337. How We Treat Others

We want to be treated well by others. We feel we deserve to be treated well and that others should be obliged to treat us this way. We don’t care what they might think about us, as long as they always fulfill this basic obligation.

We obligate others through social pressure, through appeals to rights, and through the application of laws. While we are also obligated in the same way, we see the trade-off as worthwhile, since we generally have no problem with treating others well. After all, the obligation is not usually binding. We see others as similar to ourselves, so we automatically treat them well out of compassion and not because of any obligation.

But a problem arises when we encounter someone for whom we do not feel compassion. Now we are obligated to act in way that goes again our intuitive sense of right and wrong. We are forced to treat this person well when we do not believe they deserve it. Having to do this repeatedly can lead to resentment. Even worse, the constant requirement to act against our intuitions means imposing the kind of control over ourselves that tends to limit the growth of our awareness and perpetuate suffering.

The problem is that we cannot see why the other ought to receive compassion. We are unable to see them as one of us, so they remain an other, an outsider not entitled to anything. It is this missing awareness that produces our resentment and possibly even hatred towards the other. We need to be able to see their humanity and we presently cannot.

The solution to this problem is not to enforce our obligations more rigidly or to impose penalties that do nothing to help us reflect on our lack of compassion. We need to allow our awareness to expand, and help others do the same, so that compassion arises from all of us towards all of us. In the end, it is never pressure, nor rights, nor laws that will make us treat others well, but our own awareness of the necessity of doing so.