When weeping for religious martyrs leads to the crucifixion of innocents

When weeping for religious martyrs leads to the crucifixion of innocents
Passion and redemption were part of our parents' religious experience. It would be wiser to reflect on the sins of our human gods
Robert Fisk
26 March 2005


"About suffering," Auden famously wrote in 1938, "they were never wrong,/ The Old Masters: how well they understood/ its human position; how it takes place/ While someone is eating or opening a window/Or just walking dully along." Yet the great crucifixion paintings of Caravaggio or Bellini, or Michelangelo's Pieta in the Vatican - though they were not what Auden had in mind - have God on their side. We may feel the power of suffering in the context of religion but, outside this spiritual setting, I'm not sure how compassionate we really are.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=623747

it's cultivated and learned.


Compassion is a sub-construct of the Social Contract, the foundation of civilzation. Any given sub-construct is assigned only as much priority as the civilzation in which it exists.

Given that, humans may talk alot about compassion, but actual practice is almost nil.

without paying for the independant folio. Is it in another place?