Under the Terrible Tyranny of Pity

“Verily, I like them not, the merciful ones, whose bliss is in their pity . . .”

“And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the follies of the pitiful?”

If you wish to make a man like you, it is said you should ask a favor of him rather than do a favor for him. If you ask a favor that is within his power, he will like you for asking because you thereby honor his power. This is why a man likes his wife a little better when she asks him to open a jar of pickles, and a little less when she offers to sew a button on his shirt. The request honors his strength, the offer dishonors his skill.

This is the inner meaning of St. Paul’s maxim that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20: 35). Giving is agreeable because the giver experiences and displays his own power in the act of giving. Hence the satisfaction of a man as he deftly unscrews the lid of a pickle jar, and the gratitude he feels towards his wife for affording him this opportunity to display his virility. Receiving is disagreeable because the receiver experiences and concedes his own weakness in the act of receiving. Hence the irritation a man feels as his wife threads the needle and sets to work on his loose button.

We pretend that giving is hard and generosity is therefore a virtue. We pretend this especially at dinner parties where the host is glowing with pleasure and the guests are finding fault with the wine. The truth is that receiving is much harder than giving, and gratitude is much harder than generosity. This is evident from the fact that we seek out the company of those who owe us gratitude and shun the company of those to whom we owe gratitude. As Rochefoucauld noted more than three hundred years ago, it is more blessed to give than to receive.

“We like better to see those on whom we confer benefits, than those from whom we receive them”*

I like to see those on whom I confer benefits, because it is agreeable to look down. Like the man unscrewing the pickle jar, I experience and display my strength. I dislike seeing those from whom I have received benefits, because it is disagreeable to look up. Like the man watching his button sewn, I experience and concede my weakness. Receiving benefits is, in fact, so disagreeable that I invent cunning subterfuges that convert benefits received into debts repaid. I brood for hours until I at last contrive to look down on my benefactor as a knave who is paying me modest—very modest—restitution.

It is far more agreeable to pity than it is to be pitied. This is partly owing to the fact that the one who pities only imagines the pain of the one he pities, whereas the one he pities suffers real pain. Pity for a man who has broken his leg does not feel anything like a broken leg. Pity for a woman who has no money does not feel anything like having no money. Pity for grief is not grief.

In addition to being fatuous, pity is often ghoulish. Compassionate people swarm like ghouls to scenes of death and disaster, because they hope to enjoy the agreeable sense of superiority that comes to anyone who witnesses a death or disaster that is not his own. As the sixteenth-century evangelical John Bradford watched a condemned man led to the scaffold, he is said to have uttered, “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” Although Bradford’s utterance is normally taken as piteous, it can just as well be taken as ghoulish. The grace of God is no mean thing, and a man who has the superior fortune to enjoy it feels that superiority, and therefore takes ghoulish pleasure, when he witnesses the disgrace of a man who does not.

There but for my bulging bank balance go I! There but for my lovely face go I! There but for my nimble brain go I! etc. etc.

Pity degrades the pitied [emphasis mine-WD], and this is why a man of honor instinctively hides his piteous state from the shame of pitying eyes. He may very much need their aid, but not at the price of their pity, because the price of pity is dishonor. Montaigne tells us that even as an old man in the piteous state of loneliness, he has too much pride to enjoy the company of young women would condescend to amuse him because they feel sorry for him.

“If they can only be kind to us out of pity, I had much rather not to live at all, than live upon charity.”**

Charity here means to give and not receive, which many among us suppose is a great virtue. And yet Montaigne tells us that he would rather die than receive and not give. This is because it is dishonorable to receive without giving, and because a man who consents to charity is by this consent unmanned.

It is more blessed to give than to receive because to receive without giving is to be damned.

“Who can receive pleasure where he gives none; it must needs be a mean soul that desires to owe all, and can be contented to maintain a conversation with persons to whom he is a charge.”**

Now you perhaps begin to understand what Nietzsche meant when he asked if anything in the world had caused more suffering than pity.

