Billy Beck and Gerard Vandeleun Stating the Exact Same Sentiments Regarding Compassion

Back on the 19th of March, of this year, Billy Beck, in a post titled “Look Into My Eye,” put down in repsonse to the John Boccieri statement “If in this job I can save one life one family one person, this job is worth it.” the following words.

“Worth it”, to whom, John?

This morning during your little presser, in which you could only hardly admit what you are going to do, I listened to you invoke your mother. I have questions for you. As she was rearing you, did she teach you that it was okay to steal from others? Hmm? You, in your singular person, could never claim a right to summarily intrude on my life and take my money for anything. What makes you think that this changes just because you sit in that assembly in Washington? Where do you get the right to do this to me?

I heard some woman droning on about her autistic child. Well, since you have stepped all the way across every moral line in this matter, I have something to explain to you.

I don’t care about that little bastard. As long as he’s in play in this—and you started it—I hope he curls up in a little ball and drops dead at his mother’s feet.

Do you understand? I don’t care: you sonsofbitches are pricing me right out of the market for “care” every single day, now.

Now, some individuals will read Billy Beck’s words and squirm uncomfortably, feeling that Billy is a cold hearted, uncaring monster, not understanding that Billy’s words are no different than the words Gerard Vanderleun shares with us in a post titled Against Compassion.

I once gave to all who asked. Now I give to none. Once a year I write checks to funds for widows and orphans of police, firemen, and soldiers killed in the line of duty. Beyond that, I find I can no longer spare a quarta. And when I hear, in the back of my mind, the old Depression anthem “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” I find that although I can spare it, I no longer want to give it.

It has taken decades of ceaseless hectoring but at long last my compassion account in the Bank of Human Kindness is overdrawn. I’m tapped out. I still try to care but I find, if I am honest, I couldn’t care less.

I suppose this makes me a bad person. In the land that is more and more ruled by those eager to cadge money from me or pick my pockets “for the common good” I’m just no damned good to any of them. It doesn’t bother me any more. I have become, as the song says, “comfortably numb.”

I’ve been told, so often and so stridently, to feel this and to feel that and to feel for the downtrodden of the world, that I find I no longer feel anything at all. I don’t think I’m alone in not caring. I think caring and compassion, now that it has been institutionalized enough to demand caring and compassion, has finally found its limit.

Gerard’s words, to the uncritical thinker, will be more palatable, preceded, as they are, with a sweeter story from everyday life than Billy’s reference to the autistic child dropping dead at his mother’s feet, but they are stating the exact same thing.

My previous thoughts on this subject were posted under the heading Did Your Mom Teach You to Steal?

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/10 at 08:46 AM

  1. I’m just going to say this because it is so:  Not caring about someone’s welfare, declining to answer calls to (supposedly or even verifiably) assist his needs, and resisting forced appropriation of one’s resources to aid that person against one’s will are not “the exact same thing” as hoping that he dies in some specified or unspecified manner. They just aren’t the same.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  06/10  at  10:38 AM

  2. Linda,

    If Billy’s seemingly cold preamble to his assertion of being priced out of the market in regards to caring is cast aside, and Gerard’s seemingly more palatable preamble to his assertion of being priced out of the market in regards to caring is cast aside, meaning you have no knowledge of either individual’s preamble, their words state the exact same thing.

    Vanderleun: It has taken decades of ceaseless hectoring but at long last my compassion account in the Bank of Human Kindness is overdrawn. I’m tapped out. I still try to care but I find, if I am honest, I couldn’t care less…

    I’ve been told, so often and so stridently, to feel this and to feel that and to feel for the downtrodden of the world, that I find I no longer feel anything at all. I don’t think I’m alone in not caring. I think caring and compassion, now that it has been institutionalized enough to demand caring and compassion, has finally found its limit.

    Beck:  Do you understand? I don’t care: you sonsofbitches are pricing me right out of the market for “care” every single day, now.

    If the preamble’s are removed, and the only words you have knowledge of are the quotes above, the sentiments are the same.  Beck is simply more brutally concise, forcefully striking the corrupt “Bank of Human Kindness” which has been overdrawn for decades.

    Posted by John Venlet  on  06/10  at  11:12 AM

  3. There’s a learning curve to reading Beck and that curve is steep. I started learning it back in the mid 90’s and started catching on quick, I was hungry for that kind of straight talking, having been long burned out on the maleable putty spewed by just about everybody everywhere. Still, I stumble on Becks words occaisionally and ask him for a explanation which he always readily gives. He is a teacher but only to those that yearn to learn. And he’s also one of the nicest people I’ve ever known. Seriously. People that take exception to Becks words, individually or in total, haven’t been paying attention and really need to get up to speed.
    He’s right.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  06/25  at  08:36 AM

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