Compassion and President Bush
This has been a week of extremes. On the one hand, we encounter celebration and joy about the inauguration — it seems like Camelot is upon us once again!
On the other hand, I keep encountering people spewing invective at the previous administration, most often targeted at George W. Bush.
This latter experience disheartens me.
Whether or not I agreed with all the decisions this man made during his term in office, he is still a man — an ordinary human being like all of us.
Anyone who has been picked on in their life (and that pretty much includes everybody I think) would do well to feel some bit of empathy for him and treat him with decency.
A couple of years ago, I came across a picture of George Bush on the internet that I grabbed and kept. I look at it once in a while to remind me of his humanity. When I relax and feel my way into it, I eventually start crying too.
Here’s the image:
George W. Bush has often been the U.S. President we love to hate. They even made a game of throwing a shoe at him, just like the shoes that were thrown at him in Iraq. He has sometimes been a scapegoat: frequently ridiculed and insulted.
While I don’t agree with many of his decisions nor his political stance, that hardly entitles me to treat him with any less compassion than we owe every human being. It distresses me to witness others heap scorn and vile on this human being simply because they disagree with him. What does that communicate?
If you’ve ever made an unpopular decision, stuck by your guns in the face of opposition, or been scapegoated publicly for something, you know how unpleasant it is to be on the receiving end of such treatment.
This photograph reminds me to respect President Bush for simply being human, the same as I hope others likewise behave towards me.
Martin Buber, a highly-respected philosopher, has written insightfully about relationships. He coined some terms to describe the nature of our connections. The most well-known is the “I-Thou” relationship, which describes a connection between people that is intimate, connected, and process oriented.
This does *not* characterize the way many people are behaving toward our outgoing president.
A better description is characterized by one of Buber’s lesser-known terms: the “I-It” relationship. This describes a relationship between people that is alienated, instrumental, and *thing* oriented. It’s okay to throw something at a “thing.”
And it’s Shadow behavior.
What people dislike in President Bush is nothing more than a dislike of something in themselves. I number myself in this group: we don’t like to claim our own stubbornness, our own close-mindedness, our own self-righteous religious or social attitudes. It makes us uncomfortable. Instead, it’s easier to convince ourselves that *we* aren’t like that — that we would never do anything Bush would do.
Marie Louise von-Franz, in her book Projection and Re-Collection in Jungian Psychology, describes how the term “projection” comes from the same root word (”project”) as the word “projectile.” When one is receiving negative projections from someone, it’s akin to feeling “projectiles” are being thrown at us. (Perhaps it’s something like those shoes that were thrown at him in Iraq.)
When I look at this picture of George W. Bush, it makes me want to cry too — cry for him, and cry for the whole world, including taking pity on myself for the times I too have been been the recipient of “projectiles” and experienced a hostile “I-It” relationship.
Empathy tells me that if I don’t like being on the receiving end of such treatment, then I shouldn’t give such treatment to others. Period.
I coach people to identify and develop their natural personality strengths in order to maximize their potential.
January 23rd, 2009 at 7:14 am
Hi Vicky Jo,
As you rightly point out there is a very great difference between disagreeing with someone’s choices or actions and vilifying the actual person involved. Like you, I believe that there are many policy decisions made by President Bush, and for that matter our own British politicians, that I find either incomprehensible or just plain wrong. However, just because I disagree with such grand policy it certainly does not give me the right to denounce, ridicule or heap scorn upon them as people. Indeed by so doing, in my opinion, it would say much more about who I am as an individual rather than the target of my vile contempt.
I have always firmly believed that we should treat others with the same respect, compassion and forgiveness that we ourselves would expect in return. It is when we forget this eternal truth that the worst of the excesses and evils that we are capable of rear their ugly head, as has been shown time and again throughout history. It is a frighteningly small step to move from dehumanizing another person as a ‘thing’ to coming up with the ‘final solution’. We may not have control over another person’s viewpoint, perspective or decisions but we certainly have control of our own. We may not be able to control what other people say or do, but we certainly can manage our own actions and words. It is by own choices that we can move to make the world a better place, building tolerant and caring relationships, supporting others and fostering a sense of belonging and self worth. Rather than by engaging in cruel ridicule and belittling insults, which serve only to tear down relationships and destroy the very core of our humanity, it is by sharing our differences in a tolerant and caring way that we can learn and grow.
Best regards,
Charles [INFJ]
July 1st, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Hi Vicky Jo,
I’m fairly certain you’re no fan of a certain commentator’s views either (first name Ann, last name escapes me), but in her usual trenchant way she once asked how the Democrats can expect their new President to be respected at all costs when they showed anything but like respect to the Republicans’ President. The question needed to be asked, and one could hardly blame her for ironically proposing “tit for tat” (even if in the end she meant us to realize that this would be dishonorable).
With all due respect, however (and as one who seeks to emulate the example of the original New Testament Church, I stay out of political affairs and loyalties for some very good reasons), I submit it would be going too far to claim that President Bush was stubborn, close-minded, or religiously and socially self-righteous. I won’t assume that you’re actually arguing this, but I think you do recognize the temptation to argue it. It almost sounds like the reaction of one type, or perhaps one temperament or interactive style, to another that isn’t well-understood.
IMO President Bush was “sincere, if often sincerely wrong”, and though I could be wrong about this, I think he was a Stabilizer of some kind. (My church culture — which is at the core of my life — doesn’t support political parties, but it does respect Stabilizers a lot, so no doubt that influences my regard for Pres. Bush.) I’m not quite so sure one can say even that much about the apparent fellow Catalyst President Obama (again IMO), but if so it’s because he’s letting his Shadow affect him more. If better informed and less narcissist, he could truly bring change and hope to people. (Could he be an ENFP?) And that leads me to think of something that may prove useful in your thinking about this subject.
Have you encountered The Political Compass online (it’s based in the UK)? I suggest that its fourfold Cartesian graph of political quadrants may map closely to the map of temperaments. The authoritarian-libertarian y-axis is social, the conservative-liberal x-axis is economic. So would Improvisers tend to be libertarian-conservative, Stablizers authoritarian-conservative, Catalysts authoritarian-liberal, and Theorists libertarian-liberal? Or is there something else being measured that might map onto the theory of personality type (giving yet another model to play with)? Or should we divide up the Compass in some other, type-consistent way? Your reactions would be interesting.
Now my political position isn’t dependent on my natural type. On the Compass I literally test out almost dead center, and it’s because I believe in a dedication to balance between authority and liberty and between private property and public welfare that transcends what any one human being might prefer naturally. (When I deliberately put in my “gut” reactions, interestingly, I was still centrist economically but highly authoritarian in terms of social order! But in hindsight I’m guessing that my personal brand of Shadow came into play there…how, I’m not yet sure.)