Toward a more compassionate Princeton

For the sake of formality, let's review some facts. Across the world, thousands of children die daily from hunger and preventable diseases. In Uganda they are abducted and enlisted in the army as child soldiers. In regions of South Asia, they are bonded in labor or pimped in brothels.

The list goes on to describe horrific situations of mind-numbing proportions, and yet these depictions of suffering are nothing new to our range of experiences. Who hasn't heard of the "poor, starving children" out there in the boonie-lands of the globe? Who hasn't felt a twinge of sadness when confronted with the glare of an emaciated, fly-ridden baby on the television screen? It seems that, even if we were to try, we are powerless to escape the haunting reality of a world thoroughly saturated in suffering.

When I first arrived at Princeton, scores of upperclassmen warned me about being insulated in "the bubble". Perhaps you've experienced it too: a vague sense of detachment from the non-Princeton world. It takes considerable effort to keep tabs on things we often would rather not. Who wants to hear about outsourcing, prison scandals, terrorists and slanderous election campaigns? It is all too easy to ignore such unpleasant abstractions and simply focus on the things our tactile senses can wrap themselves around.

And we can. At least, we try until something bursts the bubble by pricking those senses. My freshman year it was Sept. 11. I had thought that that day would burst the bubble forever; that the Class of 2005 would be the first to clamor out of the ivory tower and reacquaint Princeton University with the real world. Perhaps we did for a while. In the following weeks, we wept together for a nation that was forced, if only for a moment, to stare the specters of death and fear in the eye.

But in the months and years afterwards, the memory of that suffering subsided and the accusations of indifference have returned. Why? Is Princeton congenitally apathetic?

Though the charge of an "incompassionate Princeton" might be justified, we must be careful not to overlook a fundamental truth about the human spirit: it is not compassionate. The word compassion literally means "to suffer with." Certainly, we may feel pity or sorrow over someone else's plight, but those emotions do not develop into compassion until we have made those plights our own. My own. And I naturally detest compassion because I naturally detest suffering in all its forms. Why else would I call it suffering?

Of course, this characterization of compassion may strike you as masochistic and repulsive. It still strikes me in that way. I like to think of myself as a kind, forbearing and loving person, but the more I consider it, the more I find that I am only those things under the condition of convenience. I am typically more friendly than kind, indulging than forbearing, and selfish than loving. Though I may be nice, I am typically not compassionate.

Is this to say that the road towards compassion is necessarily impossible or joyless? No. What it does mean is that we ought to see compassion as a well-exercised discipline rather than a natural tendency.

In the wake of Melissa Huang '07's passing and the growing turmoil of Sudan's crisis, we are again challenged to re-investigate our notions and practices of compassion. Is it possible to have a compassionate community? Can things be done to penetrate the hardness and cynicism that have come to characterize our university?

Perhaps so, but only through the staunch resolutions of individuals committed to a community and principle greater than the sum of their personal comforts. David D. Chen is an electrical engineering major from Berkeley Heights, N.J. He can be reached at dchen@princeton.edu.