Compassion, Empathy, Sympathy and Suffering – Bearing Good and Evil

Words can have dual meanings when looking at them in relation to truth or falsity, good or evil, etc. By associating words in relation to truth and good in one perspective, and then associating the word with falsity and evil in another perspective, the several meanings and etymological root relations and derivations can be better more clearly understood to reflect aspects of reality.

To understand the importance of etymology, please read the previous post.

Com-passion: together + suffering, endure, hurt
Sym-pathy: together + suffering, endure (feeling, emotion)
Em-pathy: in + suffering, endure (feeling, emotion)

Why passion, suffer, endure, hurt? Doesn’t that seem odd that passion would reference hurt, endure and suffer? Isn’t passion good? Aren’t empathy and sympathy good as well? What is etymology capable of telling us? We can learn about the meaning of words through the symbolic imagery they invoke to reference aspects of reality.

Suffer: to carry up or under, bear, undergo, endure
Endure: firm, solid, steadfast – durare – *deru – true / deru
Hurt: to injure, wound, stumble (into), bump into; charge against, rush, crash into; knock

Suffering and Hurt

Hurt is rooted in ram, strike, collide. To ram, strike or to collide into something, all require a force being exerted. One thing goes towards another. There is the expression “hurting for it”. This relates to having a powerful sexual urge. But it can mean yearning, seeking, desiring/caring for something else, or to have a passion for it.

Even our modern language has retained some of the meaning behind the connection to passion and hurt. It’s not a simple one-sided negative that we think “hurt” means. Hurt is not merely a negative force, but also a positive one. In this example, it’s a passion, desire/care, lust and yearning for the act of ramming, striking or colliding in sexual intercourse.

Also, we can say something hurts our “heart”. This means we are enduring a force that is affecting us emotionally/passionately. We are bearing something. We are injured emotionally. Our “heart” was made hard to endure the hurt, endure the force of impact, otherwise it would “break”. Right? This is symbolism don’t forget, nothing is actually “hard” or “breaking”.

To harden yourself in consciousness from an impacting force that emotionally (passion) affects you, to endure it, is seen to relate to hurt. This relates to the suffering we are impacted with from others, in com-passion, sym-pathy or em-pathy. What others do can hurt us internally, in consciousness, and we endure. We harden ourselves emotionally to ensure it, or we may also break under the weight and force of this emotional impact.

Driving Force

Back to the driving force related to “hurting for something. What we “hurt” for, is what we care/desire to do, are passionate to do, yearn to do, etc. It’s a driving and motivating force to get movement initiated. These drives (passions, cares, etc.) move us to act.

The force drives one thing towards another. Eventually, movement of one thing towards another can lead to a collision, a *striking of one to another, a ramming into it. It’s not purely sexual as you can see. There is a beginning at one point of something, then a force is applied, then the end of movement at the goal of something else being reached.

That end and goal may also not be reached, when we have a “hurting for something”, a desire, care, yearning for something. In some cases it’s simply a destination for us to take a journey, and we will never arrive there fully ourselves, but we can still engage in the motivation and driving force to try to reach the goal we set before us. Something are impossible to achieve in totality, such as truth or perfection in totality.

But that is no reason to not strive for them, to stop us from evolving our consciousness in search and attainment of some aspects of truth and bettering ourselves. I have heard the objection and rejection to self-betterment and seeking truth from pseudo-“spiritual” “New Ager” types. It’s an excuse to never begin the journey to correct their errors or wrongs, or to seek the truth that will enable that to be done.

Bearing and Carrying the Weight

Looking at the word endure, a synonym is bear. To endure something, is to bear it. We are also talking about one thing going towards another, and either reaching that end/goal, or not. This is to frame something in correspondence, correlation and reference to another.

Correlate is rooted in relate. Relate is to bear or carry back. Refer is also a synonym for relate.Refer is “to trace, bring, or bear back”. Refer is in contrast to infer which is “to bear, carry, or take in”. The former is outward, to send, while the later is inward, to take in.

