The drive to show “masculine compassion” misses the point about human struggle.
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“To me, compassion is the new cool,” ~ Dominic Thompson, triathlete
NPR recently ran an article about veganism and masculinity. The vegan guys they interviewed are coming from an ethical base of compassion for the planet and an attempt to subvert mainstream ideas of masculinity.
Maybe going vegan, or refusing to buy anything previously worn by, or tested on, an animal is a “new cool” for men, but are you seriously going to sit there and tell me that men are not naturally compassionate?
Is Paul Simon compassionate when he sings his stories?
How about Rabinovitch-Barakovsky when he sonically massages our hearts and spirits?
Was William Shakespeare not compassionate in the signing of his sonnets?
Is Paul Coelho,
“May love fill your heart, compassion guide your mind, faith rule your soul”
not compassionate?
And those guys were cool back when cool was a temperature, right?
Do masculine gender identifiers express compassion in different ways than feminine gender identifiers? And what about the truly compassionate being ∞ would they even identify with any gender?
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Compassion comes from connection.
The more we are connected, the more compassionate we can become. The less compassionate are humans cut off, isolated, while dwelling in the dense crowd.
Their self loathing becomes loathing of others then eventually loathing of all. Then we lose a human, or many humans if the self loather had access to weapons and ammo.
Man down!
The first responders come to aid. Now there is some extreme compassion mixed with courage for you, and the compassion of platonic touch I see between men in their teens and twenties around the globe, and the compassion to listen to those who are in a struggle that grows day by day.
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Compassion is the role of humanity.
We suffer on the empathic wheel together. We all have our struggle. We are all on this planet. We all struggle together.
Compassion frees us to relieve our fellows’ suffering, and in the same turn we distract ourselves from a suffering of our own. Compassion is human, and humans are growing more compassionate.
Can our compassion achieve a better balance? Because yeah, that would be the new cool.
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