REKINDLING COMPASSION
It’s never too late to care
When we heard about a pill that might induce compassion, our first thought was to spike the water supply.
A new drug called tolcapone was found to change the social behaviour of study participants, making them more inclined to act fairly toward strangers during a game that involved divvying up resources. The “compassion pill” study, out of UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, was published online this May in the journal Current Biology.
But does this artificial altruism really count, or is it the emotional equivalent of Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France titles?
Compassion doping seems suspiciously like cheating, especially given that human compassion occurs naturally and improves with training, like a muscle. The world could use a super- size dose of goodwill, but performance enhancers aren’t the answer.
We need to build compassion like any other skill — with practice.
Compassion, the selfless desire to alleviate the suffering of others, is something that even rats and chimpanzees experience. In studies, these animals will attempt to rescue a lab mate in distress.
As for humans, there’s evidence that compassionate and co- operative behaviour predates speech and contributed to the evolution of intelligence. This could be why babies are hardwired for compassion and toddlers are prone to spontaneous acts of helpfulness, even without reward ( like handing an object to the tester that was out of reach).
Meanwhile, adults are prone to road rage.
Clearly, evolution is on our side. Much like other habits that peak during youth — climbing monkey bars, sitting on the floor for extended periods — adults are just out of shape. We’re compassionately challenged, not indifferent.
The ancient Greeks believed that anyone could unlock superhuman potential with the three pillars of heroism: strength, skill and compassion.
In his new book, Natural Born Heroes, Christopher McDougall tries to revive this classical “hero training” with a focus on these three faculties.
The ancients had a different idea of compassion than we do, writes McDougall. They thought of an acute environmental awareness, or “problem to be solved,” not the warm and fuzzy feeling we associate with random acts of kindness. McDougall calls this notion of compassion a “social spiderweb.” When you improve your awareness of others, or help them out of a bind, it’s a kind of insurance that the same trouble won’t find its way back to you.
Buddhists and new- agers call the concept karma.
Still, a social spiderweb is a connected community in which our actions affect others. And the underlying assumption is that both heroism and compassion are not innate virtues, but rather, skills we can all cultivate.
Alternately, compassion can erode with misuse. Studies have found that suppressing our instinct for kindness ( i. e. walking past a homeless person), might make us less attuned to the distress of others, which depletes our compassion even further next time. We may even lose a bit of our morality, since a sense of other people’s suffering forms the foundation for our beliefs about right and wrong. It turns out the adage, “use it or lose it’ is true.
Hockey camps improve stick handling and yoga retreats turn fledgling tree poses into sturdy trunks, so perhaps a compassion boot camp could make us more considerate. Participants could practice opening doors for strangers, helping stroller- toting moms onto streetcars, or letting shoppers with only one item cut in line before bulging buggies.
If you prefer an academic environment, sign up for Compassion Cultivation Training at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. The class includes daily meditation and mindfulness practices, listening exercises with peers and “real- world homework to help you practice compassionate thought and action,” according to the online course description.
We can only imagine what homework might include: bringing casseroles to sick neighbours, giving up your seat on the subway.
Compassion is already within us. Just say no to chemically induced kindness.