Dialogue on "The Tragedy of American Compassion" PART 7

In the late 1800s a sad and awfully logical sounding philosophy was taking center stage in the realm of compassion: Social Darwinism.

Wikipedia: ideologies whose main ideal is social evolution through artificial selection or deliberate conflict between individuals, groups, nations, and ideas.

Basically people started looking to the bigger mechanistic picture as opposed to the individuals.  Suddenly the poor were socially unadaptable...and therefore "survivial of the fittest" demanded that they be left alone to wallow in their lesser evolved state.

It is an incredibly demeaning theory that even led to the creation of "Planned Parenthood" (see Margaret Sanger "eugenics and euthanasia")

Nevertheless....how did it come to be?  Why would it grow and even thrive in the United States (for the most part a morally centered country)? 

A hint of the answer can be found in the words of Andrew Carnegie when talking about the thousands of workers in mines and factorys..."of whom the employer can know little or nothing, and to whom he is little better than a myth.  All intercourse between them is at an end.  Rigid castes are formed, and, as usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust."

And Olansky summed up by saying "social anonymity grew under conditions of urbanization."

How interesting that the closer people live together under urbanization....the further apart they really become.  As systems and stuctures and governmental hierarchies form the bond of neighborly relationships deform.  Now we look back 125 years and suddenly we see that we don't even know our neighbor.  Carnegie's concern about the distance between boss and worker now has crept its way into apartment buildings and sub-urban neighborhoods. 

As Olansky, the author, suggests it was the debate over the expression of Compassion that led to open doors for Social Darwinism.   When we strive for "more"  or we only see statistics and not faces...then suddenly compassion has become dilluted...and in the case of Social Darwinism it has been flipped copletely on its back....apathy.

So what is it in us?  Are we born with a natural disposition to distrust...and therefore it takes a small miracle to build a relationship with your neighbor?  Names matter, stories matter, the lives of our neighbors matter......a day may come where we actually realize that we need them.