Mercy musing

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Mercy first. Then safety. Then morality.

Maybe Taoism after that, though it gets pretty foggy by then.

But mercy first.

Does that make any sense?

Safety is good. You don’t want to cut yourself or burn down your house. Or run your horse into a vegetable cart.

Once you have got the spirit of mercy down, you can concern yourself with matters of safety. At some point you will have got all of that figured out.

Then… you may become a Taoist. Or go off the rails. Probably you will arrive at some kind of cosmic conclusion.

At the heart of it though will be mercy. Does that make any sense?

2

Uh, what?

3

A spacey musing!

Inspired by my observing how people use ideologies as an excuse to harm people. I’ve been thinking a lot about how religious groups and certain political groups always change the subject away from the reality at hand to some abstraction or narrative they’ve cooked up. The implied consequences seem to be someone gets the shaft, i.e. no medical coverage for you, or no pension for you, or no job for you, or you don’t belong if you don’t quit thinking and accept our fairy story. These things get done in the name of some high-minded principles or religious belief, but when you look at the effect they have on innocent people these theories don’t live up to any standards of ‘goodness’ at all.

Why not? I guess people use their religion or their politics or their pet economic theory as an excuse to skirt mercy. They’re cruel instead, because it serves their interests. Or they do things that endanger others, because that serves their interests.

I know this is spacey and abstracted. I’m kind of still circling around the idea. There isn’t much in the way of specific examples because I am attempting to describe the whole phenomenon without getting sucked into a particular case or set of personalities.

The gist is, assuming I don’t like this loosely-defined, bad behavior, how to avoid doing it myself? My first stab was to put mercy before morality (I see alternative economic or social theories used as a kind of morality too).

I’ll think about how to frame it in more rigorous philosophical language. Heck, I’ll think about how to make this make some sense. It’s one of those “I’ll figure out what I’m getting at after a few attempts” threads.

4

“Whatsoever you do unto these, the least of my brethren, you do also unto me.”

5

I’m with you, man.

6

Are there instances where mercy compromises safety? And by creating a hazard to yourself through erroneous mercy, you prevent future mercies?

I suppose it depends on your concept of self-worth. Does the world need you to be present? Then safety first and be merciful another day. Can the world learn from your example? Then mercy first and come what may. Despite evidence to the contrary (Jesus, Gandhi, Ma Theresa, etc) is still think mercy first is best. It makes my heart happier anyway, and really, isn’t that the only heart I’m responsible for? So maybe safety then…

7

Sure.

There’s scenes like when they shot Old Yeller, for instance.

8

Allright, that is a good example as far as avoiding splashy current-events headlines but is otherwise a little creepy.

Let’s take the example of my gf. She studied education and linguistics. Her activities include tutoring immigrants in English, and also tutoring poor students at the community college. They need her help- some of these people sound pretty cut off, like they hardly have anyone to talk to at all. But being the one to help them isn’t the safest move on her part. She doesn’t make any money. Economically she’d probably have been better off going into accounting. But her priority lies in helping out. I think it is quite merciful of her to bother lifting up the weak in this way. It would’ve been safer to focus on making money.

9

How do you decide who will be the recipients of your mercy?

You see two people fighting. Do you intervene? On whose side?

You see one man beating up another man. Do you intervene now?

Suppose it’s a crowd of men beating up one man. Or suppose it’s an entire country oppressing a group. What do you do?

Is there a moral difference between the Third Reich oppressing the Jews and the United States oppressing the Ku Klux Klan? Both are an entire country oppressing a group. How do you decide when oppression is justified?

10

Hmm. Well, the kind of idea I’m poking at is moral in nature. I am observing a variety of moralities in action and noticing that plenty of them don’t achieve positive results, and often negative results instead. The mercy revises the moral code of actors in the world who purport to confine their behavior to the channels of a moral code by inserting itself at the front.

I suppose some of my suspiciousness is motivating this. People broadcast their rules for life to get authority or influence. “I’m an expert, listen to me!”. Sometimes it’s a con, sometimes it just doesn’t work. Well, stick mercy right in there as line 0 of their little instruction set in the hopes of getting better results.

So, the recipients of the mercy are people who are currently negatively affected by actors in the world who present themselves as subscribing to a morality (could be a politics or economic theory, lumped under this one word).

On the side of the guy who will do the best with the oil.

But seriously, the answer is probably ‘both of them’. If they are motivated enough about what they think to duke it out, they might as well be following a morality. Stick mercy in front of the thought process and probably neither one throws a punch.

Sure. My cosmic philosophy surgery alters the consciousness of the man delivering the beating. Suddenly adhering to principles of mercy, he stops. *unless he is already behaving mercifully, see below.

I’m going to have to get more solar panels to operate this cosmic philosophy surgery equipment on such a scale.

You can check it yourself with the Ming the Merciless test. Compare each party to Ming. The closer they are to Ming, the less merciful they are.

Following this I’d have to say the Third Reich was far less merciful than the US in this case. One case was genocide, the other was, ‘Some of us don’t like black people either, but we want you all to stop picking on them just the same.’ Seems obvious.

Well, you could look at the mercy as a kind of gate. If you are wanting to bring some oppression through, first thing is it has to make it through the mercy gate. ‘Mercy first’, remember. If it doesn’t go through, then it isn’t justified (within the context of this idea. You may want to think for yourself in your own life). If it does go through, if you can somehow oppress while remaining merciful, then go right ahead.

Obviously other considerations may follow.

11

I intentionally picked an example with two clear extremes. But how do you decide which side to support when the morality of their claims is not so clear?

12

Well, it isn’t a question of picking sides. The idea is a sort of filter regulating behavior. I’d watch mine and everyone else would watch theirs, with the goal of having less morally problematic behavior to judge in the first place. So the mercy would be installed in people’s brains, not an idea referred to in a courtroom.

We’ll still get into trouble defining what ‘merciful’ precisely is if we keep going this way. And in the real world this isn’t going to be possible to implement (not without mind control anyway), hence its somewhat comic-book character.

13

I practise it as ‘kindness’, but it is basically the same as what you are saying, just a different word to relate to. The problem with it is in enabling. By always helping people you take away the opportunity for them to learn to help themselves. Sometimes that’s better for them, and it is hard to know when.

I think you also have to keep your own ego under control. Thinking I’m such a nice person, or a good person, because look how I help everyone. Then it becomes about you helping people, not about what is best for them.

Mercy and safety are fundamentally different values, IMO. It is kind to yourself to keep yourself safe, but if kindness/mercy is truly your overriding aim, there is no guarantee that will only lead you into safe situations. That is just something you need to accept.