What's the diff? Do you think we often get them confused? Are they beneficial to emotional problem solving? How can we prevent them from being abused, overused, or misused?
Compassion ][ Sympathy ][ PityWhat's the diff? Do you think we often get them confused? Are they beneficial to emotional problem solving? How can we prevent them from being abused, overused, or misused?
Wonderful summary. I think pity, sympathy, and compassion in meaning are blended in modern usage, particularly pity versus compassion. From my understanding, sympathy is a more generalized concept of 'togetherness' i.e sympathy, symphony, symposium, symptom that has its linguistic roots in the public sphere, but over time morphed into something much the same as the Christian notion of compassion, or empathy. I don't believe that the (now) secularized concept of Christian (or Muslim) compassion is the same as Buddhist compassion - though the two overlap and are applied interchangeably in popular usage. Buddhist compassion is selfless karmic charity for the illusion of suffering, while Christian compassion is maternal, or what Kierkegaard calls the "finite side of suffering." Combined and without cultural context, you get altruism. Pity on the other hand, strikes me as an action word (consider the separate meanings of pitiful and pitiless) and at least superficially resembles Buddhist compassion in that it's behavior in response to suffering.Sympathy and empathy in this view belong to the realm of emotion and intellect; whilst compassion to the realm of volition and behaviour (whilst also likely including an emotional and intellectual component). Compassion is thus the realm of choice and action, whilst sympathy and empathy are simply emotional responses distinct from compassion, and either accompanying it, preceding it, or apart from it - depending on how one choose to act based on these feelings. The feelings of sympathy, but especially empathy can help one to be compassionate. Yet feelings of sympathy and empathy, and the ability of being sympathetic and empathetic, by no means make one a 'good person'. For one can feel another persons feelings, but not want to feel them, nor want to help the person whose feelings they're feeling.