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Sympathy for bad people



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cookiecutter




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Jul 18 2014, 11:01 am
This was partially inspired by a post in the dead children thread, and partially by life in general.

Should we have sympathy for bad people? The example in the other thread was about a ten year old armed burglar getting shot by a homeowner. The poster said that she would not regret his death.

I think that it's easy to confuse the rightness of killing or hurting someone with sympathy for people who are killed or hurt. People don't want to express sympathy for urban families torn up by the criminal justice system, or for Palestinian families (let alone Hamas families) suffering from the current military action. Either they worry that it will come across as being anti-law enforcement or anti-Israel, or they just don't think in nuanced terms.

But I think it's important to focus on sympathy even of people who deserve punishment. In the case of the armed burglar, I would certainly want him dead, but I would also be sad that he is dead, and regretful if I had a role in his death. There are a few reasons why I think it's proper to cultivate this sentiment.

First of all, the sympathetic feeling is there and it's based on a positive impulse that we should generally cultivate. I feel bad for someone sitting on death row for viciously killing five children. I also believe he should die. But he once meant the world to someone as a newborn baby. He cooed and giggled with the unadulterated happiness of a toddler. He melted someone's heart when he took his first steps. As an adult, he has feelings, interests, likes and dislikes. I favor human life generally, and when we are forced to take one, it is terribly sad. We shouldn't suppress feelings of rachmonus even if we have to act to achieve justice.

Second of all, it creates a protection against tyranny in the guise of moral enforcement. If we refuse to engage with our sympathetic impulses when we occupy the higher moral ground, then we will never notice when we no longer do. We would be in danger of becoming the people we decry.

Do people agree with this? Or should we treat criminals and enemies like "the animals that they are"? Should we just be thoroughly happy that we've improved the world by reducing the evil within it?
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PinkFridge




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Jul 18 2014, 12:05 pm
Can we say a few of the above?
- Compassion: we spill wine at the seder.
- If someone is clearly an animal, sympathy is not necessarily in order.
- If true evil is eradicated, that's tikun olam in my part.

One big problem is when some feelings end up leading to totally, completely misplaced guilt, leading to inaction and danger.
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marina




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Jul 18 2014, 12:19 pm
There are people who have lost the right to breathe the same air as I do. I believe in the death penalty, with all its faults.

But not the children of those evil people. Not their uninvolved wives.


Last edited by marina on Fri, Jul 18 2014, 2:43 pm; edited 1 time in total
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monseychick




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Jul 18 2014, 12:25 pm
KOL HAMERACHEM AL HA ACHZORIM BSOFO ACHZOR AL HARACHAMIM

"WHOEVER IS MERCIFUL TO THE CRUEL, IN THE END WILL BE CRUEL TO THE MERCIFUL"

Doesnt anyone on this "frum" forum learn Tanach ?
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Lady Godiva




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Jul 18 2014, 12:38 pm
If you're asking about the bad people themselves, I have no sympathy for them.
You wrote that you have sympathy for the vicious murderer of 5 children, sitting on death row. I have no sympathy for him. I have sympathy for his mother, his wife and his children; but no sympathy for him at all.

I do have sympathy for the children and any innocent people who are killed during war, but at the same time, I know that the protection of my family comes first to me, and any sympathy I feel toward the other side must be restrained.

I'm not afraid of "becoming the people we decry," because that is not in our nature and that is not part of our belief system.

Criminals and enemies should be treated as the criminals and enemies that they are. The method of punishment or deterrence should be fair, yet carried out without guilt and without allowing human compassion to interfere. Because when it does, it might backfire and hurt your own people.

We're talking about BAD people here. We're not talking about people committing minor offenses.
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PinkFridge




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Jul 18 2014, 1:07 pm
I don't want to hijack anything but a few thoughts that I would have put on the other thread (that might dovetail with this one, don't worry, mods!)
- I've been trying to google something but it's not turning up. It's an article from a Jewish Observer, maybe early 90s. I think it was written by a David Schaps (I have no idea why that name is turning up) based on thoughts from Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, zt"l of Baltimore. It was called, IRRC, The Good Guys vs. the Heroes.
The idea is, we have this American concept of the hero, riding up and saving the day. And there are rules. You DON'T shoot a guy in the back. Inexplicably, the bad guy plays by the rules. At least most of them.
We have good guys, who live good lives, who live by a Toras chaim. Who know when it's appropriate to act with kindness, when it's appropriate to shoot in the back if one is dealing with evil and it's self-defense.
I am by no means doing this justice. If anyone can dig it up, please let me know.

