(kəm-păsh′ən)
n.
Deep awareness of the suffering of another accompanied by the wish to relieve it.
It’s a word derived from Old English, with some French tweaking, that’s been around since the fifteenth century, but there is anthropological evidence that it has been part of the human condition for far longer. There is probably no genetic test for its existence or any means by which its presence, or lack thereof, can be measured. It is uncertain if an individual’s embrace of it is learned by example or somehow predetermined. What is historically evident, in the traceable actions of documented behavior, is that it has been selectively embraced to ease suffering or withheld to exacerbate it. It appears to be absent from the most heinous monstrous behaviors in the human biography and the power of that void too often exerts an irrational, magnetic draw on masses of otherwise caring souls. Yet, I have never met anyone who has not claimed it as their own.
If I was nonjudgmental, (I would probably be a Vulcan, right?), I might be able to wrap my head around the notion that varying degrees of psychological damage nudge us all along complex pathways that may, from our individual points of view, seem wholly, (or holy if that floats your ark), righteous. The legal definition of sanity, the understanding of right v. wrong, puts the onus on, or otherwise gives a free pass to the individual. Unless we’re all nuts, (and I’m not necessarily campaigning against that conceit), most of us have some version of shoulder angels and devils whose pleas we weigh to make the decisions that determine how we and others perceive our measure of goodness. Yet, I have never met anyone who doesn’t profess to skew toward the good.
How can anyone understand the heart of Genghis Khan or Hitler or Stalin or Pinochet or Assad? And likewise, how can anyone understand Donald Trump? Unlike the afore-listed tyrannical monsters, he is an aimless, unspecific, ill-informed, self-absorbed, poorly-concocted homunculus who has survived in spite of, or more likely because of his lack of compassion. His stream of consciousness approach, where his reality is whatever he says in the moment, has the potential to wreak even wider havoc than those in the Villains Hall of Fame. He is consistently on the wrong side of every issue, and the alternate universe he’s created with his aversion to the truth has eroded the already tenuous foundation of peaceful coexistence in the world. We may never get a definitive picture of what did or didn’t happen between Russia and the Trump campaign, but if there was a Manchurian Candidate-esque plot to undermine America’s way of life and its standing in the League of Nations…mission accomplished.