“And what in the world hath caused more suffering than the follies of the pitiful?”

The word pitiful here has its original sense of filled with pity, and the folly of the pitiful is their cruel indulgence in compassion and charity. They tell us, and perhaps even believe, that pity is a very noble sentiment. But it is upon closer inspection revealed as fatuous, ghoulish and most of all degrading. As a commentator on Nietzsche says,

“Pity—that attitude towards our fellow-creatures, which, as you know, all of us, individually resent most bitterly, when it is directed at us; pity which makes us recoil when it is breathed upon us even by our best friend;—this is the quality which is fast becoming the greatest virtue amongst us . . . . Whatever we may say in its support, we know it is ignoble—or, if we don’t, why, pray, do all those amongst us who have any taste for courage, independence and nobility of spirit, resent and resist it with all our might?”***

This is a question to which every honest Christian must find an answer, for he almost certainly thinks pity is a very fine thing, but at the same time does everything in his power to ensure that no one feels pity for him.

What is this baleful gift, pity, that each of us is so eager to give and so unwilling to receive?

There have always been, as Montaigne said, “mean souls that desire to owe all.” Or that have been, at least, content to be piteous objects of charity and to “receive pleasure where they gives none.” Nietzsche calls them “grey people.” In our democratic age, these “grey people” have joined with the “the merciful ones, whose bliss is in their pity,” and their hymns to the piteous and the pitiful (original sense) define the culture of the age. This is why Ludovici wrote, in 1914, that pity “is fast becoming the greatest virtue amongst us.” More than thirty years earlier, Nietzsche described the growing tyranny of pity in an image that was more poetic, and more portentous.

“So be ye warned against pity: from thence there yet cometh unto men a heavy cloud! Verily, I understand weather-signs.”†

A heavy cloud is a storm cloud heavy with rain. That storm cloud is now directly overhead, blocking the sun, growling with thunder, flashing with lightening, and lashing the trees with gusts of angry wind. And all for pity’s sake, because men grow mad under a tyranny of pity.

*) Rochefoucauld, Maxims and Moral Reflections (1665)
**) Montaigne, “On Some Verses of Virgil” (1580)
***) Anthony M. Ludovici, Who is to be Master of the World? (1914)
†) Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883)

Pity for the victim is how liberals achieve their self-awarded sainthood. Victims need villains, real or invented, but usually invented. Anger and hatred, based on lies, over something that they are told instead of experienced themselves, has the Left’s minions in an uproar. And that’s how Democrats prefer it.

Nobody wants pity, but doesn’t Christianity ask you to take pity on the homeless and hungry which translates into charitable action? And I believe that is a good thing rather than death through starvation and exposure to the elements. If people take advantage of you through their pitiful state then that is another thing altogether. For example, the beggar who is too lazy to work and would rather beg and play on your sentiments.

The worst is self pity. It’s a state where you rail against the world, on one hand, and cower in fear and inadequacy on the other. The cowering generally wins out unless you become cognizant of what an ineffectual and useless person you’ve become and how that emotion is making you circle the drain. Courage is the answer. It should rouse you and lead to action. And action also gets you out of your depressed state (kicks in the endorphins). Self pity neutralized a healthy sense of shame and is quite self indulgent. There is no natural end to wallowing in it — it only leads to more of the same behavior. Courage is the key.

Pity can lead to a feeling of contempt. That can lead to less appealing things like ostracism , ridicule , feeling superior, ‘’supremacist''. I try not to pity anyone. Praying is better. Especially if you're thanking God for not making you the object of the person or thing you pity.

In the Bible the preferred way to give is to do so privately, very discretely, so that only God knows, not to win God’s favor by the deed, and not to humiliate the recipient, but out of complete selflessness.

“Modern” pity is done publicly to impress others even if it means humiliating the recipient.

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