#on pity

[tamsoj]

One grows out of pity when it’s useless.

Albert Camus, from The Plague

[arixstyx]

Which of us do you think so lowly of

That you would take an act of kindness

As one of disgrace

[extremelynony]

On Bad Guys (and pity?)

I’ve read a lot of books, especially fictional, in the past couple of years. And there is pretty much always a good guy and a bad guy, just to keep the story interesting. Protagonists and antagonists if you want to be official like that.

And I can’t quite remember what sparked this question of mine, but I think it might have been Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. I’ve talked about him and his book before. He wrote about how mentors taught the main character to fight and defeat the antagonists, but in reality, the bad guys weren’t all that bad.

And so I wondered, what is the difference between bad guys and people who do bad things?

Of course, everybody’s definition of “bad” may be different, but I think we can generally agree that violating a universal law, written or unwritten, is bad.

And let’s also agree that a fourteen-year-old boy named Sulliv has a mother with a deadly injury and he needs money for medical bills. You probably can see where I’m going with this.

Sulliv is young and he’s not able to get a good enough job for his mother’s biils. He has some connections and decides to get into illegal drug dealing. He would never take them himself, but he knew people that would.

I mean, I guess people have different feelings about illegal drugs (like LSD and heroin) but I think that it’s agreed upon by society that dealing drugs like that is bad.

So is Sulliv a bad person?

I feel most people would say no, out of pity. Out of pity because Sulliv can’t do anything about his mother’s condition. But what if he could?

What if he told his mother not to go to that sketchy supermarket to buy their potato chips because the other one in the safer neighborhood didn’t have them? And what if that was where his mother almost died from a serial killer?

Farfetched, I know. But my point is, what if it was Sulliv’s fault that his mother was injured?

And still, is Sulliv a bad person?

There’s something about the fact that you could have, would have, should have done something to fix the situation earlier, that just isn’t that pitiful. But you didn’t do anything to fix the situation. And now, you can’t. And now, you aren’t pitied anymore.

There only seems to be pity when the entire situation is out of your hands. When Fate decides to intervene and there is nothing you can do about it. But this pity underestimates the entire flaw of humans: imperfections.

We’re humans. We’re literally defined as mistakes (we were a mistake for the Earth, we make mistakes, we produce mistakes, etc.). And when we only receive pity when we don’t make mistakes, it seems a little irrational.

And then there’s the topic of unforgivable mistakes. Which is a whole other ramble on forgiveness.

But I think to sum it up, Sulliv is seen as a bad person when he doesn’t receive pity. And he is seen as a good person when he receives pity. So I guess the real question is, to what length will you go to pity someone and forgive them for their mistakes?

Happy Tuesday,

Written from A Nony Mouse

[beruthielthequeen]

Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good.

--JRR Tolkien

[vivalaglamourpuss]

I Don't Like to Pity Anyone.

It's Such a Useless Emotion. And Condescending One as Well, Seeing as It's Not Really a Person Attempting to Put Themselves in Another's Place. It is More Looking at their Situation from a Distance and Feeling Bad. 

However, I Am Currently Looking at Someone Who for a Long Time I Resented. Not for Anything They Did Particularly to Me, But Circumstantially. And Now, I See That There's a Situation. And I Thought for a Long Time This Would Make Me Happy. But...It Doesn't. I Understand, in Part, A Little Slice of What They Could Be Feeling. And...Well I'm Not Happy. And If It Means Anything, I Hope That All Works Out.

Because You Know, Hope is All We Really Have Sometimes.