Compassion Privilege: Why Kind People Close Their Hearts

This post is published in three parts. Please click on the links for Part 1 and Part 3.

The Forces That Shape Who and How We Are

Now imagine that you don’t have just one stressful morning but you have such experiences day in and day out, which is the case for many people. Imagine, for example, that your budget only allows for you to live in an apartment with walls so thin that you’re disturbed by neighbors from all sides, every night and also during the day, when you’re trying to work; and you can’t afford high-speed internet, so your online conversations are constantly freezing and dropping. Or imagine that you have chronic pain that doctors can’t treat, which isn’t so intense that you can’t go about your normal business but is a constant source of low-grade suffering that prevents you from ever being fully present or from ever getting a good night’s sleep. Or imagine that your marriage to the person who was the love of your life has been in a stalemate for years, but you don't know how to fix it and you’re too afraid to even consider ending it. Or try to imagine that, after years of taking care of others who are suffering, you’ve become emotionally exhausted; and your “compassion fatigue” has caused you to shut down your heart and feel numb.

In each of these scenarios, to the rest of the world, you seem fine—while on the inside, you feel like you’re barely able to keep your head above water.

And now imagine that your genetic makeup and your upbringing and other life experiences have made you less able to access your compassion. Imagine that you were born with low or no ability to feel empathy; or that your imagination isn’t flexible or vivid enough to enable you to readily understand the experience of others; or that you were born with a biological predisposition for depression or anxiety or extreme sensitivity such that you need to wrap yourself in heavy psychological armor simply to cope with being alive in a violent and unpredictable world; or that your desire to appease your bullying parent turned you into a bully yourself; or that you overheard your parents talking about how your babysitter had stolen money, planting in you the seeds of a belief that people aren’t trustworthy. Or imagine that you haven’t experienced enough pain in your own life to truly empathize with those who are suffering.

At this very moment, what you’re thinking and feeling—and therefore how you will choose to act—is the result of the intersection of a virtually infinite number of factors. Countless forces beyond your control have led you to where you now stand. To assume that others should think, feel, and act as we do, or as we imagine we would, in any situation, reflects a profound misunderstanding of human psychology and development. Each one of us is nothing more nor less than the synthesis of our hardwiring and every single experience we’ve had. Expecting people to be different from who and how they are is like expecting a tree that’s been rained on not to be wet. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t work to grow our awareness and evolve; it is simply to say that the environment in which this work takes place is the result of factors that have shaped us into who we are.

We often hear stories of someone who’s “beaten the odds,” rising above their challenging circumstances to become a paragon of virtue or success. We compare this person with others who were supposedly in the same circumstances but who failed to thrive. But there’s no such thing as the same circumstances: maybe a crusader for compassion had a chance encounter early in life with an adult whose words instilled in them a belief in their own inherent worth, while a less compassionate individual did not; maybe a high achiever was always well-nourished, while a lower achiever had an undetected vitamin deficiency sapping their energy such that they learned to think of themselves as “lazy,” which became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Holding in special esteem those who are more compassionate than others is not terribly different from elevating in value people who are more intelligent, attractive, or financially well off than others. The tendency to assume that some people are “special” and thus “better” obscures the reality that we are all unique syntheses of our biology and minute-to-minute lived experiences. And, perhaps more importantly, it prevents us from recognizing that when we’re able to achieve something that others have not, it’s because we’ve had privileges that have enabled us to do so.

What Is (Compassion) Privilege?

A privilege is a benefit that some have but others don’t and that’s the result of forces beyond our control.³ Some privileges are simply advantages that certain individuals have, like particular abilities or qualities, such as being able to run faster than others or having an optimistic temperament. Other privileges, such as societal privileges like male, socioeconomic, and white privilege, are advantages that exist only because they are actively denied to others and that are used to maintain massive structural inequities and widespread oppression.

Clearly, societal privileges are problematic in very different ways than are the forms of privilege mentioned previously, and I do not mean to conflate these differing kinds of privilege. Nor do I mean to imply that those who are directly harmed by societal privileges should take on yet another burden when trying to deal with these problems: the burden of trying to feel compassion in the face of oppression. There are indeed times when we need to shore up our emotional boundaries to protect ourselves from further harm; and there are times when our anger is an important source of power that motivates us to take action against injustice. What I am suggesting is that, for those of us who are operating within a safe space, physically and emotionally, it’s important to practice compassion as we promote compassion.

Whatever kind of privilege someone has, they are more likely to be held in esteem because of it, to be perceived—and often to perceive themselves—as somehow superior; and they are often (though not always) more likely to receive special, preferential treatment. And when we have a privilege, we generally have greater access to a particular resource (or set of resources) than others do. People who are more compassionate simply have greater access to their compassion.

Our capacity to access our compassion changes, depending on the circumstances. After a stressful day, for example, this capacity is more limited than it is when we’ve been able to feel nurtured. However, we also have a more general capacity that fluctuates depending on circumstances—just as, for example, we have a general capacity for focus. We may be more focused than the average person, but when we haven’t slept well or are worried about something, we’re less able to focus than we normally would be.

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Please click on the links for Part 1 and Part 3.