If You Understand Their Plight, Feel Compassion, Not Joy
A person should have a basic capacity for empathy and not be too indifferent to the sufferings of others. When others are in great pain, taking pleasure in their misfortune or treating a funeral as a celebration is deeply unpopular. Our Chinese ancestors had a profound understanding of this and left us a classic maxim: "If you understand their plight, feel compassion, not joy."
This means that if we empathize with others' circumstances, we should feel deep compassion for what they endure rather than behaving inappropriately in such moments. For example, when others are plainly in deep water and hot fire, yet we throw victory celebrations with song and dance, flaunting our own achievements and forbidding others to grieve; or when war has burned down others' homes and, instead of feeling deep sympathy, we ridicule them; or when a family is in mourning and we laugh and chat cheerfully nearby. These behaviors are all utterly improper.
Unfortunately, the above behaviors fill the mainstream and social media of our time, making them unbearable for an ordinary person with normal reason and feeling. I myself therefore choose to stay as far away as possible from all kinds of information. Having seen too much of the ugly side of human nature, no one can truly be happy. Some people disregard basic humanity for political or economic gain; others have lost basic humanity through failed education. In the internet age, these inhumane fellows are all very active.
Mr. Bertrand Russell said that the greatest misfortune of intellectuals is to live in an irrational age. It seems to me that the greatest misfortune of ordinary people is always having around us fellows who have lost basic humanity. They cannot manage "compassion, not joy," and repeatedly break through the bottom line of human nature, doing things that make others deeply uncomfortable.
In this age of frequent disasters, tragedies are more common than usual. Natural disasters, plagues, wars, hunger, and poverty leave many people living in deep water. Climate disasters are increasing the world's refugee population, and the number of hungry people keeps rising; wave after wave of pandemics drive up unemployment, strain medical resources, and break supply chains; wars launched by foolish, power-hungry fellows create many displaced refugees and unfortunate people killed in shelling. A normal person living in such an age should have basic sympathy for the suffering, and not join any carnival that feeds on others' pain.
I have lived for more than forty years and never imagined that humanity in the 21st century would one day face, on a broad scale, the present predicament: many households have not even enough food to fill their stomachs; the sick cannot get timely medical care; suffering women and children become prey for human traffickers; meanwhile, the internet is filled with mockery of the fallen. The so-called light of human civilization has dimmed considerably.
Sympathy is not only a basic human emotion; animals also know to rescue suffering members of their own or other species, showing that compassion is one of our innate dispositions. What I find utterly puzzling is why some people have lost this innate disposition, so that they can remain unmoved by others' suffering, even laugh cheerfully. A little consolation is that those who can feel "compassion, not joy" in the face of others' misfortune are still the great majority; unfortunately, in some extreme ages they become the silent majority, because once they raise their voices, they are threatened by the few who are driven by interest and by those whom these few have incited.
I am very small; about this ugly social phenomenon I can do nothing to change it. I can only require of myself to hold the bottom line of "compassion, not joy," and not join any inhumane carnival.