Clementia and Misericordia
The uses and misuses of Pity
I have been convicted through want indeed, yet not of arguments, but of audacity and impudence, and of the inclination to say such things to you as would have been most agreeable for you to hear, had I lamented and bewailed and done and said many other things unworthy of me, as I affirm, but such as you are accustomed to hear from others.
Crito 29, Plato
Socrates preferred drinking hemlock to resorting to the Appeal to Pity. Today most political arguments boil down to “HOW CAN YOU JUST STAND THERE AND WATCH THOSE POOR OPPRESSED PEOPLE GET LITERALLY KILLED!?!?” Palestinian families, beheaded Israeli babies, BIPOC activists, undocumented immigrants, oppressed genderspecials, hate speech trauma survivors — the list grows longer with each passing day.
Once we looked up to the strong and the smart. Today those things are “privileges.” We didn’t earn them through hard workouts and long days in the library; we got them as a gift and used them to become oppressors. The only people who can truly understand our world are those who are ground beneath its heel. Their voices must be heard and obeyed so we can overthrow the people who have committed the ultimate sin of being more talented and capable than us.
Even Socrates had to admit that the Appeal to Pity works. But why does Pity work — and what are its limitations?
According to St. Thomas Aquinas:
[F]rom the very fact that a person takes pity on anyone, it follows that another's distress grieves him. And since sorrow or grief is about one's own ills, one grieves or sorrows for another's distress, in so far as one looks upon another's distress as one's own.
Aquinas describes two motivating factors for pity. We pity a friend or loved one who has fallen on hard times. As he movingly puts it, “he who loves another looks upon his friend as another self.” We may also pity someone when we fear we may fall prey to his misfortune. If Aquinas is correct — and he usually is — pity is rooted in two of our deepest animal instincts, love and fear.
We’re hard-wired to feel protective toward children. If we weren’t, very few babies would survive their first year. The site of a child in distress provokes a visceral reaction. The sight of a happy child gives us a warm glow. We think baby animals are ridiculously cute because their wide eyes and stumbling approach to the world trigger the same reaction.
The fight or flight response exists in just about every animal. But thanks to our superior cognitive abilities, we can be frightened not just by a present danger but also by potential future threats. This can become a destructive loop that we call anxiety. And just as hunters flush prey of hiding, those who wish to manipulate us can use our real and imaginary fears to their advantage.
When a charity uses pictures of hungry children, it seeks to bypass your logic circuits and appeal directly to your heart. Only a few warped sadists take joy in a child’s suffering. Most of us feel sadness, followed by a desire to Do Something. If we have children, or want children, the pain is especially acute.
Advertisements that warn, directly or obliquely, “DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU” appeal to pity through fear. You feel sorry for the person who used inadequate deodorant, wore an unfashionable outfit, or paid too much for their car insurance. But you have grafted your face into the photo. You imagine how horrible it would be to smell bad, to be poor, to wear ugly clothes.
These appeals invariably come with a solution to the plight at hand. The advertiser gets your attention with a pain point, then offers the cure. You can change the life of this adorable, pitiful toddler. You can buy their deodorant, their clothes, or their insurance police. These ads end with a call to action that alleviates your pain and fattens their coffers.
The starving kids in those stock photos don’t stand to benefit directly from your contribution. Granted, others who look very like them may get a meal or two from it, but that’s not even certain. And while it’s nice to smell good and have money, there’s no reason to suppose their hygiene products or car coverage is better than that used by the poor smelly slob or the that their wardrobe will win you friends and lovers.
Marketers know emotions, not logic, get people to reach for their card. We like to think of ourselves as rational beings, but reason plays a minor role in most of our activities. Our cerebrum spends far more time dealing with fight-or-flight responses and conditioned stimuli than it does pondering the ramifications of future events or weighing the advantages or disadvantages of each action. This conflict between reason and passion has long been known and examined by great philosophers.
While you’ll still hear the words “inclement weather” occasionally, “clement” has largely fallen out of use in American English. Both words are derived from the Latin clementia. Seneca the Younger explains in his essay De clementia:
Would not he, who constantly punished his children by beating them for the most trifling faults, be thought the worst of fathers? Which is worthier to impart a liberal education: he who flays his scholars alive if their memory be weak, or if their eyes do not run quickly along the lines as they read, or he who prefers to improve and instruct them by kindly warnings and moral influence? If a tribune or a centurion is harsh, he will make men deserters, and one cannot blame them for desertion…
So also a huntsman, both when he is teaching puppies to follow the tracks of wild animals, and when he uses dogs already trained to drive them from their lairs and hunt them, does not often threaten to beat them, for, if he does, he will break their spirit, and make them stupid and currish with fear; though, on the other hand, he will not allow them to roam and range about unrestrained.
