©2015 by Raymond Alexander Kukkee  

Compassion and Choices: A way of life disappearing?

The world is awash in tears. Crocodile tears.   Tears are shed over death, loss of life,  displaced, desperate refugees, the endless quest for freedom. Insane, evil, ideologue perpetrators and their unfortunate victims of warfare. The shattering brutality of cataclysmic events like earthquakes, floods and famine.  Poverty. Starving, sick, old, infirm, blank and lonely faces,  the merely homeless, sleeping in doorways at minus 40C,  losing fingers, toes and hope in sub-zero temperatures. Global images of poverty, garbage-scavengers,  dying, bone-thin children covered with disease-bearing flies living and playing in impossible filth governed by the obscene rich in nameless, arrogant countries. Not a pretty picture. Ho-hum—We turn the page, pursue wealth, live the good life,   watch the big game on television, go shopping.  Is compassion as a way of life disappearing? In an enlightened civilization,  this collection of images of humanity —which pretends to be 'advanced' and civilized —should raise bile,  incite a riot in the mind, and at the very minimum, encourage introspection, logic, thought, and point the way to better choices. A demand for change. It does not. It does not change. Compassion for others may be stirred briefly at times  but is broken, disenfranchised by reality. With few exceptions, compassion and good choices increasingly are proven to be  hollow promises of lip service which disappear with the slightest breeze. Any excuse will suffice; rest assured the next fashion trend or noble, arrogant 'cause' will distract. Urgency is forgotten. Conveniently. Choices are made. Usually the wrong choices. A trendy 'app' will fix it. Compassion and choices. To not express dismay at  less-than-stellar hypocrisy so blatantly predominant in North America — would be to deny compassion entirely. To deny reality entirely. To deny truth entirely. Let us be hypocrites and pretend we have made the right choices instead, and congratulate ourselves. Momentarily.  Buy another $600 cell phone, the newest mode.  Or 'the watch'.  With apps. There, that ought to do it. In casual observation, that appears to be the way everything works.

Is genuine compassion advanced evolution?

The willful avoidance of choices made with genuine compassion for the honest betterment of civilization is not evolution for the better. A rising question must be, then, if one of the major characteristics of genuine evolution, —an essential requirement of evolution and advancement in civilization—is compassion demonstrated willfully and repeatedly by responsible choices.  

"Alice, it's a good thing you dropped in to see real life..."

  Meantime, we, the "super-evolved' on 'upper earth' —can always hope and dream of better days.  More logic. More compassion.  More thought. Better choices. More apps. What do you think?

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Is that Incoming I hear?