> I agree it's a struggle to find compassion for people pulling down a lot of money. But I think it's worth the struggle. If there were fewer fucked up people in the world, we'd have a smaller, saner financial industry.
I totally agree. Especially since "fucked-up-ness" (e.g. alienation and narcissism/fleas) can be so infectious; abuse does breed abuse. Basically, the inability to have a fulfilling life without destroying self and/or others, and to even relate, think or talk about anything without some kind of stilted, shrill "corset" of euphemisms and rationalizations. I think it's all a matter of degree, too, it's not like "they" are fundamentally different from anyone else.
> [..] if one is in touch with one's own unconscious reality, I think one would have to admit that in all of us there is a piece of Eichmann, and if you ask why, on what basis do I say this, then I would ask you wether you have lost your appetite when you read that in India people were starving, or wether you have gone on eating. As soon as you have not lost your appetite, when you knew other people were starving, then your heart has hardened, and in principle, you have done the same which Eichmann did.
> I don't think, that if we are really in touch with the inner reality of ourselves, that there is any crime, or perhaps any virtue, which we cannot discover in ourselves. We shut ourselves [off] from the awareness of our inner reality, we project the evil to our opponents and enemies, and believe that the good is in ourselves; indidivually, nationally, and group-wise in general.
> But if you can really see that every one of us, carries all of humanity, the good and the evil, within himself, then indeed is very hard to be a fanatic, then indeed it's very hard to be a judge, then indeed would follow, a deep understanding, if not love, of your fellow man. Which is part of being truly a person.
-- Erich Fromm, lecture called "The Automaton Citizen"
I do think self-defense is also important, but there is something to be said for calm and non-hateful self-defence... being firm and focused doesn't mean you can't still have compassion with whom you're disarming. But by the same token: when we react differently, when we get angry, whether righteously or self-righteously, that may not be ideal, but it's also something to have compassion with, surely.
There is a window of opportunity; if what people turning themselves and others into robots, as age-old as that may be, doesn't get nipped in the bud before we can "grow" whatever robots we want orders of magnitude more cheaply than we are growing humans, then life on this planet will become infinitely more poor. When nobody gets fucking mad over this stuff anymore, it will be so much worse. I'm not saying getting mad is constructive, but it's understandable and secondary in the big scheme of things. Worker's rights weren't won for by people making polite suggestions, neither will be any future worth a thing. Apart from the people who have a change of heart or collapse, there are a lot who don't, and they play for keeps, while the people that die every few seconds don't even get to complain. It's not as if any of this happens in a vacuum.