If we had endless clement days of clear skies and sunshine, we’d soon be facing a drought. Sometimes rain is necessary and sometimes punishment is necessary. But endless inclement days would leave us flooded and endless ham-handed beatings leave their target sullen, resentful, and uncooperative. Clementia seeks a middle path. It punishes when necessary, but only to the appropriate degree. It also grants mercy, but only when mercy is an appropriate response.
Both clementia and misericordia are often translated as “pity.” But they are very different concepts. Misericordia is derived from the Latin words misereri (to have mercy) and cor (heart). Clementia involves reason, while misericordia is grounded in emotion.
There are times and places where misericordia is useful. Doctors don’t speculate on the moral uprightness of the people they operate on, nor do soup kitchens feed only the righteous poor. Christianity recognizes that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We’re called to alleviate the suffering of even the worst sinners in the hope that they might partake of repentance and redemption.
But while we’re called to forgive those who have trespassed against us, the Lord’s Prayer says nothing about offering unconditional forgiveness to those who have trespassed against others. Because misericordia is emotional, it must also be tempered by clementia. Caring about the physical and spiritual well-being of violent criminals is one thing. Releasing them because the thought of people in prison makes you feel sad is another.
Unfortunately, that distinction has been deprecated of late. Instead of leniency based on supporting evidence, we face calls to abolish prisons and defund police. Misericordia is in full swing and clementia is seen as the slave master giving his Negroes Christmas gifts. So how did we get here and how do we get out?
Both clementia and misericordia come from a position of power. You can only give clemency to someone whose fate is in your hands. You can only pity someone who is suffering from something that doesn’t presently afflict you. (Fellow sufferers can respond with empathy and advice, which is more helpful than pity and which is one reason why support groups are more effective than sad feelings).
Those who provide laundry lists of their disabilities on social media profiles do so to gain attention and credibility. But they miss that very important point. People will occasionally throw money into a panhandler’s coffee cup, but they don’t ask beggars for advice. Pity gets you scraps, not respect. It’s not enough to list your weaknesses. You also have to show what you have done with your strengths.
At this point some readers may be thinking “how can you be so heartless, you ableist, racist, sexist, poor-shaming fascist pig!” I’m acting from clementia, which means I actually give a shit about these people. Honest if uncomfortable advice that helps people change their lives is more helpful than spare change or upvotes. I’m quite skilled at mockery, but I’m also capable of compassion and tough love. I don’t need panhandlers and e-beggars, and I’d like to do whatever I can to see that they’re no longer forced to resort to such tactics for survival and socialization.
Much that passes for “pity” nowadays is merely performance. It is driven not by love but by a desire for social status. Many people who insist that X Lives Matter have little actual interest in the target of their faux tears. This season’s good cause is a fashionable outfit they wear in public gatherings. And when the next season rolls around, those causes get thrown in the closet in favor of newer and shinier causes.
Like misericordia, this status-seeking is grounded in emotion. The Followers of Causes want to be seen as good people, but they also want to see themselves as good. By scratching their emotional itch with a donation or a slogan, they convince themselves that they are doing something to change the world. And their circle of friends, driven by the same motivations, reinforces their feelings with kind words. The end result is lots of self-satisfaction but very little actual change.
Indeed, change is the last thing most of these crusaders want. They want to be the pitying rather than the pitiful. To lose their objects of real and pretended affection would be to lose one of the pillars of their self-image. Black lives only matter to them when a Black life gets snuffed out in some photogenic way by a police officer. Black lives lost to intraracial violence or drugs require the sort of nuanced contemplation that is the hallmark of clementia.
Rather than tackle these difficult problems, they are ignored or dismissed with meaningless magic words like “systemic racism” or “more humane drug policies.” These phrases soothe their doubts, but they also place the blame squarely on imaginary oppressors. These Good People With Big Hearts cannot imagine the targets of their pity being anything but broken and weak, or consider any options that might help them become whole and strong.
If you want to change the world — and it desperately needs changing — think about what you want to change. Your thoughts and prayers are useless if they’re not accompanied by action. Small acts of kindness are more effective than lengthy screeds about fashionable problems.
If you’ve grown accustomed to promoting yourself and your causes through pity, stop immediately. Right now you can still milk crowds for asspats, but the pendulum is swinging back. Instead of moving between clementia and misericordia it’s swinging between excessive mercy and mercilessness. For years politicians and activists have behaved like aggressive spare-changers. But those campaigns have reached saturation a while back, and you’re about to discover just how close pity is to contempt.
Clementia seeks to respond to problems in the most merciful way possible. We all agree it’s better that the downtrodden be lifted up. Now we need to agree that we will not accomplish that solely by tears and words.