Kennedy's Quartet of Cop-outs

Why does compassion not reign in our world but merely ring in our ears?  Why is it so often merely an aching aspiration, or an occasionally recurring dream?  Do you, like me, speak of the Good Samaritan, but so often see yourself more truly as one of those who passed by?

In his Day of Affirmation Address   to the Union of South African Students in 1966, a forty-year old Robert Kennedy offered four reasons.  They ring true in me; how about you?

Futility:

First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills -- against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence.

Expediency:

The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities.

Timidity:

A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence.

Comfort:

For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger is comfort; the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success ….

By compassion, I don’t mean ending homelessness or illiteracy or inequitable distribution of wealth.  I simply mean helping those in need as we happen upon them. I think that Bobby Kennedy’s Quartet of Cop-outs can serve us in understanding our failures to be Good Samaritans.  They may provide us the opportunity to ask ourselves the question that a well-known radio shrink asks again and again: “What were you THINKing?”

I’ll use myself as an example.  Yesterday I was on my way home from a meeting with a potential client, waiting at an intersection.  I was not pressed for time. The street that I was on ended at the busy, curving road ahead, and I needed to turn left, meaning that traffic needed to clear in both directions.  There were four cars in front of me, and eventually three, and then two.  On the sidewalk on my left was a young woman, holding a toddler on her hip and holding the hand of one little boy who in turn was holding the hand of another.  I assumed that the woman was their mom, and I was focused on the fact that the brothers were upset about having to hold hands.  The mother’s attention was divided between her desire to get the kids safely across the street in front of the car ahead of me and getting the boys to obey.  While she remained on the curb, trying to get the boys to comply, traffic ahead momentarily cleared and I followed the car ahead of me, completing my left turn. 

I immediately regretted leaving the woman in her dilemma, and had the desire to turn around.  But by the time I could safely do so, I could no longer see her.  As I drove the last mile home, I asked myself “What were you THINKing?”  Actually, I was thinking about how the boys fought their mom over holding each others’ hands, while my granddaughters eagerly protect each other in such situations.  I wondered why it was so different wit these boys.  I had observed them, but I had not seen them.  I had fallen into the trap that Martin Buber calls an “I-it relationship” that considers the other as an object, or I would say even worse, a concept or idea, to be considered in my mind or discarded when the traffic clears.

As I look at Kennedy’s Quartet of Cop-outs, I score a perfect 4, failing on all points.  Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you how.  But in the meantime, please comment below how you would have measured me against Kennedy’s Cop-outs, or how you have similarly failed to stop and help, and how you feel to restrict compassion to its café place as idea?

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.