Martin Luther King, Jr.: An Unusual Gift for Compassion

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was unusually gifted in his ability to see the connections that bind humankind together, and in his ability to convince others to follow his vision. In his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. King wrote the now-famous line, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." He wrote of the need for unity to overcome the pervasive racial discrimination in the American South, but his words have an intentional and timeless resonance that reaches far beyond the struggle of his day.

Dr. King was unusually gifted because such a broad perspective on our common destiny seems to be in short supply. Unexpected natural disasters like the Haitian earthquake, the 2004 tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina bring out the best in us, but these are surprising, cataclysmic events, and the global outpouring of support (and donations to relief agencies) is short-lived and typically not seen with the many man-made disasters that rob individuals of their integrity and their lives on a daily basis.

Is our compassion for victims of poverty, war, genocide, and crimes against humanity tempered by the fact that these conditions appear to be chronic and never-ending? Earthquakes and tidal waves happen in an instant, but conflict so often seems intractable. Are our attention spans really so short lived that we can respond to the suffering of some but tune out that of others?

Recent social psychology research puts science behind what Eddie Izzard once joked about: People seem either unable or unwilling to comprehend large-scale suffering, and the likelihood that we will help those in need diminishes as the number of suffering grows. This is not a case of compassion fatigue; it's a compassion deficit.

That our world has seen and celebrated the likes of Dr. King, Gandhi, and Mother Teresa should show us that we are not fundamentally hard-wired against seeing the "bigger picture" and responding to mass human suffering, but that something else, something over which we have control, causes us to tune out appeals to help those trapped by man's own disasters. Many, many people dedicate their lives to these causes, but if a fraction of the aid being mobilized for Haiti now had been available before the earthquake, the destruction might not have been nearly as complete.

Those of us living far away from the devastation of poverty and war are far too comfortable, far too complacent -- rather than celebrating the legacy of Dr. King once a year, we need to do a better job of living it, every day of the year.

Photo: Walter Albertin