On Compassion

Annotated Bibliography On Compassion Ascher, Barbara. On Compassion. 5O Essays. Ed. Samuel Cohen. capital of Massachusetts Bedford/St. Martins, 2004. 35-38. Print. Barbara Aschers essay offers examples of every mean solar day life in New York urban center to support her thoughts about grace. She uses two different encounters to back up her arguments and points. The prototypal encounter involved a woman, with a child, giving m whizy to a homeless soul as he starred at the rare child. Ascher questi angiotensin-converting enzymed as to why the woman gave to the homeless. Was it fear or compassion that actuate the gift?The second encounter involved a homeless person coming into a cafe, smelling of cigarettes and urine and the owner rushing to bowl over the man a coffee and a bag of food. Twice Ascher has witnessed this and one argument made was, what compelled the woman to feed the man? Was it because of pity? anxiety? Compassion? As winter comes the mayor kicks all the homeless of the streets and into Bellevue Hospital. Ascher means that what the mayor is doing shows compassion, but another side of her fears it is because of raw humanity offending our sensibilities(38).She uses kindle words to basically describe how population dont similar to face reality and turn back how life really is. People barely walk past the homeless, pretend nothing is wrong and life is pure(a) forgetting about the other humans in rags, starving, and living day to day on the street and in parks. For most it wasnt a life style chosen, yet people only see what is right in antecedent of their eyes An awareness of rags with voices that make no sense and scream in inarticulate rage(38). Ascher believes and states that, Compassion is not a character character like sunny disposition.It must be learned, and it is learned by having sorrow at our windows, coming through the gates of our yards, the walls of our towns, adversity that becomes so known that we begin to identify and empathize with it. (38) Ascher then, compares the homeless to the Ancient Greeks, reminding us of our parking area humanity. In my opinion, I believe that the point of this essay was to speak to people through writing. Ascher made very good points about her beliefs on compassion. For example, how she believes compassion is learned and not just a character trait. I for one agree with her.Being compassionate is not something that you should describe yourself as, but more so an action of doing or giving without second-guessing, or thinking of it. Its something you cut off up as a child in your home and lodge and it grows on you, it becomes part of your identity. In Aschers essay she gets her point crossways with plenty of arguments to back it up. She uses encounters from everyday life so readers can see and understand where she is coming from. Ascher made me change how I see and think about compassion. Thats why she is such a great writer because the execution of her work is just excellent.