The -late in re-late is related to extol, which is to raise, bear or carry up, “to place on high, raise, elevate.” Correspond is “to pledge back, promise in return”. There is also the word tolerate with the same -tol root as extol. Tolerate is “to bear or support”.

All of these words are related in meaning with reference to bearing or carrying something. You receive something, bear, carry and endure it. Correspond, correlate and reference are about one thing to another, and a sending back of what was received. This relates to reciprocal/reciprocity, meaning “rise and fall, move back and forth; reverse the motion of.”

This is also related to the understanding of cause and effect interchanges in the deterministic influence of reality. One thing can lead to another, and another, etc. We can receive an effect as a stimulus, whereby we causally generate an effect of our own as a response. We can bear, carry and endure things, but we can also get rid of that burden, to drop it or send it back.

To bear and endure a negative, wrong, immoral or evil effect, and then create another negative, wrong, immoral or evil of our own, is not wise. That would fuel more evil into the world. We need to rechannel and reorganize the corruption around us that we receive and endure, not bear it and do nothing nor create more of it.

Endure

If you carry something forever, you want it to be something good, not evil. We want to temporarily carry, correspond, and correlate the evil to better know, understand and eventually reduce it. If we care for truth, we want to carry the truth on our backs and keep it with us. Enduring and tolerating truth and good is a good thing. To bear with falsity and tolerate the effects of evil, is to let evil continue unchallenged. If we do nothing, it will only get worse. Notice how endure is related to truth in the etymology. Truth and endure have the same etymological root! We are meant to endure truth, but not falsity, although that is part of life as well. It’s right in the etymology.

We can have passion for, hurt for, yearn for, and bear the burden of caring, seeking, embracing, living and standing for truth, specifically Moral Truth. This driving force of passion, what we hurt for inside to have, is the destination we strive for, that drives us. We have passion, yearn, care and seek truth and endure the hardships of truth with endurance. Truth takes time, but the reward is worth it. Endurance is required, not giving up.

We can never have the totality of truth. We can never be absolutely perfect. But that doesn’t stop us from reaching for the truth, from reaching for self-improvement, betterment, change, evolution, etc. The good kind of passion, hurt, suffering, endurance, is with Moral Truth/Law/”Love”, the good and the right.

We want to carry back and get rid of the evil, not hold onto it, suffer and endure it as a negative in our lives. The bad kind of passion is to hold onto falsity and evil, to carry and bear it, rather than send back the evil to nullify it, and remove ourselves from its grasp and weight that holds us down. The evil we carry that we create ourselves and that we are coerced and allow to continue is a weight we must bear. Most people bear with it in ignorance and let it persist. We need to nullify and negate the evil around us, by being aware we are bearing and carrying it in the first place.

There is also the word druid that has the same root and meaning as “true” and “endure”:

A “druid” is to know that which is “firm, solid, steadfast”, as a tree is. This symbolizes the solid foundation of reality and truth. Firm, solid, and steadfast. To endure something is usually taken as a negative thing, to suffer it. But is has a positive meaning as well. The original meaning that is rooted in solid, firm and steadfast, like the truth is unshakable to stand firm and steadfast.

The opposition of truth and falsity plays out in our life as enduring the hurt and suffering all around, that we may feel, in order not to break and fall apart in some form of psychosis or breakdown. That is how we need to endure and have endurance for the hardships in life.

We need to be strong and withstand the onslaught against our “minds” and “hearts” if we are to learn about the reality we live in and overcome these barriers of falsity.

This is the crappy end of the stick we have the endure and suffer. All the evil that we are creating as a whole, and especially since we let it continue, means we are going to continue to suffer in the negative even if we choose to be in denial and willfully ignore it. This is why it’s vitally important to face and accept the current condition, not deny the negative in the world and in us. We will keep being weighed down until we face the corruption, and stop bearing it by doing something about it.

