Sunday, January 22, 2023

Stories of Compassion, Stories of Responsibility, and Where They Converge

 There are many ways of narrating the same events. 

 

No story will be simply and completely true. 


Every story will reveal some aspect. 


Thus telling many different stories about the same situation will give us many angles on the ultimately unspeakable whole of a situation.


Stories of compassion tend to minimize questions of individual responsibility. We zoom out and say "Of course it had to happen that way... Of course it wasn't the right moment for you to really confront that addiction... Of course they didn't mean to hurt you..."


R.G. Collingwood calls this "Absolute Ethics," in which everything is intelligible and understandable and therefore nothing can be entirely wrong or evil.


Stories of responsibility emphasize individual choice and freedom rather than the compulsion of circumstances. We hone in and say "Of course you were struggling with your own abuse, but I don't care, you can't treat me that way.... I don't care how hard your  day was, you need to remember to lock the door..."


The tension of compassion and responsibility is the tension between necessity and freedom, circumstance and agency.


There are forms of action in which these things converge, in which what we freely choose to do is also what we feel to be necessary.


This is a form of freedom that arises from self-compassion. "Given all that I understand about myself and my situation I see no other alternative. It is not a perfect alternative, but it is the best alternative I am aware of."


Collingwood called this form of action "Duty" (in a specifically non-legal, non-regularian sense, i.e. not duty as following the law, but duty as acting out of perceived necessity that follows from deep intimacy with the situation).


I was exposed to COVID on 12/25 and became symptomatic on 12/28. I recovered and tested negative on 1/7. I became feverish on 1/9 with what I later learned was pneumonia. I have been horrifically ill, more ill than I've ever been in my adult life. 

 

I am often critical of the "biomedical" orientations of my professional field. But I thank god for antibiotics because I probably would have died without them.


As I've recovered I have grappled with how to tell the story of my exposure. I, on the one hand, of course have compassion for the people I was around. And I find that the more I recover, the angrier I feel, and the more I am telling a story of responsibility in which people let me down.


There is truth to both of these stories.


Above all I am grappling with the vulnerability I feel in having been so violently ill, alone in my apartment, doing my best to take care of myself.


I am grateful for the many people that showed up for me.


I hope to not be this sick again for a very long time.

1 comment: