Compassion v Truth

A Wondering

A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet were written at the same time, around 1595. Both plays follow the same pattern, a pattern that is shared by many of Shakespeare’s comedies: there is an existing social structure that maintains the status quo and serves the interests of those in power. The status quo provides stability and control, but the younger generation feels this structure as a constraint and an injustice; they want freedom and personal agency, not obedience to patriarchs. The older generation insists upon its authority, but the young resist and rebel. They eventually get their way… sort of. In Midsummer, after misadventure in the forest with fairies and love potions and a donkey, the older generation realizes that there is a rightness to the claims of the young. The Duke Theseus and the domineering father, Egeus, accept the new values of the youth, those based off love and personal choice. Order is restored because authority is itself enlarged as it incorporates the youth’s values, values that are founded on love and freedom, but ultimately turn towards tradition and order. There is a subversion of order followed by a containment of the new values. The same thing happens in Romeo and Juliet, only there it occurs as a result of the deaths of the young lovers. The warring Capulet and Montague fathers reconcile with each other at the end of the play and mourn together the loss of Juliet and Romeo. Love wins, in the end, though lives are destroyed in the process.

I am middle aged and a parent. Does that mean I am now in the position of power and authority, especially over youth? I am trying to work out how to resolve the tension between compassion and truth. (This tension is discussed brilliantly by David Widdicombe. You can listen to him here.) How might I show love to one who insists that I validate parts about him that go against my principles? When someone I love has been led to believe that in order to treat him with authentic kindness, I must reform my convictions about the nature of reality, about the soul-sickness of therapy-culture, about the nihilism at the heart of contemporary gender ideology, what do I do? Is it me who needs to change, like Juliet’s self-involved mother? Am I holding to ancient, unprogressive, backwards, harmful values simply because they maintain the status quo and serve the needs of power? Am I the one who needs to be disrupted, enlarged, and corrected? Or is it that the cultural tyranny of enforced compassion is where the power lies? My convictions cut against the structure of authority – The Machine, as it is often called. Does this mean that I am the one who might have cause to rebel, to challenge the hegemony of academic institutions, mainstream media, corporate interests, and the medical/pharma titans? While I see a general trend of cynicism towards wokeism in young people (it is a child, after all, who points out that the emperor has no clothes), it remains a powerful tribal force for some. Once a corrective to the authority of adults, extreme progressivism is now aligned with the institutions of power. What happens when the unrestrained juggernaut of capitalist individualism unites with the therapeutic culture of compassion? What happens when someone you love has made these systems of interweaving authority and hyper individualism her whole personality? How do you love someone in a real way, a way that goes beyond mere politeness, when she requires you to love her on her terms, which means compromising what you think is true?

I do not know. As I began writing this the thought occurred to me, unbidden: WWJD? Ah, that old chestnut. My first inclination was to laugh at this, feeling that, rightly or wrongly, Jesus offers little help in negotiating these things. He was both firm in his convictions and unrelenting in his compassion. But his life ended, for three days at least, in tragedy, executed by those whom he loved in truth and goodness. It is likely true that I will become more intimately acquainted with tragedy. Not everything works out. Sometimes things will turn to the worst, and I will have to sit with heartbreak. There is wisdom in holding a tragic view of life. Tragedy is not unrealistic. But it would be more tragic still to be resigned to tragedy. That would be a kind of defeated fatalism that is no different in the end from the lonely nihilism I believe I am trying to withstand. What then.

What is the difference between love and affection? How does one cultivate a fondness for someone? Culturally, it feels as though we are losing the capacity for affection. I am a fan of HBO. With a few important outliers (Madmen, Breaking Bad, Stranger Things, the early seasons of The Walking Dead, and classics like The Office) there have been few shows that have had the same cultural force as HBO’s The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, True Blood, and of course, Game of Thrones. HBO has had its share of misses, too, but it has honoured the importance of complex storytelling and rich characters. In the desert of Hollywood sequels and remakes, HBO has stood out. But now I find myself struggling to engage with its programing. House of the Dragon feels merely bleak rather than gritty. The new Dune series is likewise grim. The recent iterations of True Detective, after its masterful first season, have been more or less unwatchable, despite their star-power. Why is this? The plots are great. The storytelling complex. The characters deep.

These shows have lost the simple quality of affection. Not only do I not really like any of the characters on these shows, I don’t see the characters liking each other. They don’t laugh together. This seems both a reflection of the sickness in our culture and a contributor to it. The power of Game of Thrones came not in the political intrigue, though that was at least thoughtful, nor in the flying dragons, though they were badass, nor in the nudity, which at first tantalized then disappeared completely in the final season, but in the friendships between those who should be enemies. Arya and The Hound. Sansa and Theon. Jamie and Brienne. Tyrion and Bronn. Jon Snow and everyone. Without losing a single bit of its edge, GoT was able to be delightful, as well as awful. The same is true of other shows. At the heart of Breaking Bad was the love and loyalty between Walter and Jesse, certainly not a simple loyalty, but one that was based off a father-son/teacher-pupil affection. The Office is filled with unlikeable characters like Dwight and Angela, and yet somehow they all like each other. The Office is a triumph of grace, of the human heart’s capacity to extend goodwill to men (and to women). Why do these shows seem so long ago now? Quaint, almost.

This isn’t a long meditation, or a highly polished one. I am thinking out loud. But it may be possible that my initial scoff at the WWJD slogan was premature. Maybe in my attempts to take a high ground, I am not aiming low enough. Jesus was infamous for spending time with disreputable people. I wonder what he said while eating and drinking with publicans and prostitutes. Was he funny? Did he laugh deeply? I know he was loved (as well as despised), but I have to imagine he was also liked.

What is the value of simply sharing a meal? Having a few drinks? Being silly, playing board games, snowball fights and sledding, Christmas music, candy canes and cookies, ugly Christmas sweaters? Can I have affection for someone even if I feel as though there is a barrier between us, some thick gelatinous layer of right-think and thoughtcrime that may come between us? It is one thing to love your neighbour. But can I like her?

These are my musing as I wrap presents and anticipate with hope and with trepidation the Christmas season. Surely I am not alone in this. I do not have optimism that the tension between compassion and reality can be resolved. I maintain that it is unloving to affirm a delusion, not because I want to be right, but because I want to affirm gratitude and joy, and I think truth leads us to these things. I think that the need to diagnose as illness every shade of anxiety, compulsion, and anger results in more passivity and soul sickness, not less. And I am aware that no amount of reasoned debate will change the minds of those I love who believe differently than I do, not least of all because they use different facts and different reasonings to arrive at their beliefs. I am aware also that from their perspectives, I am the indoctrinated and deluded one who is aligned with power that they are resisting. I am alert to the fact that my convictions may slide into arrogance, that I may feel coolly superior to those who don’t see things my way, just so. My prayer is that my own heart be softened. That I approach others with humility rather than certainty. This is hard.

But perhaps with just the right amount of wine (by which I mean a little too much) and the right amount of music (by which I mean hitting the high notes with Mariah), and the right amount of laughter (by which I mean hold no quarter Uno around the table), and the right amount of excess (by which I mean the competitive eating of Toblerone), I can find affection for those I find it confusing to love. It is the time of miracle! The inn is full. But there is room in the stable, humble, but warm.