The Guardian for this meeting was Bruce Mowbray. The comments are by Bruce Mowbray.

--BELL--
 
Bruce Mowbray: Heya, Maude!
Bruce Mowbray: Heya, Cat!
Bruce Mowbray: I was building a sign and did not see you arrive.
Bruce Mowbray: Sry!
Catrinamonblue Resident: Hi Bruce, Maude :)
Bruce Mowbray: I'm going to finish the sign... Just a sec, please....
Catrinamonblue Resident: np :)
Bruce Mowbray: ty.
DR42 Resident: Just woke up.
Bruce Mowbray: ;-)
Bruce Mowbray: Whew!
Bruce Mowbray: How does that look?
DR42 Resident wonders where the sign is.
Bruce Mowbray: It's above the box to my left.
Catrinamonblue Resident: looks good :)
DR42 Resident: Ah, OK.
DR42 Resident: Looks good....
Bruce Mowbray: Thanks. I was afraid new-comers might not know what this box was for.
DR42 Resident: "(touch for card)"
Bruce Mowbray: Does it have a hover text that I'm not seeing?
DR42 Resident: No hover text
Bruce Mowbray: Oh well. I'll wait till I hear more from Storm, or someone else, about it.
DR42 Resident: I like a sign far better than hover text.
Bruce Mowbray: kk. Thanks, Maude.
Bruce Mowbray: Unfortunately, I've been so busy this week that I've not made it to any of the previous discussions about empathy, compassion, and pity.
Bruce Mowbray: (which are the "topics" suggested for this week....)
DR42 Resident: Hover text is the second most ugly thing in all of SL, IMNSHO.
Bruce Mowbray: But we can talk about anything, of course.
Catrinamonblue Resident: :)
Bruce Mowbray wonders what the first most ugly thing is.
DR42 Resident: Ban lines.
Catrinamonblue Resident: I was the one who had suggested the topic. My thought had been that, while there is empathy in compassion, there is no compassion in empathy
Bruce Mowbray: Do we have any ban lines around here?
Bruce Mowbray: listens carefully to Cat....
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmmm. "While there is empathy in compassion, there is no compassion in empathy."
DR42 Resident: A implies B, B excludes A?
Catrinamonblue Resident: just that empathy feels the feelings of others but compassion compels action to help to correct whatever may be wrong
Bruce Mowbray: So "empathy" is a more general term . . . and "compassion" might be a refinement of that?
Bruce Mowbray: kk. So compassion involves action?
Catrinamonblue Resident: just my thoughts and am willing to listen to others ideas on the subject