- I mentioned the ration is 20:1. I heard, was it CBS radio? that 20 Gazans were killed in the first day of war and one soldier. I might have heard wrong, But I think the ratio might be closing, r"l.
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Bruria




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Jul 18 2014, 1:17 pm
My rabbi always says that if we are kind to bad people we are being mean with nice people. If a person is sympathetic to a criminal/bad person they are being mean to the victims.
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cookiecutter




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Jul 18 2014, 3:54 pm
monseychick wrote:
KOL HAMERACHEM AL HA ACHZORIM BSOFO ACHZOR AL HARACHAMIM

"WHOEVER IS MERCIFUL TO THE CRUEL, IN THE END WILL BE CRUEL TO THE MERCIFUL"

Doesnt anyone on this "frum" forum learn Tanach ?
I don't know what that means, though. I am not advocating acting differently. I am advocating feeling differently, as a protection against wrongful acts.

There is no "platonic evil". Society decides what is good and what is evil, and society determines how they will deal with evil. It's nice to claim you can eliminate your feelings of mercy toward objectively evil people but that is pragmatically impossible. You will end up losing your merciful feelings toward people who deserve them, or (what is essentially the same thing) expanding the definition of evil so that you can be merciless to whomever you want. Pretty soon you're in a "first they came for the communists" situation.

This is the problem with American politics. Democrats want to give everything to everyone. Republicans want to hold everyone responsible for everything. There is no room for a pragmatic middle because each side has completely eliminated the opposing sentiment.

I am curious about the following: Would you work as an executioner? Would you marry an executioner? Are you proud of your answer?
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sequoia




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Jul 18 2014, 5:03 pm
Again, emotional economy in the interests of sanity...

The world would not benefit if I lost my mind or became ill.
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FranticFrummie




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Jul 18 2014, 10:42 pm
I think sympathy is the wrong word. What I feel is pity, for the waste of human potential. Each person is born with choices, and has to deal with the consequences of those choices. If they choose wrongly, I can pity them because they didn't choose to cure cancer, become a plumber, or become any sort of person who contributes to the advancement of their society.

The Palestinians could have made Gaza a world class tourist destination to rival Hawaii if they chose. They had the money, the infrastructure, everything they needed. The cement they poured into terror tunnels could have been used to build world class luxury hotels that would create jobs and income. The unemployment rate would go down, the quality of life would go up, and they would not have all this anger that they project on Israel.

They could have started their own version of Technion, and been world leaders in technology, agriculture, and medicine. They could have had the respect of the whole world and been the envy of the Middle East.

They chose their path, not us. I pity them.
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ora_43




 
 
    
 

Post Sat, Jul 19 2014, 2:48 pm
cookiecutter wrote:
I don't know what that means, though. I am not advocating acting differently. I am advocating feeling differently, as a protection against wrongful acts.

Do you not think that feelings affect actions?

I think you may be falling into the trap of thinking only of the possibility of evil actions, and not of the possibility of evil inaction. In this case, the possibility that people will die (or otherwise suffer) because of inaction in the face of evil. Letting people be hurt and doing nothing to stop it is also a kind of evil.

Quote:
It's nice to claim you can eliminate your feelings of mercy toward objectively evil people but that is pragmatically impossible. You will end up losing your merciful feelings toward people who deserve them, or (what is essentially the same thing) expanding the definition of evil so that you can be merciless to whomever you want. Pretty soon you're in a "first they came for the communists" situation.

You're stating this as a fact, but I have no idea why it should be assumed that this is true. From what I've seen, virtually the exact opposite is true. The more people sympathize with non-evil people, the less tolerance they have for those who would (callously, deliberately) do them serious harm.

FTR, "mercy" implies a degree of lenience, not just warm-and-fuzzy heart feelings that have zero impact on behavior.
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Shopmiami49




 
 
    
 

Post Sat, Jul 19 2014, 4:49 pm
I believe in having sympathy for the unfortunate and innocent people who find themselves hurt/killed/loss of home by the situation around them. But having sympathy for BAD people? No, why would I?

Maybe I would feel bad that they are mentally ill, dysfunctional, or the like, but I would not feel bad if they did something wrong and paid the price for it.
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Frumdoc




 
 
    
 

Post Sat, Jul 19 2014, 8:17 pm
I don't think the world is divided into good guys and bad guys in such a straightforward way.

There are good people who do bad things, and bad people who do good things, and a whole spectrum of people who sometimes do good things and sometimes do bad things, including unforgivable things like murder, mass murder or torture or rape.

The actions deserve punishment, which in some cases may be death.

But life and people are not so easily categorized as we might like.
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