Is a mass 'compassion awakening' possible?
My own experience of ‘compassion awakening’
‘Sounds like the right thing to do, but I just don’t care enough’. I had a few vegetarian friends in my student years, and this was how I felt in response to hearing their arguments. Being an ‘altruistic’ or caring person was not an important part of my identity growing up, and I don’t recall feeling compassion as an emotion. This changed when I went on an intensive 10 day silent meditation retreat in my early 20s, around 10 years ago. This was pretty much my first experience of meditation and I knew very little about Buddhist teachings. The retreat had a dramatic impact on my values: I went from feeling fairly apathetic about the suffering in the world, to becoming vegetarian, giving large-ish sums of money to charity and volunteering for several charities.
On the retreat, I experienced an extremely heightened awareness of my bodily sensations, emotions and thoughts. At times, I had an intense visceral sense of my own mortality and of the impermanence of all experience. Sometimes it felt like I was in quick sand, free-falling through time, each moment disappearing from my conscious experience. This felt terrifying. I remember lying in bed one day, feeling so fearful that my whole body was violently shaking. I also had this strong sense that all experience was ephemeral and unsubstantial. Genuine joy seemed elusive and unpredictable, and the things that I thought were pleasurable (for example, eating a tasty meal) only brought very fleeting positive feelings when I really observed closely.
Even though these experiences gradually faded in intensity after the retreat and I felt more and more ‘normal’, it had a dramatic impact on my world view and values and how I found purpose, meaning and happiness. This change seemed less about a new interest in Buddhist philosophy and ethics and therefore a sense of ‘duty’, but rather due to more awareness of my own and other’s suffering. I didn’t identify as someone who was particularly unhappy before my retreat, but in hindsight I think I was avoidant of negative emotions, rarely felt feelings of joy and generally felt quite ‘numb’. The heightened awareness of my emotions I experienced through meditation was deeply unpleasant and painful. It felt like all my unconscious fears and anxieties were gradually uncovered through the practice. I wouldn’t recommend an experience like this. But meditation also gave me the tools to allow myself to feel pain, make sense of it, and meet it with more acceptance and kindness. It awakened an ability to feel compassion towards myself and others, and to also feel more joy.
Buddhist philosophy and my past approach to altruism
My approach to altruism following this retreat differed to my current approach. I was strongly influenced by Buddhist philosophy and my own personal experience. Buddhism emphasises how internal conditions of the mind are the root causes of suffering, responsible for all the ‘external’ suffering in the world. We are naturally inclined to crave pleasurable experiences and feel aversion towards unpleasant feelings. This is perpetually unsatisfying because our sources of pleasure are intrinsically impermanent and subject to change, and pain is unavoidable. A world full of minds motivated by desire, hatred and greed is at the core of why the world is full of suffering. Buddhism teaches that by understanding how our mind works, we can change these mental habit patterns and find more reliable sources of happiness, becoming motivated by compassion, rather than craving and greed. My approach to altruism, very much influenced by this Buddhist world view, did not lead me to believe we should ignore the ‘symptoms’ of this (the external manifestations of suffering), but I felt strongly that we we needed to also change people’s minds if we wanted to create widespread positive change in the world. In reality, I guess I thought this meant that more people should practice meditation or other forms of contemplative practices that led to more wisdom and compassion.
Is a widespread ‘compassion awakening’ possible?
Do I still think a mass ‘compassion awakening’ is the answer? Despite my agreement in the root causes of suffering, this does not necessarily mean I believe in the Buddha’s solution. Plausibly, in Buddha’s time when there were fewer opportunities for the average person to make change on a large scale, getting everyone to meditate really was the most important thing to do. This seems highly unlikely in the modern world due to the interconnectedness created by technology, particularly for people in developed countries with a lot of resources.
I am now much more skeptical about the tractability of widespread change in people’s values through contemplative practices, and I see how my intuitions were influenced heavily by personal experience. However, I still share the view that if you were to do a root cause analysis of any problem in the world and keep asking ‘why?’, eventually you would come to a similar conclusion to the Buddha. The problem is the result of evolved minds. The world is full of suffering because our minds have evolved to crave things that are useful for survival and reproduction, and avoid pain as much as possible. Evolution has not optimised for a world full of happiness and peace. Pleasure is an important motivator, but it is more useful if the feelings are short-lived and lead to more craving, and pain is a powerful motivator. Even though empathy and altruism are important and functional (and can be trained), an excess is not functional. We are motivated to feel compassion as far as it increases connection and cooperation and therefore helps us to thrive. The desire to meet our own needs almost always trumps the desire to help others. Unfortunately, this means that humans are always going to compete to gain resources at the expense of others in a zero sum game, causing inequality and suffering.
Finding a compromise
Effective Altruism is a movement that has heavily informed my approach to altruism in the last few years, and mostly focuses on getting people who already care to focus more on prioritisation of altruistic actions based on impact. For example, getting people who care about animals to focus on interventions that help animals on a large scale, such as ending factory farming or helping animals in the wild. There is less focus on working out how more people can be motivated by compassion directly, probably because this seems a lot less tractable.
Despite my skepticism, I still believe in the promise of interventions that increase compassion and empathy, expand our moral circles, and appeal to the ‘better angels’ of human nature. I feel it is important to answer some fundamental questions: why are some people much more motivated by compassion than others? How can we inspire compassion whilst making people feel empowered rather than overwhelmed? How can we convince people that caring and compassion feels good? To what extent can compassion be trained?
Perhaps I have become too skeptical about the promise in these kind of interventions and can bring together my past and current approach to altruism, to find a compromise that addresses both the ‘root’ and the symptoms? I think that ‘awakening compassion’ can happen alongside interventions to reduce the external ‘symptoms’. For example, getting people to reduce the suffering of animals or future people using messaging that increases compassion and pro-social values, rather than just behaviour change. Perhaps if we want to improve the world as much as possible, it turns out that widespread compassion encouragement is less important and it is more important that people in power are compassionate and caring. If it is the case that there is huge inequality in distribution of power and a tiny proportion of people have most of the power to make a difference, this might point to interventions that build compassion into institutional decision making. For example organisations like Compassion in politics, who want to ensure that compassion is at the heart of political decision making.
There are organisations that are trying to understand the science of altruism and compassion, and answer some of these fundamental questions about compassion and altruism. For example the ‘Centre for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education’ at Stanford University. There are also charities like the ‘Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering’ who provide resources and tools to increase compassion in education.
My previous conviction in a widespread ‘compassion awakening’ may have been naive and idealistic. But it is important enough that it definitely seems worthy of more focus, research and consideration.