives the essential identity of all individuals. Compassion is the perception of the participation of all of us in the blind will in the world.”
In the case against compassion, there is fear that “compassion draws one into bottomless depths, into abysses, eroticism and morbidity.” For the Stoics—such as Zeno, Spinoza, Hobbes, Montaigne and Nietzsche—compassion, or empathy, was incompatible with the “superiority of reason.” For Zeno, it was an unreasonable dependency, a weakness, a sickness of soul. For Spinoza, it was plain and simple nonsense. For Hobbes it was a confusion of the spirit which stupefies. For Montaigne, it was a passion vitieuse. For Nietzsche, it was nothing but a depressive, contagious instinct, a multiplier of misery.
For Ziegler, compassion’s nature is homeopathic, it is radical empathy for what is diseased that is described as a “becoming-the-same-as” or “similar-to” the patient [person]; inner work that heals.
THE COMPASS IS A DEVICE that directs human beings on a journey in numerous directions. The four points of a compass give direction to a particular place, function and operation. Imagine for a moment, that if the heart could be metaphorically placed and located at the center of this compass, the heart would have an advantage of seeing and responding to all directions, directing its course in a more empowered way.
The word “compass” is formed from the Old French word compass, meaning circumference and fro Vulgar Latin compassus, meaning equal step (Latin com- with + passus a step, pace meaning “with pace”). Curiously, the word compass comes from the stem word compati (com- with + pati to suffer or endure) meaning “to suffer together with,” as in a patient enduring and pacing calmly the patos pain.
I offer that by expanding the imagination of this word into compassion (com+passion) meaning “to be with passion” or suffering, the word “compass” becomes an instrument that has the energy to circumnavigate, encompass, and circulate in many directions around the emotions of the one who is suffering, pacing the healing required.
The ancient philosophers Plato, Hesiod, Phaedreus, and Parmenides illuminate a pathway out from our brokenness to find a repairable, renewable, concordant, harmonious and self-synchronizing resting place by means of knowing Eros (Love) and how He relates to Chaos and Thanatos (Death). Eros (Desire, Love) and His antithesis brother Thanatos (Death) were born out of Chaos that is Night and Darkness. Hesiod says through Phaedreus’ speech in Plato’s Symposium2 that “first Chaos came into existence, and then, Broad-breasted Earth, secure seat for everything forever, and Love.” And on the origin of Chaos, “Parmedides says that ‘the very first god She devised was Love’” (10). In Plato’s opinion,
Love is the most ancient of the gods, the most honored, and the most effective in enabling human beings to acquire courage and happiness, both in life and death (12)…He is the one who makes peace among humankind and windless calm at sea, rest for the winds and sleep for those distressed. (31)
HOW CAN ONE INDIVIDUAL MAKE THE PARTS OF OUR WORLD WHOLE?
It seems to me that seeing the multitudes within the whole and whole within a fractal part is in some way to be in the realm of pattern and complexity. While understanding that a human being is made whole from one egg, one part, that infinitely divides into multitudinous parts, or cells, just as the atom combines to create matter, there comes a humbling apprehension that we are merely a part of the whole we call earth.
To allow ourselves to be led back to our essential nature, our “blissful source,” the joy of embodying our environment—our present self, the presence of others, of nature, of world—is a journey worth taking.
In turn, we each become better responsive; emotionally intelligent collectively.
© Shelley R. Noble-Letort
Excerpt from Human-Earth Expressions on Integrative Health and Our Environment: Mapping Caves
Chapter 5: The Mythos of Chaos and Compassion
Klein, Ezra. “It Seems Odd That We Would Let The World Burn.” New York Times Opinion, 15 July 2021.
Plato. Symposium. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.