“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
Dalai Lama XIV
The six essays on “Compassion” (i.e. this one as well as this, this, this, this, and this) all advance the same important argument – that society’s response to harmful behaviour, no matter how egregious that behaviour may be, should always be one of compassion, concern, caring, and understanding, not anger, hate, and judgment.
In short, society’s assumption that we are responsible for our own behaviour is simply wrong, and these six essays lay out exactly why.
Here are the basic arguments that will be fleshed out:
- Human behaviour is impacted by innumerable factors we neither choose nor control.
- These factors are totally unique to each and every one of us, guaranteeing widely varying behaviour – none of them being right or wrong, simply different.
- We don’t get to choose our behaviour, because we can’t – it’s physically impossible.
The material that follows directly challenges many of our deeply-held beliefs about blame, responsibility, retribution, and behavioural choice. I ask only that you maintain an open mind. After all, it is only by subjecting our collective assumptions to ongoing assessment that we can ever hope to build a more just, compassionate society.
Why forgive and forget needs to replace judgment and anger
We look out at the world and what do we see? We see people doing things and saying things that we would never do and never say – puzzling things, often infuriating things – behavior that is simply inexplicable – to us.
And what do we do when we don’t understand someone else’s “wayward” behavior?
- We assume we know why they behaved as they did.
- We take that assumption as reality.
- We sit in judgment of that person based on our assumption.
- We find them guilty as charged.
- And then we get angry with them.
- “Look at how he’s driving! He’s obviously an ignorant, self-centered jerk!” (or, maybe he’s a dad with a sick child in the back seat, and he’s racing, scared as hell, to the hospital)
- “She didn’t even come to the party! She’s so stuck-up and anti-social!” (or, maybe she’s an introvert and finds noisy social events draining)
- “Look at how he’s treating his son – he’s such a terrible father!” (or, maybe he was treated that way by his own dad and that’s the best parenting he’s capable of at that moment)
While we judge our own actions and our own words by our known motives, known intentions, known mitigating factors, and known extenuating circumstances, we typically judge others based solely on their external actions.
And then, in our ignorance, we assign malign motives to those actions.
As covered in this post, this is not our fault. Our evolutionary inheritance biases us towards the use of aggression because millennia ago such behavior kept us alive – better to act aggressively and be wrong than to act compassionately and be killed.
But we no longer need to act aggressively to stay alive. By assigning malign intent to others’ behavior, we create needless conflict and discord through our ignorance, and this has serious ramifications:
- We upset ourselves (which is terrible for our mental and physical well-being ) and we upset those around us.
- We add to the aggression of the world rather than to its peace. In so doing, we create the world we don’t want to live in rather than the world we do.
Aware of this human bias, we can start to do better; we can choose the path of compassion over aggression and the path of wisdom over ignorance.
“I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you want to make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change”
Michael Jackson, “Man In the Mirror“
WHY COMPASSION?
This post argues that whenever we encounter upsetting behavior in others we should meet it with compassion and caring rather than judgment and anger.
This is not to say that we don’t take the necessary steps to prevent them from doing further harm, but we do so with respect and caring.
But why should we do this? Three reasons come to mind:
- We can never know why others behave as they do. As documented in this post, human behavior is impacted by innumerable factors, almost all of which are outside of our control and outside of our conscious awareness. It is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that what goes on in our brain is nothing more than biochemical reactions following the laws of physics. Mess with the physics and unfortunate consequences result – consequences that we then mistake as purposely-bad behavior, with no context or mitigating circumstances whatsoever.
- None of us signed up for these factors – they were simply doled out randomly to each of us as part of life, luck of the draw.
- Most people remain ignorant of mindfulness – they know of only one way to get through life – habitually and, therefore, mindlessly. We don’t get angry with people who, through lack of training, don’t know how to read, write, or do math. Why, then, should we get angry with those who have received zero training in mindfulness and who, as a result, and through no fault of their own, act in a mindless manner?
“I began to wonder whether people were thinking at all. Decades of research later, I have found the answer is a resounding ‘no’ – mindlessness is pervasive. In fact, I believe virtually all of our problems; personal, interpersonal, professional, and societal; either directly or indirectly, stem from mindlessness.”
Dr. Ellen Langer, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
Simply put, it is wrongheaded for us to sit in judgement of others when ignorance of mindfulness remains the norm, and when factors that we had no role in choosing, and with which we have no conscious acquaintance, drive our behavior, particularly our worst behavior.