--BELL--

Bruce Mowbray: Hmmmmm.
Bruce Mowbray: My brother (who died last August) practiced workmen's compensation law for over 30 years, but had never heard of the word "empathy" when I spoke it to him not long before he died....I couldn't imagine how someone who worked with people in pain . . .
Bruce Mowbray: could not know about empathy.
Bruce Mowbray: He thought I was "manipulating" the conversation by using big words he'd never heard before.
Catrinamonblue Resident: did he have empathy? maybe not understanding it?
Bruce Mowbray: (Good thing I didn't say "compassion," then. Huh?)
DR42 Resident: What of Pity? does one need either compassion or empathy to pity? Are they exclusive? I do not always accept the classical view that compassion leads to action, but rather that compassion leads to understanding while empathy is a sharing of feelings.
Bruce Mowbray: No, he didn't have empathy.
Bruce Mowbray: Clearly not.
Catrinamonblue Resident: ah
Bruce Mowbray listens for more about pity.
Bruce Mowbray: (Maude)....
Catrinamonblue Resident: listening
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmm. Compassion leads to "understanding...."
DR42 Resident: Pity, in US English, is a pejorative term.
DR42 Resident: I do not know if it has always been such.
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, I'm afraid it has become a sort of demeaning posture/gesture to pity someone...
Bruce Mowbray: but I don't feel that way myself.
Bruce Mowbray: But, nor do I want anyone to pity me.
Catrinamonblue Resident: I've always thought of pity as sadness when all efforts to help have failed and the person pushes you away/cuts you out of their life
Bruce Mowbray: If I see an animal that has been wounded, pity is my natural response.
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, Cat...
DR42 Resident: So, how do we compare two terms that have positive connotations with one that has negative connotations?
Bruce Mowbray: me too.
Bruce Mowbray: or perhaps that person doesn't push you away -- but you still feel unable to do anything helpful.
DR42 Resident: Pity? or (non-active) compassion?
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmmm.
Bruce Mowbray: For me, compassion suggests no-separation.
DR42 Resident: "Pity the poor fool....."
Bruce Mowbray: A very close identification with the "object" of your compassion -- enough so that it feels like two "subjects."
Bruce Mowbray: I find it truly difficult to walk the streets of major cities... because it hurts to see people in dire straits...
Bruce Mowbray: barely existing with extremely limited resources.
Catrinamonblue Resident: yes
Bruce Mowbray: no place to sleep or eat... no medical help...
Bruce Mowbray: etc.
DR42 Resident: Is that pity?
Bruce Mowbray: So, I intentionally "steel" myself -- (protect myself) -- but in compassionate ways, I hope, because I know I will be challenged when visiting cities.
Bruce Mowbray: It is a sort of pity, yes.
Bruce Mowbray: Perhaps if I told the individual that I felt sorry for him - for his condition - then he would be insulted.
Bruce Mowbray: by being pitied by me....
Bruce Mowbray: But it goes deeper than that, for me.
Catrinamonblue Resident: So is pity when we are helpless to act? compassion when we can act? and empathy to feel with?
Bruce Mowbray: But it would be unfair to expect anyone else to understand those feelings.
Bruce Mowbray listens....
DR42 Resident: The great Wiki says: Pity means feeling for others, particularly feelings of sadness or sorrow, and is used in a comparable sense to the more modern words "sympathy" and "empathy". Through insincere usage, it can also have a more unsympathetic connotation of feelings of superiority or condescension.
Bruce Mowbray: I sometimes (often?) act not out of compassion but out of some sense of obligation/duty/expectation -- or perhaps reactively, not knowing how to handle some situation any better than that.
Bruce Mowbray: Ahhh. That's pretty much how I feel about "pity," actually.
Catrinamonblue Resident: nods
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, that condescension thing is what others whom I might pity may feel I am doing, but I'm not.
Catrinamonblue Resident: same here Bruce
Bruce Mowbray: ;-)
DR42 Resident: I rarely see it used in the first sense these days. The feelings of superiority or condescension is ugly, but reality.
Bruce Mowbray: But - as with my brother's misunderstanding of my use of the term "empathy" - I don't feel I can expect others to understand my "pity," or my "empathy" or my compassion.
DR42 Resident: Do the Kardashians pity others?
Bruce Mowbray: Those are highly subjective ways of being in the world....
Bruce Mowbray: I don't know anything about them, sry.
Bruce Mowbray: Are they on cable TV? I don't get that, sry.
Catrinamonblue Resident: I don't watch reality tv at all
Bruce Mowbray: "reality" TV? Are they on that?
Bruce Mowbray: [sounds un-real.]
Catrinamonblue Resident: those reality shows that are supposed to show what people are really like but don't
DR42 Resident: They act as a class of privileged people.
Bruce Mowbray: Oh! I get it -- sort of like Big Brother or Survivor "reality."
Catrinamonblue Resident: yes
Bruce Mowbray: hmmmm.

