All true, just not relevant. I do think there is a serious problem of having too thin skins today and it is not directly relevant to compassion. As late as in the 1960's, in the hippie age, people were listening to Zen Buddhist masters and similar gurus, like Osho, who would telling them you are not helpless with your feelings.
Osho's right hand did run the biggest bioattack on the US at the time. I don't want to live in a world where when someone doesn't like how an election is going to go they try to poison a significant portion of the electorate to keep them at home.
With increased technological capacities, this gets more dangerous.
Todays 25 years old seem to literally think other people control their emotions, other people can make them angry or sad, and from this grave mistake they make their whole system of ethics, they say making others sad or angry is wrong, that it is basically the responsibility of person A how he made person B feel and not person B's responsibility to police his own emotions and so on.
There are certainly people who hold that position but I'm not one of them.
How is this relevant again? It is true that in some cases the spirituality of the era resulted in violent madness another example in Tokyo but quite probably not by these kinds of teachings. There were many kinds.
My hidden secret goal is to understand the sentiments behind social justice better, however I will refrain from asking questions that directly relate to it, as they can be mind-killers, instead, I have constructed an entirely apolitical, and probably safe thought experiment involving a common everyday problem that shouldn't be incisive.
Alice is living in an apartment, she is listening to music. The volume of her music is well within what is allowed by the regulations or social norms. Yet the neighbor is still complaining and wants her to turn it down, claiming that she (the neighbor) is unusually sensitive to noise due to some kind of ear or mental condition.
Bob, Alice's friend is also present, and he makes a case that while she can turn it down basically out of niceness or neighborliness, this level of kindness is going far beyond the requirements of duty, and should be considered a favor, because she has no ethical duty to turn it down, for the following reasons.
1) Her volume level of music is usual, it is the sensitivity level of the neighbor that is unusual, and we are under no duty to cater to every special need of others.
2) In other words, it is okay to cause suffering to others as long as it is a usual, common, accepted thing to do that would not cause suffering to a typical person.
The reasons for this are
A) It would be too hard to do otherwise, to cater to every special need, in this case it is easy, but not in all cases, so this is no general principle.
B/1) It would not help the other person much, if the other person is unusually sensitive, the problem would not be fixed by one person catering to them. A hundred people should cater to it, after all there are many sources of noise in the neighborhood.
B/2) In other words, if you are unusually rude, reducing it to usual levels of rudeness is efficient, because by that one move you made a lot of people content. But if you are already on the usual levels of rudeness and an unusually sensitive person is still suffering, further reduction is less efficient because you are only one of the many sources of their suffering. And these people are few anyway.
C) Special needs are easy to fake.
D) People should really work on toughening up and growing a thicker skin, it is actually possible.
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