“Most of what we do and think and feel is not
under our conscious control”
David Eagleman, neuroscientist and adjunct professor, Stanford University and author of “Incognito – The Secret Lives of the Brain“
FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE HUMAN BEHAVIOR
So, the next time you find yourself negatively judging someone’s behavior, stop and ask yourself if you know whether their actions may have been influenced by any of the factors laid out below.
Then ask yourself if compassion and understanding is not a wiser way forward – a better way forward – than getting angry and consigning that individual to your “bad person” column:
Sex
The vast majority of criminals are male (e.g. FBI data show that males make up 90% of those arrested for murder, 88% for robbery, 83% for arson, 82% for vandalism, 82% for car theft, and 80% for offences against family and children).
Under-developed prefrontal cortex (PFC)
A study of men with Antisocial Personality Disorder found that their prefrontal cortex was at least 10% smaller than average. This compromises impulse control, emotional control, and the ability to judge the consequences of one’s actions.
Abnormal dopamine sensitivity
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps regulate attention, learning, and emotional responses as well as acting on our brain’s pleasure centers. Affected individuals tend to be impulsive and have a reduced ability to delay gratification.
Adolescence
The last brain region to fully mature is the prefrontal cortex (PFC), not fully functional until our mid-twenties. Given that the PFC is the locus of our executive functioning – impulse control, emotional control, and creativity – it should come as no surprise that adolescents tend to exhibit ill-judged behavior and exaggerated emotions.
Stress
Stress impairs our judgment, makes us impulsive, reactionary, aggressive, emotional, as well as more fearful. Stress also biases us toward selfishness.
Abnormal serotonin levels
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in our feelings of happiness and well-being. Low levels of serotonin have been associated with impulsive aggression.
Testosterone
Testosterone has been found to boost impulsivity and risk-taking while making those already prone to aggression even more aggressive. Conversely, men with below-average levels of testosterone have been found to be rated as better parents.
Physical pain
An individual predisposed to aggression becomes even more so when in pain. In addition, those in pain often exhibit self-centered behavior with reduced empathy for others.
Hunger
When people are hungry they become more aggressive and less charitable. In one study, judges who had recently eaten granted parole in 60% of their cases whereas judges who were hungry granted almost no parole.
Social environment
In the presence of women, men become more aggressive, more risk-taking, and more impulsive – unless the setting happens to dictate that status is enhanced by being sociable, in which case they exhibit more emollient behavior.
It has been found that sustained inter-group contact generally decreases prejudice. This is supported by the observation that those states in the U.S. with the fewest immigrants as a percentage of the population tend to have the most anti-immigrant views – a prime example of ignorance breeding fear.
Neighborhood
The presence of litter, graffiti, broken windows, and public drunkenness in a neighborhood leads to increased crime as it signals that people there don’t care.
The state of a neighborhood also communicates cultural norms to children, thus exacerbating bad behavior in bad neighborhoods and instilling good behavior in good neighborhoods.
Climate
Hot temperatures have been found to lead to higher rates of violence.
Culture
Collectivist cultures (e.g. China, Japan) emphasize interdependence, harmony, conformity, and the needs and responsibilities of the group over those of the individual. In contrast, individualist cultures (e.g. Canada, U.S.A.) value independence, competition, personal achievement, uniqueness, and the needs and rights of the individual.
Cultures with greater income inequality have been found to have less social capital (i.e. less trust, less cooperation, less generosity, and less inclination to come to another’s aid).
Socio-Economic Status
A child born to a family of low socio-economic status is at risk of being overly reactive to stress. They are also at risk of having stunted brain development leading to poor working memory, poor emotional control, and impulsive behavior.
It has been found that rich people tend to be less kind and to demonstrate less empathy and compassion.
Abnormal Oxytocin Sensitivity or Amount
An abnormally high level of the hormone oxytocin is associated with being more pro-social toward those similar to you and more antisocial toward those who are different from you.
Menstruation
As many as three of every four women experience some form of Perimenstrual Syndrome (PMS) whose behavioral symptoms include anxiety, depression, mood swings, irritability, food cravings, insomnia, poor concentration, and social withdrawal.
Menopause
Roughly 80% of menopausal women experience symptoms that include depression, insomnia, anxiety, and memory loss. In one British study, nearly half of affected women said it negatively impacted their work.
Economic Factors
Economic downturns increase the occurrence of spousal and child abuse.