--BELL--

Bruce Mowbray: Well, I sort of generate my own meanings for concepts like these....
Bruce Mowbray: I hope this does not sound demeaning, judgmental, or condescending, but I felt a sort of pity for my brother... for never having understood the word "empathy" before....
DR42 Resident: I doubt the way the are portrayed on TV is how they really are.
Bruce Mowbray: especially when he worked with people in pain all the time... who had lost their jobs, homes, etc.
Bruce Mowbray: Heya, Kori!
Catrinamonblue Resident: a natural reaction Bruce
Catrinamonblue Resident: Hi Kori :)
Bruce Mowbray: How ya doin', good person?
Korel Laloix: heya
Bruce Mowbray: ;-)
Korel Laloix smiles
Korel Laloix: Really cut up... been picking blackberries.
Bruce Mowbray: I'm now wondering, do we need to "protect" ourselves from our own compassion, or empathy, or pity...?
Bruce Mowbray: Great! Blackberry wine, then?
DR42 Resident: People who provide care for others, social workers, doctors, etc, need a special kind of inner strength to keep themselves whole.
Korel Laloix: Probably more like cobbler and preserves
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmm. Yes, that was my experience.
Korel Laloix: And they need to accept help as well.. that can be tricky.
Bruce Mowbray: I worked with profoundly retarded, non-verbal, psychotic adult males for 13 years.
DR42 Resident: While I may have a great deal of empathy and compassion, I certainly do not have that strength.
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmm. Well, I never thought of it as "special."
Bruce Mowbray: They taught me something important about myself every day for 13 years.
Bruce Mowbray: and also that there is great unfairness in the world....
DR42 Resident: So, maybe your brother had empathy, but his sense of self-preservation allowed him to build a wall of protection?

[I missed DR42's statement when we were "in session."  Yes, that is exactly what he had to do, in order to "preserve" himself.  Something in me "pities" his having to do that.]

Bruce Mowbray: How did I get THIS but they got THAT? Unfair!!
Bruce Mowbray: but eventually I came to "understand" that the "reasons" for things might be deeper than we're able to understand or appreciate...
Catrinamonblue Resident: I tell my kids that life is not meant to be fair -  its just life :)
Korel Laloix: Difficult question... have asked it myself quite a lot.
Bruce Mowbray: and maybe that's also how it is with folks we "pity."
Bruce Mowbray: All I know is that the most challenging of those men was also my best "teacher."
DR42 Resident: If that pity leads to action in some form then it has become compassion?
Bruce Mowbray: Some very difficult "lessons" to be learned, there.
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmm. . . Well, there is compassionate action -- and then there are all sorts of non-compassionate action. . .
Bruce Mowbray: Maybe empathy could possibly go the other way... I don't know.  (A non-compassionate way.)
Bruce Mowbray: Like, shoving "help" at someone who doesn't want it or [really] need it.
DR42 Resident: Shoving help is not compassion or even empathy.
Catrinamonblue Resident: Sometimes the best help you can give is to step back and let them be
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, "shoving" has no place in compassion, for sure...
Catrinamonblue Resident: sometimes people need to learn their own lessons even if they are causing themselves much hurt
Bruce Mowbray slaps his typist rather than pitying him.
Korel Laloix: True... but sometimes the best help is also beating the shit out of someone that deserves it.
Bruce Mowbray: Perhaps EVERYONE can ONLY learn her own lessons. . . On whom else could we possibly "work"?
DR42 Resident reads typonese just fine.
Bruce Mowbray: Thanks, Maude!
Bruce Mowbray: Go for it, Kori!!!
Catrinamonblue Resident: :)
Bruce Mowbray: Just don't let that be me.
Korel Laloix: I have.
Korel Laloix: Sad to say.
Bruce Mowbray: and that has also been done TO you, Kori.
DR42 Resident: Delivering a "wake up call", as it were. With a 2x4.
Bruce Mowbray: OUCH!
Bruce Mowbray: Perhaps you have to get their attention, first.
Bruce Mowbray: I taught 8th graders for seven years . . . and what you've said brings back some memories.
Bruce Mowbray: But I always refused corporal punishment with my kids.
Bruce Mowbray: NO WAY was I going to use violence to get some "point" about "proper" behavior across to them.
DR42 Resident: The 2x4 does not have to be corporal.
Bruce Mowbray: (Got into trouble with a few principals because of that.)
Bruce Mowbray: Ahhh! Good point, Maude!
Korel Laloix: wow lag

