Morality is the way we behave towards others and without others morality is inexistent. It’s the unwritten law which we tend to follow in our social interactions and use it to measure other people and other people use it to measure us. Everybody has different perception of morality depending on their personal beliefs and experience so it is hard to precisely define it but the key is that for morality we need others and the will to interact with them.
A man without compassion would fail to understand others as good as one with it, compassion is useful because it helps us predict behavior of others and it helps us shift our point of view from ourselves to others. All humans have power to imagine, by imagining being in the place of the one we interact with we can make sure to act towards them as we would wish them to act towards us. Compassion is something most people lack and that is why there is so much injustice, if everyone was compassionate and aware of others open conflicts would cease to exist(nobody with compassion wants conflict because conflict leads to hate and hate leads to casualties, compassionate people don’t wish others to suffer therefore they don’t wish there to be casualties). If a person had others in mind while making all his decisions he would never act so as to do wrong to them because nobody really wants to be wronged, but not everyone puts themselves in the place of others because of factors such as greed, lust ,vengeance. It’s not only good for others when we’re acting with compassion because by satisfying others we satisfy ourselves, our ego gets the reward just as others praise us and thank us for our behavior and to a real human being this is enough to feel good. The problem is some humans find it more rewarding to be personally successful and to make good for themselves only so they ignore wishes and needs of others as if they don’t exist and some humans find it rewarding to harm others and these two types of humans, overly egocentric and hostile greatly lack compassion. We wouldn’t know compassion without lack of it because without uncompassionate people there would be too much peace in the world which is what humans don’t seem to want. Humans are much more compassionate on a personal level than on group based one, wars are examples for this, in war people are capable of dehumanizing their enemies and completely eliminating compassion, while murder on a personal level is harder to commit. Whichever the reason for war is and mostly it is conflict of interests between two or more groups of people there is no excuse for this elimination of compassion from our actions and thinking, whatever there is on this planet is not worth a human life when we look at it from the rational standpoint. Humans are and were in the state of war since their creation, we are in constant conflicts with ourselves and others and conflict seems to be in our nature, this is probably one of the reasons why we are so capable of eliminating compassion in certain situations. Nevertheless a real human being would act towards Kant’s categorical imperatives at all times and at all costs, despite our warrior nature an aware human being would always have others in mind when making a certain decision or action and not only because he puts himself in their place but because it is the right thing to do from whichever perspective you look at it. Morality is hard to define and varies from region to region, even from person to person but it can be stated that without at least some care towards others morality wouldn’t exist , immoral people are not only judged and hated by others they usually feel bad themselves or do not have the capability to feel joy because of their shallow minds, immoral man doesn’t understand joy beyond personal pleasure and that is just sad. One of the reasons why people are immoral is lack of knowledge, lack of knowledge on what other people have been through and in what kind of situation they are in, lack of knowledge how they genuinely feel and what they genuinely want. Society is too big for us to get to know everybody we meet and this is why we can’t act absolutely right towards others because we can only predict their wishes and feelings to some extent. In order to act morally towards others we need to know their true intentions and expectations which is hard because nobody acts truthfully at all situations and nobody gives us the real feedback, which we need to understand what they want from us. Lack of truth and genuine feedback(by genuine feedback I mean reacting the way you really want to without making sure your reaction is socially acceptable and without adapting it to the current situation/environment) is one of many difficulties we face when we try to act morally. Subjectivity is the key component of compassion but it can be an enemy to real moral action because sometimes when we put ourselves in the place of others and think from that perspective our thoughts are too much colored by our personal wishes so when we make a decision and think it’s moral it just might be immoral and too selfish without us realizing and this is hard to realize without genuine feedback. Compassion is something women(specifically birth giving ones) understand better than men because the mother-child bond which they have is one of the strongest among all bonds in human interactions. It is this kind of selfless care and devotion all of us should strive to achieve towards every other human being, by acting so we make it clear to others that we care. Biological purpose of a man is to live, love and reproduce, great majority of people attach to a partner at some point in their life and get to feel love, love is the pure concentrate of selflessness and compassion (compassion without selflessness is just selfish egoistic compassion which isn’t really compassion at all) and if we are all capable to feel love to a single human being we are capable of feeling love towards all human beings. Having in mind that great majority of people do feel love(ultimate compassion) and then act without it in their future decisions towards others makes humans quite hypocritical. I wouldn’t pose the question if compassion is necessary for morality because it’s logical that without care for others and their expectations and well-being there is no morale(although we do not need to explicitly care about someone to do right by them, we certainly are more efficient when we do). But since we live in a diverse world which contains in it some people who can’t feel emotions I am obliged to take them into consideration. Can a man be moral without the actual feeling of compassion , well without the ability to feel emotions we can still use our brains to think up the do’s and do not’s in our interactions, this kind of morale would be more of a mechanic one rather than real emotion-based(one would have to rationally predict if others will react positively or negatively to their actions, without shifting of the point of view due to inability to feel other’s emotions) but we can’t deny it’s existence ,I think the name utilitarian morale would fit it the best(it’s main purpose would be efficiency in social interactions). This mechanic, utilitarian, emotionless morale is harder to practice than emotion based one but at least it’s the proof that all humans with various kinds of emotional backgrounds(or lack of them) can act towards others morally(it can be practiced by those who do have emotions yet choose to reserve them for specific people only). Next to being compassionate, for acting morally it is useful to be rational and to make smart predictions of the outcome of our social interactions, the better we predict how others will be impacted by our actions the better we can exercise our moral codex in the future. Another flaw of compassion is that sometimes it’s the reason why we do not succeed to act morally, in cases such as giving advantage to family when searching to employ somebody(emotions without reason cause nepotism). Emotions can easily get out of control in certain situations and they need to be subdued to reason, this is why rationality while making decisions is necessary to be moral, sometimes we need to get past the emotional barrier to act rightfully and morally and reason is the means of transport we use to get past that barrier. Man is a social animal, we are pack animals and one can hardly survive when separated from the pack, this is why some(sadly not most) of us accept and practice morale(in it’s true meaning) which we either took from others or developed ourselves
Compassion isn’t the sole basis of morality, basis of morality is made both of compassion and rationality because in order to act morally towards others(so as to satisfy them and not to do them wrong) we need sense as much as we need emotions. Actually I’d reckon we need sense to act morally slightly more than we need emotions and although compassion is a useful compass in navigating the seas of social interactions it is not the only navigational tool.
Children of Wisdom 