Against Sensitivity!

I rail against sensitivity, and I do it for the sake of compassion.

The expectation of sensitivity is to expect the sensitive person to see the other in pain before it happens, and to act so as to avoid doing anything to cause it. Where we don't share the same vulnerabilities as the other, sensitivity entails a deliberate and false identification with the other's perceived weakness. We can only know how to act by estimating the degree to which the other person is too weak to take what we ourselves would have no problem with. Sensitivity is a form of contempt.

Sensitivity is deemed a wonderful thing, and if in some moment you find you are possessed of it, thank your stars! But have pity on the miserables who were born bereft of that psychic sense, and so are sentenced to spend years over uncomfortable lifetimes being rebuked, accused of being insensitive, and feeling utterly alienated. If you think these lost souls enjoy their exile, you are simply cruel, that's all.

Compassion springs forth in the moment we see that another is in anguish, in pain. We rush to save and and aid that one. Our heart has known suffering too, and we see it - we leap. If we were the cause of it, we weep. We weep on the inside, one hopes - so as to not affront the one who we wronged! Still we rush to save and aid, and make amends. Compassionate beings, we strive always not to be cruel.

Sensitivity run amok can cause total shutdown of most generous and surprising gifts or outpourings. The paralysis brought on by the desire and requirement not to be offensive, or uncomfortable, or unwanted, or objectionable, can be quite suffocatingly complete.

Compassion, oddly, can not cause this. Compassion cares deeply what it means, and it means well, and can answer for itself. But compassion does not insult the other beforehand, with the presumption that maybe the other can't take what one means.