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Being excessively compassionate might lead to lack of integrity, or backbone, or something—nearly
What if we’re talking about Michael Jackson’s music, Roman Polanski’s movies, or Thomas Jefferson’s writing—where the thing causing us moral anguish is an unchangeable fact of history?
“Can we separate the art from the artist?” or “How do we deal with loved ones whose beliefs cause us pain?”
If Aristotle is right—if there is some amount of anger that should be directed at the right people for the right reasons, or some amount of shame that people should feel for their bad actions—these are the situations he’s talking about.
Existentialism, in a hilariously reductive nutshell, believes the following: Human existence is absurd. There is no “higher power” or deity or meaning to be found beyond the fact of that existence, and this condition fills us with dread and anxiety. The movement’s overall goal (though the details vary from writer to writer) was to make sense of what we can do in the face of that absurdity, dread, and anxiety.
Nothing “guides” us, we’re not following any playbook from religion or spirituality or anything. All we have, and all we ultimately are, is the choices we make while we’re alive.
the other great French existentialist, Albert Camus (1913–1960).
Camus broke down his version of existentialism
Humans desire meaning from the universe, but the universe is cold and indifferent and denies us that meaning; in fact, nothing “means” anything, really, or at least nothing is more “meaningful” than anything else.
Sartre’s existentialism: we choose to act, and the choices are ours and ours alone.
Both men also encourage us not to dwell on our mistakes.
Saying that all we are is our choices ignores the fact that sometimes choices are made for us. People don’t choose to be put in many situations that they’re in—they’re just in them, and those situations often force them to make other choices that in a more forgiving (or at least neutral) world they wouldn’t make.
many of the events that befall us after that, are things we often have little or no control over.10
that none of them really deals with: context.
If caring and trying are the key to ethical improvement
instead he just explains how it happened, acknowledges that he blew it, names the people he hurt, and expresses regret. This is the correct way to apologize.
The bullshitter couldn’t care less what the truth is—he wants only to make himself appear a certain way or achieve some effect on the listener.
“The essence of bullshit,” said Frankfurt, “is not that it is false but that it is phony.”
But if they’ve done something forgivable, we should remember what we hope for when we screw up, and try to summon that same grace and understanding.
“Oh, it doesn’t get any better when they’re grown-ups,” said Nana. “I worry about you all the time.”
knowledge makes people gentle, maybe it makes them safer too.
so, you look back on the person you were ten years before and shudder—at the mistakes you made, at your immaturity and thickheadedness—and then you breathe a sigh of relief that you’re so much smarter and more mature now. Then ten years later… it happens again.
think about the parts of people you love—their kindness, generosity, loyalty, courage, determination, mildness.
The trying is important. Keep trying.
You might have to draw and redraw the lines between “good” and “bad” over and over, and that’s fine. The important thing is that you keep drawing them.
We are wrong, and we try again, and we’re wrong again, and again, and again. Keep trying.
Know thyself. and Nothing in excess.
There are more than one quadrillion ants on earth! A million-billion ants?! That’s so many ants!
“ ‘knowledge makes men gentle’ ”
“Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is,” Whatever, May 15, 2012,
But the important part is: Don’t put pineapple on pizza. It’s wet and juicy! Nothing wet and juicy should go on pizza! Honestly, if that’s the only thing you take away from this book, I’ll feel like I’ve done my job.
“All people have equal rights regardless of gender,” and a bunch of other basic stuff that was left out of the founding documents of almost every nation on earth.
something called “compassion fatigue,” which according to the American Psychological Association “occurs when psychologists or others take on the suffering of patients who have experienced extreme stress or trauma,” and “can result in depression and anxiety.”
is nonsense upon stilts.
the backfire effect, which often causes people who are confronted with information that challenges their core identities to dig in their heels and double down on their original belief. See especially the work of Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, explained in the podcast You Are Not So Smart. Like most of these thorny, complex issues, however, there is also some evidence that the effect is not quite as strong as their work suggested.
