Pity is the feeling that kind and compassionate people can show to their fellow man when they are in a difficult situation, experiencing a breakdown in a relationship or the loss of a loved one. However, pity is often called a humiliating feeling.
Instructions
Step 1
A feeling of compassion is characteristic of people: they are used to feeling sorry for the disadvantaged, people without a roof over their heads, unfortunate victims of military conflicts left homeless, crying little children and abandoned animals. And in this case, pity for such people or creatures is a manifestation of humanity, humanity, without which the world would have perished long ago in cruelty and suffering. This is a manifestation of the wisdom of mankind, accumulated from distant barbaric times, when people did not know pity. Mercy, compassion, pity - these words are often put on a par.
Step 2
However, it is worth sharing compassion and pity, for the most part these feelings are very different. Compassion is a feeling that a person shows because of their own kindness and unwillingness to harm another. Often, compassion is very strongly associated with empathy - the ability to feel joy or pain, the suffering of another person, to transfer them to yourself, to sympathize with the interlocutor. Such feelings help a person himself not to commit evil in relation to his neighbor, teach him to value someone else's life, to respect the rights of another person.
Step 3
Most pity has nothing to do with compassion and empathy. It can be quite selfish or helpless feeling. Pity manifests itself in response to complaints, or to some unpleasant event in the life of another person. Moreover, such complaints can be expressed even by a completely successful, young and educated person.
Step 4
In these cases, pity may not imply any special sympathy or desire to help another person. The pitying person only pretends to share the pain of his interlocutor, secretly sighing with relief that everything is so bad with him. After all, this puts him in the best light. Or he takes the opportunity and begins to also complain to the interlocutor, expecting a return pity from him.
Step 5
Therefore, pity is associated with weakness and humiliation: this feeling does not imply any specific help, support, guidance. It only incites a person to complain more and more, encourages him to blame anyone, but not himself, and supposedly gives him the right to shift responsibility for his life onto the shoulders of other people.
Step 6
But this state of affairs is unacceptable with a healthy, strong and young person. And if someone begins to pity him instead of supporting him with actions or advice, then such pity should humiliate the person. Only weak and infirm people are worthy of true compassion, but even many of them do not tolerate self-pity.