--BELL--

Bruce Mowbray: Perhaps lag is the cosmos' way to get us to reconsider . . . or maybe to get us to second-guess ourselves (or else buy a new graphics card for the computer....)
DR42 Resident: I think that people who work for the State Department should first teach 8th graders. If they did that, then, maybe our foreign policy would be compassionate rather than greed-based.
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmmm. Good point, Maude.
Bruce Mowbray: Are you suggesting that folks in the State Dept. are really latent-developing 8th graders?
DR42 Resident has three sisters who taught grades K, 1, and 2, while she taught at university.
Bruce Mowbray listens....
DR42 Resident: No, that the act of teaching them would lead to better understanding of dealing with people who have vastly divergent goals.
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, I understand.
Bruce Mowbray: They would either have a growth experience, or they would simply quit.
DR42 Resident: I happen to think that they are delayed 8th graders and are the class bullies.
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, what do 8th grade bullies do when they grow up? Become State Department officials!
Korel Laloix: Never really dealt with any of those folks.
Bruce Mowbray: Me neither, Kori -- but we all deal with the effects of their work every day, in one way or another.
Korel Laloix: I really was a Hillary supporter..... but not so sure now.
Bruce Mowbray: Should I have more "compassion" for the State Dept. officials?
DR42 Resident: I never was, but now I might be.
Korel Laloix: A lot of people have jobs that take a price from them.
Bruce Mowbray: Politics (whom we "support" and rally behind) is also a "growth" opportunity.
DR42 Resident: Yes
Bruce Mowbray: I have strong feelings about Obama's use of drones. . . and also about clandestine surveillance programs... so my idealism has become a bit frayed, I'm afraid.
Bruce Mowbray: Perhaps I still have an 8th graders "ideal" view of the world.
Bruce Mowbray: (or do they lose that at an earlier age now-a-days?)
DR42 Resident: But both of those programs were a legacy from the Bush administration. It is just that now there is less secrecy around them.
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmm. Does more information make us more compassionate, then . . .
Bruce Mowbray: or less?
DR42 Resident: I think it makes us more cynical.
Bruce Mowbray: It could, surely.
Catrinamonblue Resident: maybe less - as we must pick and choose or shut out some of the information as it would overload us
Bruce Mowbray: With my brother's case, though, I was able to tolerate him only because I realized (knew) that his plight was worse than my own -- as a small child.
Bruce Mowbray: Somehow that "information" enabled me to have compassion for him -- even when he was most obnoxious and abusive.
Catrinamonblue Resident: nods
DR42 Resident: SO you had compassion. Your action was acceptance of his situation as it differed from yours.
Bruce Mowbray: He died about 10 months ago -- and I have not even begun to grieve his passing...
Catrinamonblue Resident: hugs
Bruce Mowbray: but I grieve what happened to him as a child, that made him almost intolerable as a narcissistic adult ....
DR42 Resident: My father passed 8 years ago, and I have not grieved at all, and I doubt I ever will.
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmmm.
Bruce Mowbray: Understandable, Maude . . . especially so if one knew what you know....
DR42 Resident: He was the source of my abuse.
Korel Laloix: The only soft spot I have for my mother is knowing the rough time she had as a little girl.
Bruce Mowbray: There you go, Kori!  That's exactly what I was trying to say.
Korel Laloix: it is not much of a soft spot though...
Bruce Mowbray: ;-)
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, I do understand that, also, or think that I do (from my own experience -- which, I guess, is what empathy means.)
Korel Laloix: I can at least stand to be in the same room with her now.
Bruce Mowbray: Ahhhh!
Bruce Mowbray: Excellent!
DR42 Resident: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/san-francisco-plane-crash.html?_r=0
Bruce Mowbray: Wow!

Bruce Mowbray: That happened a time or two when I was living in the Bay Area.
Bruce Mowbray: I hope no one was hurt.

--BELL--

DR42 Resident: Hurt but not killed. 

(Two people had been reported killed at the time I posted this log - Bruce)

Bruce Mowbray: I seem to recall that it was an airplane from the Far East that landed in the Bay -- also, when I was living out there.
Bruce Mowbray: I've flown into that airport many times....
Bruce Mowbray: water.... water..... water.... then suddenly, RUNWAY!
Bruce Mowbray: I must be gone. May you each have a fine weekend.
Bruce Mowbray: Thanks everyone.
DR42 Resident: Same, Bruce
Catrinamonblue Resident: Bye Bruce :)
Korel Laloix: Also I.   Ciao
Korel Laloix: wow lag
Korel Laloix: Off to another chat myself...
Catrinamonblue Resident: I'm going to look at the dome
Catrinamonblue Resident: see you later
DR42 Resident: bye