Exemption from Care

A Call to Compassion, Part II

Photo: Just before sunrise. The Fountain at Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library, March 2023

Exemption From Care

When was the last time a leader, a society, centered itself around a call to compassion? We seem to be deaf to it; and it seems as though a grass-roots action is need to call us back. The dissolution of religion by secularism has a left a void; and the secular, despite its protestations to the contrary (methinks it doth protest too much) has proven categorically unable to offer a sound rationale or even a credible game plan for compassion towards others. As to our technologists, forget about it; they know about as much about compassion as the average person knows about quantum mechanics. “If we program it, they will come,” they announce— actually meaning, of course, ”they will buy,” because with them it is always about the money, the money. The technology will somehow magically morph into things that are compassionate: we will Pinocchio the data into real, living things. The fact that data never does that has not so far extinguished the fairy tale.