M. Scott Peck: “We do not have to love. We choose to love”

The courage to choose compassion in a world that fears it

(If you have received this by email, please click on the title to read the latest version. I often correct typos and continue to edit my essays after publishing the first version).

Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

I don’t know about you, but I am fed up. The only reason I have my job as a psychotherapist is because people are horrible to one another, especially to children and young people. We know exactly what we need in order to be well in every way, yet we’ve created a world that offers us the exact opposite in almost every domain.

We live in a world where intelligent people readily accept the baseless propaganda that life is a competition for survival. Our countries use our resources—not to help the disadvantaged among us, or make life good for everyone—but to indiscriminately bomb other human beings where they live, work, shop, learn, play, and even in the places where they try to hide from danger. Our countries are mean and nasty. They do not share. They do not care. They lie, steal and kill in our name, and supposedly for our benefit.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Why?

There are plenty of excuses: economic, geo-political, religious, racial, you name it. I love a good theory, but when it comes to humanity’s inhumanity, theories and analyses are an obscene waste of our intellectual resources. They provide a pathetic, quasi-intellectual cover for the simple and pitiful fact that the most powerful people in the world lack empathy and compassion. There is nothing sophisticated or complicated here. The simple and chilling truth is that our empathy-challenged leaders, and those who support them, don’t give a damn about others.

It’s ugly and shameful, but human beings don’t care about anyone except those in their immediate circles. Too many don’t even care about those closest to them, including their own children. We have been sold—and have willingly bought—the warped idea that love, compassion, cooperation, empathy and generosity are dangerous weaknesses. We need love, compassion and empathy to develop well—it is even a scientific fact—and yet we are ridiculed, even pathologised, both for needing love and for offering it. When the media discuss love or cooperation, it is often in a sickeningly soppy way, and only within ‘permitted’ contexts. You won’t find it in situations our corrupt societies deem ‘controversial’, such as the ongoing, live genocide in Palestine.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Compassion is a free-to-use resource. It requires no technology, complex mining operations, or storage facilities. It is renewable, environmentally friendly, produces no toxic waste, and exists in abundance everywhere. That we place it under lock and key and ration it is both bizarre and perverse.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The prohibition on kindness and love runs deep. Some psychotherapists are chastised by their managers for offering a suffering client warmth and compassion, instead of implementing the next page in their CBT manuals. In The Road Less Travelled M. Scott Peck says, “We do not have to love. We choose to love”. In our species’ brief existence love is indeed a road much less travelled as we repeatedly choose the opposite.

I occasionally publish my essays on Medium, when I find time to transfer them from here to there. It appears there may be a stronger Zionist presence on Medium compared to Substack. Jewish Israelis and Israel’s sympathisers make their contempt for me and my writings quite clear. They give up debating facts pretty quickly—mostly because their emotive, ill-informed arguments don’t stand up to the scrutiny of facts and reality. Zionists often attack me specifically for expressing compassion for the Palestinian people. Many Israeli Jews see themselves as victims, greedily demanding compassion and sympathy for themselves. They seem to become enraged, even distressed when empathy is extended to others, especially to Palestinians. I can sense the confusion through their words. They really don’t get that they are not special, or more entitled than others.

I unceremoniously block anyone who demonstrates a permanent absence of empathy, especially when their words drip with venom and malice, and are clearly intended to hurt me. I’m never offended. I just don’t want to expose myself to poison. You can’t reason with an absence of empathy. No logic or intellectual arguments can convince those steeped in survivalism and tribalism to care about other people, especially when they see them as an ‘other’ or as an ‘enemy’. Empathy is a higher function. Every human being with the capacity for empathy must discover it for themselves and find their own way to act on it. You don’t need education or knowledge to experience empathy and act on it. In fact, education can often train people out of empathy and compassion. I shut the door to my spaces when people spread poison, and I let them go. I quietly pray that something I, or someone else, has said might land somewhere in the hearts and minds of the empathy-challenged, and perhaps stir something.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I know that change is possible, because I have changed. When I discovered I had empathy for the Palestinian people, I no longer cared about Zionist arguments, or narratives. Empathy cuts through the bullshit elegantly and with ease. Either way, I am not interested in sparring. I am interested in collaboration—but not for ‘winning’ some insane race, or competition for ‘success’ or survival. I am interested in collaboration for the goal of helping every one of us develop to our full potential, so we can live full, rich, and authentic lives, and do good in the world. It’s the only thing that matters to me. Survival on its own is worthless, and deeply painful for human beings. I was brought up to believe that survival was all I could expect out of life, and it nearly destroyed me. We need to ask ourselves why we want to survive, and what our life is about. Survival alone is not an achievement. Living well, is.

Israeli Jews imagine they’ll enjoy ‘safety’ and a good life once they’ve eliminated all Palestinians. Yet a harsh and bitter truth awaits them. Their problem doesn’t lie outside themselves. When they finally run out of external ‘enemies’ to destroy, they’ll discover that the real adversary has been there all along—within them.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Any individual or society steeped so deep in survivalism at the cost of everything else, compromise their very soul. But you can’t convince a devout survivalist that the soul is important. They don’t believe in it.

Israel has not paused its genocide of the Palestinian people. The genocide continues in ebbs and flows, with comprehensive international cover and support. While the carnage continues with varying degrees of savagery and barbarity, Israeli society and its leaders are brainstorming ways to complete the elimination of six million Palestinian human beings.

The labels we give ourselves are an invention. Our humanity is a biological fact. We all—yes, Israel, that applies to you too—have our humanity in common, regardless of the name we give ourselves or the language we speak. No human being is more entitled to live and thrive than another. No one is inherently more important, or worthy than anyone else. Equality does not mean sameness; it means having equal value. All human beings have exactly the same worth, even the empathy-challenged.

Everyone matters, and should matter not just to those closest to them, but to us all. Everyone’s suffering should concern everyone else. Empathy—the instinctive knowing that all living beings matter—cuts through conflict and disagreement. It is a powerful magical potion that banishes fear and prevents us from inflicting harm not just on our own kind, but on all living beings. No one would create weapons, agree to become a soldier in order to kill, or experiment on animals if they placed empathy at the heart of their existence. If we were truly a healthy species, we would never allow those who lack empathy to hold power.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Israel’s genocidal settler-colonialism stands as a case study that reveals a sick and troubled species. We have no real achievements—or at least no right to boast about any—while we continue to hurt each other and ration the most essential ingredients we need: love, empathy and compassion.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

We all need love, and love is all we need. It is time to turn the world on its head: to insist on empathy as a core principle in all human affairs, and to begin spreading love and compassion. Let us make love the focus of our existence. We don’t have to like everyone. We just have to love them. Nothing else matters.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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