Truth Endurance

True relates to steady, steadfast, firm, solid, and wood. To endure, to harden in, to make hard, solid, steadfast, firm inside, to make true inside. En-dure, “in”-dure, “in”-ture, “in”-true. The truth, needs to be endured, suffered, carried and beared with, as our passion, what we “hurt” for, the ramming drive and force we have to move us forward or what we move towards.

Truth and Moral Truth/Law/”Love” fuels us as we get more of it. Truth will steel ourselves and make ourselves harder and more able to bear the evil around us so that we can learn from it and then finally do something about it. Truth is hard and solid, and we need to endure the truth, in all the beauty and horror of the current condition resulting from falsity we allow to exist. We need to harden and steel ourselves from being manipulated by the deceptions, falsity, negative, evil and immorality. Truth will make us into warriors that are able to withstand steadfastly and confront the evil.

Only by making ourselves hardened and steadfast to face the truth and falsity, good and evil, will we be steeled and protected from be manipulated by the falsity, lies, deception and evil. Truth is what allows us to endure and protect ourselves.

Truth is to be carried all the time, we have to bear it, all the truth about reality in its horror, darkness, and evil as well as the beauty, light and good. Once we remove the evil and falsity, it will no longer be there to be beared with. The weight and burden will be lifted.

We need the courage to look in the mirror as well. We have to bear, carry, suffer, and endure the trials and tribulations of honestly facing reality. Keep the true, and send back the false, keep the good, send back the evil. Both need to be faced, hence we carry and bear the memory through time (endurance), either as conceptual knowledge or experiential knowledge, but we are not bearing it through creating it.

We stand under, and hold up (extol) truth in our lives in the long term, while the evil we are holding up in our lives must be stopped. The force of evil must be sent back, not carried further. To send back the evil, to nullify feeding it through upholding, carrying and creating evil.

Knowledge of evil needs to be endured and understood in order to help others let go of their burden and release, return and send back the evil they are carrying to no longer create it and feed it. If the individual evils are removed, the overall evil is also removed. Individual creation of evil is what feeds the overall evil.

We endure and suffer in “mind” and “heart” with the knowledge of good and evil, truth and falsity. To have the hard, solid, firm, steadfast composure in “mind” and “heart” to bear, carry, suffer and endure through it. That ram, strike and collision force with the hard truth in reality can hurt. This is what we suffer. Facing the truth hurts.

As should have been clear, pathos and passion relate to suffering and enduring. Pathos also relates to calamity, which passion relates to through hurt, as hurt is relating a ramming, striking, collision, which is a form of calamity. So we can see passion and pathos are relating in many ways. Pathos is derived from the same meanings as passion, but it has additional meanings specifically related to feelings and emotions, mostly of pity or sorrow. Passion is Latin for the Greek pathos, so they essentially are the same with minor variations. Compassion and sympathy mean the same thing in essence, and both require empathy to feel the passion, suffering, hardship and hurt that we are all going through because of our aggregate actions to create the world we create.

I mentioned reciprocity, and cause and effect earlier. These are aspects of balance. A balance uses a scale. But what do we need to be balancing? If you read my post on Maat & Morality, and the scales of balance to measure and weigh ourselves compared to the feather of truth, then you can see how this also applies here. We need to balance the truth in ourselves, and expel the evil. We need to weigh and measure the truth compared to falsity, the good compared to evil.

You never balance good and evil literally, only relationally. When we use a balance, we set two things on scales to compare their relative measurements. We measure one thing to see its relation to another thing measured. We can measure good in comparison to evil, and we can discern between the two. We are not to balance good and evil in our lives in a literal sense. We relate good to evil so that we can come to know them in greater degrees in order to end slavery and create freedom (an anarchistic goal). You do not literally balance evil and good and engage in them both equally. That is pure folly.