The Dark Side of Compassion.
Why compassion is a double edge sword
Like most of us, I have always been concerned with being a compassionate person. As a personality trait, highly compassionate people take a greater interest in other people’s problems than their own, particularly for those they think are in need, the young and the helpless. Those who considered themselves compassionate will strive to lessen the suffering of the people around them.
Most people look at helping others as central to morality, which began with the Christian doctrine of mercy and has found a home in our society as compassion. Most of our generation obsess over helping others; most of us would say our goal in life is to help others or the world. But they say every virtue pushed to the extreme becomes a vice, so what is the dark side of our obsession with compassion?
In the ancient world, they were well aware of the danger of the maternal instinct of compassion to prevent people from growing up. There is a reason the story of Oedipus has survived four thousand years from ancie…