Judgment Biases
Attractive people are generally judged to have better personalities and higher moral standards, to be kinder, more honest, friendlier, and more trustworthy than those rated as less attractive. They are more likely to be hired and to receive a higher salary. When accused of a crime, they are less likely to be convicted. These biases have been shown to exist in children as young as five.
Cognitive Load
A heavy cognitive load makes people more conservative, more likely to lie, less charitable, and less willing to help someone in need.
Lack of Sleep
Symptoms of sleep deprivation include irritability, a depressed mood, difficulty paying attention, poor memory, and a tendency to be more conservative than normal.
Genes
Pedophilia and sociopathy tend to run in families, suggesting a genetic component.
Studies have found that there is a genetic component to addiction, estimated to explain about half the likelihood of becoming addicted.
“Studies on twins suggest that mathematical ability is about 60% heritable. Now research in the journal, PLOS Biology, has mapped exactly how tiny changes in DNA bless some with mathematical wizardry and condemn others to relative innumeracy.”
Economist magazine, October 2020
Pre-Natal Conditions
There is evidence that pedophilia is associated with pre-natal endocrine abnormalities.
High maternal stress can stunt fetal brain development and make the child more prone to anxiety and depression.
Maternal malnutrition, as well as drug and alcohol abuse, can impair fetal brain development.
Brain Damage
Those with damage to their prefrontal cortex tend to see moral dilemmas in very pragmatic, even cold-hearted terms.
Those with a damaged amygdala tend to be more accepting of unkind behavior.
A large percentage of death row inmates have a history of damage to their frontal cortex, particularly in childhood before the brain is fully developed.
One thing that adult pedophiles have in common is a greater incidence of having suffered from brain injuries during childhood.
Damage to the frontal cortex can lead to socially inappropriate behavior, apathy, hyper-sexuality, bursts of compulsive gambling, stealing, and aggressiveness. Such individuals often show poor judgment in choosing friends and partners and don’t learn from past bad experience.
Those suffering from frontal cortex dementia often become disinhibited and exhibit socially-inappropriate behavior.
“Criminals do have broken brains, brains that are physically different from those of the rest of us.”
Dr. Adrian Raine, “The Anatomy of Violence“
Brain Differences
Studies of the brains of transgender individuals show that they more closely resemble the sex they feel themselves to be rather than their biological sex.
Psychopaths’ amygdalae have been found to be smaller than normal. Such individuals are also less reactive to pain. Further, they have been found to have decreased activity in their frontal cortex and less coupling of their prefrontal cortex (the wise part of our brain) to other brain regions.
A four-year-old’s openness to new toys has been found to predict how open they’ll be as an adult to novelty and social change.
Of those on Death Row in the U.S., by some measures all of them suffer from some form of disability, and many have a low IQ.
People scoring high in conscientiousness have been found to have more brain matter in the part of the brain responsible for planning for the future and making decisions.
People scoring high in agreeableness have been found to have less brain matter in a part of the brain responsible for processing emotions and making decisions.
“Many of us like to think that all adults possess the same capacity to make sound choices. It’s a nice idea, but it’s wrong. So, when it comes to thinking about blameworthiness, the first difficulty to consider is that people do not choose their own developmental path.”
David Eagleman
Sexual Orientation
Why are gay men attracted to men? Why are lesbian women attracted to women? Why are heterosexuals attracted to members of the opposite sex? Science clearly indicates that choice has nothing to do with it. Instead, factors such as genetics, prenatal hormone levels, brain structure, and birth order all play potential roles. For example, it has been found that the chance of male homosexuality increases for the last-born son.
Upbringing
Risk factors for developing sociopathic behavior include physical or mental abuse as a child, parental neglect, family instability, witnessing violence, and growing up in general chaos. Sociopathic behavior includes having no regard for right or wrong, ignoring the feelings of others, lying, manipulative behavior, impulsiveness, hostility, abusive behavior, risky behavior, and being irresponsible. The prevalence of sociopathy is much higher among those in prison than the general population.
Studies find that children raised in dysfunctional families have a higher risk of substance abuse, impaired cognitive ability, impaired emotional and impulse control, and a higher risk of exhibiting antisocial, violent behavior.
“While our decisions may seem like free choices, no good evidence exists that they actually are”
David Eagleman
Drug Use
Athletes abusing anabolic steroids often exhibit increased irritability, aggression, anger, and anxiety (“roid rage”).
