The Four Theses
Previously, I mentioned that there are four theses I have to support the premise of compassion and understanding being necessary components to solving world problems, they are as follows:
Compassion is a powerful and active response, not a passionate reaction
Wisdom and compassion need to be paired for unity to exist
The more diverse, the more successful – understanding diversity (and its importance) is essential
Culture and worldview must be understood and held in high regard for success.
Each of these theses has an important role in shaping the future of our thoughts, cities, nations, and world, and they feed into each other.
First, I think it is important to redefine compassion and show it as it truly is. Compassion and passion are different things. It is not a reaction, such as how one would fight for a perceived injustice through passionate anger toward the “oppressor” (could actually be injustice and oppression). Those reactions may be good, they may help someone and show a new side of the coin of life to the person engaging it, so by all means, be passionate and protect those who are hurting or being hurt. Compassion, however, is a much deeper seeded thing. It is intentional and an active response as opposed to a reaction (which will be differentiated later). Compassion takes time to get on another person’s level, learn and understand their struggle, let their view of the situation be changed for a lifetime rather than just a moment, and actively live out their new understanding by keeping in mind how one feels when they are in that situation. Its purposeful, actions are thought about before the decision is made.
Next, wisdom needs to partner with compassion if unity is to be found. Unity is thought to be so many things. I want to propose that unity is not everyone doing the same thing or even going toward the same overarching goal, but rather everyone taking a small amount of time learning to understand those around them and realize that “I am not the center of the universe” for one second longer today than yesterday, and tomorrow than today and so on. Obviously, there will be clashes and there will be people you can’t reach. That is where wisdom comes in, learning which fights to pick and how far out of the way to go for something you have a passion for.
Diversity is another part of the whole understanding aspect of this solution. Diversity is a good thing and getting out of one’s ideas and comfort zone to understand another side grows their worldview and culture. It is disruptive to let another’s thinking influence yours. However, disruption can give birth to creativity, expand one’s understanding, and teach one to be more relatable and versatile. Diversity brings all of those things as well and allows for relativity to kick in. Worldview, culture, and the self (individual) all benefit from diversity, and recognizing differences and allowing them to be builds people stronger.
Finally, culture and worldview’s importance. Worldview simply is a lens through which an individual views the whole world and the truth they rely on in order to interpret what they encounter. Culture is actually and individual thing as well as a corporate thing. Together, people make up a culture by the agreed upon ways at which they life. Individually, it is the traditions and ideas that drive someone’s actions and decisions as well as how they interact with people and who they interact with. The whole social structure of culture helps form worldview. In many ways, culture becomes truth for people which in turn are foundations for a worldview. If one can understand another’s culture and worldview, then they can see the world as the other does.