Idiot Compassion for Dummies

It has been some years since I first heard the term "idiot compassion" used by Zen Teacher Joan Halifax. Her example was that you don't help a friend commit suicide; that might seem like compassion, but it's idiot compassion. After much thought, I'd have to say, "That depends." What if someone you love were wasting away in a painful terminal illness, and too ill to hasten her own exit without help, and asked you to help?

I think idiot compassion interested me because I grew up in an alcoholic household, my father the alcoholic, my mother the explainer.

"He didn't mean it."
"He has a headache today."

The setup was that he chose me to be mean to, to delegate as the family scapegoat, as it is known in family systems theory. The scapegoat is the one cast as the only problem in the family: If it wasn't for Jeanne, this would be a happy family.  She ruins everything.

My mother's interpretation was that he was "strict" with me, which she said in a wondering way.  No, this was not true.  He was not at all strict with anyone, including himself, not setting clear rules and enforcing boundaries as a father should.  He lashed out at me and demeaned me whenever he noticed me.  My mother did this too; when she was ruminating on her simmering anger at him, she would insult me or kick at me.  Really.  That sweet Sunday school teacher. 

I think that however much he disappointed and angered her, she loved her role as "the martyr, always the virgin," as my father put it.  Her role was to be kind and protective of her Man. If he had treated her son that way, it would have been a different story, but I was just a girl.

If I complained to my mother about something brutal he said to me, she might say, "His back has been bothering him," her voice assuming a rounded, sacred tone.  She was speaking as a ministering angel.  She loved that role.  When I was sixteen, I did my best to commit suicide. 

Here's the thing:  it does not matter what motivates someone to harm others - the harm is done. We might need to help that person or lock them up.  But to excuse out-of-bounds behavior, to explain it away and let them do it again, that's idiot compassion.  You're not helping them, you're not helping the victim, whether that victim is your child or yourself. 

It's not uncommon for women to excuse away bad behavior, and not just with their partners.  I've watched with some disbelief how people accept and excuse rude behavior from a woman in my (former) social circle because, oh, she's worried about [fill in the blank].  My response to that is my favorite line from the movies:  I don't care what she's worried about - she's hurtful.  And I don't like to be hurt. 

In case you haven't seen "The Fugitive," Tommy Lee Jones is a federal marshal chasing an escaped murderer played by Harrison Ford.  In the confrontation above, Ford is trapped in a huge sewer pipe.  He turns and tells Jones he is innocent.  Jones' response is, I don't care!  Because it's not his job to judge innocence.  His job is to bring the guy in.  And all you men and women who are putting up with partners who are mean to you and your kids, that's not your job, either.  That's not what compassion does.

Bailing out Uncle Jack (and Greece, and Haiti . . . )

I was about ten or eleven years old the night my father was in the kitchen talking to my mother, really angry. I remember he was in his "work" clothes, the ones he wore to do major jobs around the house, like fix the roof. Whatever he was doing had been interrupted by a babbling, pleading phone call from his brother Jack. Another call. Another arrest for drunk and disorderly. Jack lived in Youngstown, 50 miles away. Couldn't he call someone else? There isn't anyone else. You're my brother. What about Louise? She told me she wouldn't come. She hung up on me. Ed, you're my only hope. You're my brother.
My father was telling my mother angrily, This is it. This is the last time. As far as I know it was. And later, how much later I don't know, Jack dried up. I remember him at a wedding, showing me the 12 steps that had saved his life. When he pointed to each step on a card he carried in his wallet, his hands trembled. He had gone very far downhill before he hit bottom.

My father figured it out on his own I imagine - he had just kept bailing out Jack, and Jack just kept getting arrested. My father had a job to go to, he couldn't be up all night driving to Youngstown and back, he needed to live a regular healthy life, get his sleep, maintain his health and family. Then there would have been the money involved back before credit cards and ATM's, money I suppose was never repaid.

We are overpopulating and over-stressing our planet, and so these days we see large bodies of people falling into wreckage. When it's economic disaster that threatens, we talk about "bail-out," and we say, Our economic stability depends on theirs. When there's been a natural disaster, we mount "rescue missions" in the name of simple humanity. But in truth, both are often the result of a mixture of bad judgment and bad luck. The economic mess in Greece is rooted in the way people live there, people who want to retire early, who are willing to let the very rich escape taxation (sound familiar?). The earthquake in Haiti was a double disaster because people lived there without infrastructure or civil government, so that everything just fell in. Building codes, it turns out, save lives.

We are not directly involved in cleaning up the current mess with the Greek economy, though we will not be immune from what happens there. In any case, the fact is, we have plenty to do on our own shores, cleaning up our own mess in the Gulf - an entire coastal economy and culture destroyed by our lust for the fun things cheap energy brought our way. We can turn our compassion in this direction. And we do need to be cautious to avoid thoughtless or "idiot compassion," which Pema Chodron explains here. Maybe Uncle Jack will benefit from serving his time.