Opioid abusers may experience confusion, disorientation, mood swings, anxiety, and a distorted perception of reality.
Loneliness
Loneliness is associated with an increase in the number of a type of immature immune cell known to trigger anxiety. Feeling lonely also increases the level of a type of signalling molecule in the brain associated with social withdrawal, heightened suspicion of the outside world, and an increased tendency toward decisions that involve little risk. Loneliness is also associated with increased irritability, self-centredness, and defensiveness.
Sexual Arousal
Studies find that, when in a state of sexual arousal, our moral judgment becomes compromised.
“… it is neither biology alone nor environment alone that determines the final product of a personality. When it comes to the ‘nature versus nurture’ question, the answer almost always includes both. This is the reason people come to the table with quite different ways of seeing the world, dissimilar personalities, and varied capacities for decision making.”
David Eagleman
WHY COMPASSION, UNDERSTANDING, and FORGIVENESS SHOULD BE OUR DEFAULT APPROACH TO LIFE
So, someone does or says something to upset us, what do we do next?
In light of the multitude of factors outlined above, all of which have the potential to materially impact human behavior, is it not patently unfair and unjustified for us to react in anger, as is the current norm in our society?
Indeed, should you still feel justified reacting in anger, then reasonable responses to these three questions seem in order:
- What exactly are you getting angry at?
- Where do you draw the line for assessing if someone should be considered ‘responsible’ for their own behavior?
- What would such a line even mean?
Question #1: What Are You Getting Angry At?
If you’re going to get angry over what you perceive to be someone’s errant behavior, what exactly are you getting angry at?:
That person’s hormone levels? Their hunger? Their behavioral disorder? Their prenatal conditions? Their upbringing? Their socio-economic status? Their culture? Their brain structure? Their stress level? Their cognitive load? Their neighborhood? Their lack of positive role models? Their drug addiction? Their temperament? Their peers? Their age? Their illness? Their pain? Their genetic inheritance? The economy? Their lack of sleep? Their head injury from high school? The parenting style they were exposed to as a child? The physical and mental abuse their grandfather suffered as a child? …. and on, and on, and on.
Question #2: Where do you draw the line for assessing if someone is ‘responsible’ for their behavior?
In law, it is possible for a criminal to be found not guilty by reason of insanity. In the U.S. it is possible to be spared the death penalty by reason of insufficient mental capacity to understand right from wrong.
In other words, lines are drawn to separate those who are deemed “responsible” for their behavior and those who are not.
But where do we draw such a line, and how do we justify it? For example, in some U.S. states an IQ under 70 is deemed to be the cut-off line below which the death penalty cannot be applied. But why 70? Why not 62 or 83? Why not the average of five IQ tests over the span of a two-year period?
With any fair assessment, it quickly becomes apparent that any such line is totally arbitrary, unfair, unjust, and without validity; there is no justifiable cut-off line for being considered responsible for one’s behaviour.
Question #3: What Would Such a Line Even Mean?
Lastly, even if a cut-off line was agreed upon to distinguish between someone responsible for their behavior and someone not, what exactly would such a cut-off line mean given how different we are from each other? What exactly would such a line mean given all the biological and environmental factors that can impact human behavior, and over which we have near-zero say or control?
In truth, such a line would be totally meaningless.
“Our worst behaviors, ones we condemn and punish, are the products of our biology.”
Dr. Robert Sapolsky, professor of biology and neurology, Stanford University and author of “Behave – The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst“
COMPASSION
Think of some of the most admired historical figures and the traits they hold in common – the Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. Each espoused compassion, understanding, forgiveness, patience, and eschewed aggression.
Given that these are some of the traits we most admire, and given the information presented herein, four things should by now be very clear:
- We need to substitute compassion for judgement and anger whenever we encounter others’ “wayward” behavior.
- Each of us will take a turn exhibiting excruciatingly bad behavior due to factors over which we have no control and about which we have no conscious awareness.
- In such circumstances, each one of us would want to be shown compassion and understanding rather than anger and blame.
- It follows, then, that this same courtesy should be extended to everyone – sitting in judgment of others’ perceived wayward behavior simply has no justification.
At each fork in the road of life we get to choose the path of aggression or the path of compassion.
It is compassion, not anger, that is supported by the evidence.
It is compassion, not anger, that makes us better people.
And it is compassion, not anger, that makes our world a better place for us all.
Warmest wishes,
Rob @ Living a Mindful Life