mlennyma wrote:I pity one guy who was boasting to have bought uchumi at 12 when 10 is supposed to be an exit level.
Pity is a deceptive emotional response to perceived suffering. Why deceptive? Because it feigns a closeness that is really distance. When unsure of ourselves and afraid to step outside the insularity of what is comfortable and reassuring about normalcy, we respond to undomesticated suffering with pity. Pity emerges from the presumption that we must do something to hide affliction when we encounter it, making it go away. This urge to cover up suffering is a symptom of shame, the shame we attribute to another whose out-of-control body elicits our own sense of shame. So we condescend to others as pathetic, feeling sorry for them in order to connect with their suffering as though it would be tragic if it were our own. It is as if to say, "There but for the grace of God go I." This feeling is not to be equated with compassion or sympathy, a feeling-along-with the other. For pity is a feeling for the other that presumes the other is unlike us, subject to a state of affairs that we are relieved to have avoided. Hence, the real focus of pity is directed toward the perceiver and not the perceived, who is left on the outside.
THOMAS E. REYNOLDS, Vulnerable Communion