According to many authors, humans are naturally cooperative. In the book “The Age of Empathy,” Frans de Waal argues that the nature of animals is characterized by kindness as well as collaboration to competition as well as carnage. According to the author, humans are naturally born to be competitors to being empathizers. In the book of “The Ethic of Compassion,” Dalai Lama wrote about human compassion. He argues that for humans to survive, they need the power of compassion, inner as well as external peace. In the life of a human, compassion is essential since it promotes growth, as well as love among each other. In most cases, humans are characterized by greed. For the society to be kind, people should take a lesson from nature.
The Tibetan Buddhism has been used by Dai Lama to base his teachings of compassion. According to the Tibetan, compassion means love, affection, kindness, gentleness, spirit generosity, as well as warm-heartedness. People who suffer are helped by people with these traits. Literally, according to the Latin culture, the word compassion connotes to suffering from someone. Dai Lama suggests that compassion, as well as inner peace, goes hand in hand. People who do acts of compassion are helping themselves. Before helping others, one needs inner peace. Inner peace becomes stronger when one performs the act of helping others. Acts of compassion help people relate better to others. According to Dai Lama, there are three levels of compassion, for instance, empathy, putting inspiration into practice, as well as the continual presence of compassion. Humans should practice compassion even with their enemies. Enemies might help one practice compassion. Before one extends love to others, it is important to love oneself. Helping others has some benefits such as developing more strength as well as confidence. Additionally, individuals experience peace as well as happiness. The activities of people are in danger of becoming destructive when compassion is lacking (Dai 734). The acts of people become selfish to people when they live for themselves and possess no compassion. In the long run, the society will be destroyed.
Frans De Waal argues that chimpanzees have empathy. Like humans, apes return favors, as well as yawn when others yawn. When the young need group support, the male chimps cannot stay away from them. Besides, De Waal argues that humans, as well as animals, are pre-programmed to reach out. De Waal suggests that it is natural to be nice. He points out that animals are lovely to each other. When they are wounded by leopards, chimpanzees care for the mates. Also, to support the sick from drowning, the dolphins support the sick companions near the surface of the water. De Waal writes that humans need to practice empathy so that the virtue does not go to extinction. Individuals need to be connected to keep the society intact.
Dai Lama argues that people regard their possessions in much higher value, in the world today. They find it difficult to abandon their interests for the reason of helping others. Many people believe that showing others compassion, especially strangers has little benefits. When individuals involve themselves in the misfortunes of others, they might get miserable in the process.
According to De Waal, humans are characteristically selfish. This is evident in how they carry out their politics, as well as matters relating to finance. Additionally, the author cites the outrage of the public in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The issue helped President Obama to be elected. De Waal suggests that people need to work together to build a just society that is based on viewing human nature generously. Humans have notably ignored the topics of sympathy, concern, as well as charity.
According to the book of “The Ethic of Compassion,” to understand fairness, empathy plays an important role. Humans demonstrate fairness through caring about others as well as a desire for a harmonious society (Waal 56). On the other hand, the egocentric nature overwhelms them and end promoting fairness because they want an environment that is harmonious and not because they want it. When other people are around them, people tend to have a sense of fairness. The inner egocentric nature of people reveals itself when the people around them are removed. This implies that when no one is watching, people tend to scoop the larger share is a share was to be distributed. According to Dai Lama people tend to be unfair to strangers while offering a sense of fairness to the people they are familiar with. Dai Lama suggests that for people to achieve fairness, the ability of people to enter and to some extent, share the suffering of other people plays an important role. Compassion is regarded as selfishness when it is aimed at achieving recognition. Additionally, the author suggests that for people to attain fairness, they should avoid impartiality (Dali 38). When it comes to being rewarded, humans tend to be dissatisfied. Humans often see favors as their rights. Dai Lama asserts that compassion plays an essential role in ensuring fairness. Also, humans should treat all people fairly to achieve fairness.
In the book of “The Age of Empathy,” Frans de Waal describes how the aspect of fairness is viewed differently by animals. The author associated fairness to Chimpanzees who also when subjected to experiments with rewards, they depict some sense of fairness. He observed that when chimpanzees have given food to share, for instance, watermelons each one will go to get a hand on it. Whichever chimpanzee will get the watermelon will be respected. This implies that even the most dominant chimpanzee will respect the lowliest cur. No one will take the food, although the mates will beg for it. In nature, ownership relates to sharing. Each chimpanzee will have some, only 20 minutes after being given the food (Waal 43). The owner will share with their best friends, as well as members of the family who end up sharing with other friends as well as family members. There is peace, although they tussle.
According to De Waal, the principle of ownership, as well as sharing, is common even in other animals such as killer whales as well as wolves. Just with ownership and sharing, compromise goes with justice too. Social animals care about fairness. The author indicates that when it comes to working as well as rewards, many primates demonstrate an intuitive sense of fairness. This is especially true when the animals under study are given a lesser share in the distribution. Frans de Waal suggests that the sense of fairness of people is caused by self-interest. It is difficult for a person to refuse the larger proportion of a share when it is presented to him. Besides the author highlights that animals resent some acts of unfairness. Until fairness is arrived at by fair distribution, animals will tend to remain dissatisfied. For instance, when two monkeys perform the same job but one is rewarded highly, the monkey that is cheated will act cheated. In the face of such inequity, it will refuse to do its job.
Frans de Waal, as well as Dai Lama, acknowledge that partiality plays a role in demonstrating fairness. In most of the cases, humans fail to recognize the fact that all people deserve fairness. Sympathy should not play a role in expressing fairness. Fairness ought to be the right of every individual.
According to the analysis of the two books, one must consider some aspects of human nature to understand fairness. For one to understand nature, some aspects such as compassion, as well as self-interest have to be taken into consideration. People need to be fair as well as compassionate to themselves as well as to others. People are complicated because of the competition between one another. Competition has made people instinctively cruel, caring, as well as curious. The book of De Waal is based on anecdotes of primates that are sweet in nature as well as humans that are ill-advised. In both the books, it is evident that greed undermines the driving force of societies.
Works Cited
Dalai Lama. “The Ethic of Compassion." The Norton Mix, edited by Katie Hannah, W.W. Norton " Company, 2017, pp. 36-42.
Waal, Frans de. “The Age of Empathy." The Norton Mix, edited by Katie Hannah, W.W. Norton " Company, 2017, pp. 43-67.
