A Case Against Compassion
by Justin Carmien
Indeed, our capacity to empathize is not infinite. Today, images and reports of suffering in the news and on social media fuel an economy of attention. In their own ways, early third-millennium feminism, the #MeToo movement, postcolonial narratives and social justice activism, the body-positive movement, the men’s rights movement, Black Lives Matter, and trans activism all signal an explicit truth: exercising compassion involves decision, and far from being an absolute good, compassion is a site of exclusion. In other words, compassion is a political problem. Undoubtedly, the protests and activism following the deaths of George Floyd, Iryna Zarutska, and Charlie Kirk punctuate this economy—one which we might further characterize by a sense of crisis, mirroring the urgency evoked by the phenomenon of suffering. Despite this acknowledgment, my reflections invite careful consideration. After all, if we are to reclaim a healthy exercise of compassion—both in our everyday encounters with suffering and in public media—we must first be willing to problematize compassion. And while my reflections might appear “inhumane”, neglecting sensitivity to the particular cases cited, I encourage you to also refrain from sensitivity in order to consider the economy of compassion together with me—in order to understand the instrumentality of compassion.
Diagnosis
“Controlling the narrative” is a commonplace critique of mainstream media—often directed at how racial identity, gender identity, or immigration status is presented in headlines. This might be exemplified by the 2015 Charleston, South Carolina church shooting, where headlines portrayed Dylann Roof in humanizing terms, while his attack on a historically Black church appeared racially charged. We might further consider the 2023 Nashville Covenant School shooting, where reports downplayed Aiden Hale’s transgender identity while evoking sympathy for his mental illness. Yet the question of whether mainstream media is conspiring coordinated narrative control may be overshadowed by the broader democratization of news coverage in social media. Indeed, we all remember the Black Lives Matter protests, Target boycotts, Bud Light/Dylan Mulvaney backlash, and—still pressing today—the responses to the Israel-Gaza conflict. However, while technology has likely exacerbated such social fevers, it may have also revealed a long-forgotten economy of morality: the good, the beautiful, and the true, along with the false, the painful, and the immoral adhere as the phenomena which they are only insofar as they have afferred the truth—where affer is a neologism derived from the Latin ad- meaning “to, toward” and ferro meaning “to carry, bear.”
When diagnosing the instrumentality of compassion in economic terms, with truth as the currency, we might immediately recall those instances where suffering has been employed to provoke compassion toward “my people”—those who share a demographic identity with the Self—whether that be Black, White, male, female, European, American, Jewish, Christian, Millennial, Gen Z, LGBTQ+, or otherwise. According to this diagnosis, whether you animate the death of Floyd or Zarutska depends on “whose side you are on.” I admit this is the habitual diagnosis. Indeed, today it is commonplace to address contemporary problems through psychology and in terms of sociology. However, we might do well to look beyond objective sciences and toward the phenomenal experience. Phenomenology is our method for arriving at the objects of the science of ontology. Such science can help us retain objective language.
Metaphysics of Truth
When we adhere to the phenomenal experience, committing ourselves to the phenomena themselves in the event of their appearance—unburdened by habitual ways of interpreting the world—the phenomenon of the good, the beautiful, and the true, along with the false, the painful, and the immoral, show themselves at locations that exhibit the capacity for truth—or more precisely, the capacity for its reception and bearing. We can refer to this capacity as afference. With this term in hand, we can qualify such locations as ethical themselves, insofar as they have afferred the truth.
Indeed, throughout history, it has been common for human animals to care for rare and precious artworks. Consider that many religious temples have been preserved, with distressed parts mended and others entirely rebuilt, for thousands of years. Countless hours of labor have been invested in these projects; in some cases, lives have even been lost. We might also consider losses to our own modern landscape. For instance, we might recall the destruction of the World Trade Center towers following the September 11th attacks, or the ruination of the minaret of the Great Mosque of Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War. In some cases, the loss of these artifacts affects us more profoundly than the amorphous and anonymous human lives lost alongside them. Admittedly, this comparative language might seem perverse at first. Weighing the value of human life against inanimate objects can appear “inhumane.” Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that these artifacts hold value, and are often deemed worthy of human life. Surely the artists and craftsmen themselves sacrificed their lives for their creations, and many more have dedicated their lives to their preservation. We conclude: locations hold value insofar as they have afferred the truth. This is the case whether the “location” being considered is a religious site or appears on the newsfeed of your Facebook page.
Of course, the “fetishism” of an object-oriented ontology might lead many to believe that a flattening of the ontological hierarchy encourages a dangerous worldview in which some human lives are treated as objects to be disposed of. However, for others, the murders of Floyd and Zarutska are unethical—not because murder is immoral—but because, in a political economy of the afference of truth, those objects have not afferred the truth. As such, they are unnoteworthy.
Prescription
If this diagnosis is correct, and technology has indeed uncovered a long-forgotten economy of the afference of truth, then we are called to interrogate our inherited infrastructure, such that we might see how the degradation of human lives has become a worthy price in the afference of truth. I maintain that neither psychology nor sociology delves deeply enough into the phenomenology of truth. In order to address the loss of mutual thriving and flourishing—along with feelings of alienation, rootlessness, estrangement, resentment, and apathy—economic reformers require an understanding of the nature of truth. Only upon a metaphysics of truth can we derive policy for achieving effective afferent pathways for truth, such that human lives are no longer tallied as a reasonable expense.
Justin Carmien is the author of the book Metaphysics of the Aletheyein. He currently serves as the president of his neighborhood association in Edgewater, Chicago, and works as a designer for the Government Finance Officers Association, a local government think tank based in Chicago.