Do you feel any compassion for Dzhokhar?

I don’t feel compassion for him, but I do feel sorry for him. It’s obvious that he was an extremely gullible and impressionable person, and was basically indoctrinated by his older brother when Dzhokhar was a teenager

I do not have any emotions about him specifically either way, except for my contempt for the death penalty. I do feel a certain amount of sorrow for anyone that is being murdered by the state, no matter how guilty or how severe their “crime”.

I hadn’t thought much about him either way but my attitude toward a 19 year old is “Old enough to know better.”

No compassion. He was old enough to think for himself and make his own choices.

I don’t hate him. If anything I pity him for being stupid.

Nope. Not a bit. This was not a random, unplanned act or accident by a careless kid.
He spent lots of time buying the pressure cookers, buying the explosives, disassembling and reassembling the materials. He knew the Marathon was going to take place and knew it would be very crowded. He went to event and placed his device where he knew it would kill and injure many innocents – and be photographed for the best news coverage.
He had ample time to change his mind. He didn’t.
Nope. No compassion at all. He’s not worth it.

I do not feel compassion for him. He has shown and continues to show no remorse for the dead and injured. His actions caused the consequences.

I have no compassion for that terrorist.
My compassion is for the ones that are left behind to grieve for their loved ones that were murdered, for the ones that were maimed and have to live with their injuries the rest of their life.

I’m not sure whether it’s compassion I feel or the desire to have seen him get worse punishment, but I believe he should have been sentenced to life in solitary confinement. The older I get, the more difficulty I have with the death sentence, and life in a hole without the chance of a pardon seems pretty extreme to me.

Wow, @LuckyGuy, I’m really glad I’m not on trial for my life and have you on my jury.

Not compassion. Just the knowledge from personal experience that few examples of bungling folly can compare with what rattles around in the head of a19 year old boy. It’s the bedrock fundamental that allows the army and marine corps to exist as viable enterprises. To my mind, it makes more sense to lock the kid in a cage and allow him to reflect on his actions for a lifetime.

Yeah, I do. McVeigh he ain’t.

And meanwhile, mass murderer Chris Kyle (160 confirmed murders), gets a propaganda movie in his honour.
By comparison, the bombing only killed 3.

I agree with @rockfan. I feel sorry for him due to his age, bad choices, and sway his brother had over him.

I do not, however, feel compassion for him. That I reserve for the victims, the responders who helped, and all their friends and families.

He did, ultimately, make his own decisions.

I also completely agree with @stanleybmanly. Very good point.

Thanks everyone.

As usual, I’m working through my own thoughts/feelings here. This topic could be related to a common theme within many of my questions (free will, intention, etc). And any explanation I could express here re: my feelings of (what I am calling) compassion and Dzhokhar or anyone would likely not be sufficient to explain why I feel compassion.

After I asked the question, however, I realized that what really interested me were questions I embedded in the details at the bottom of my question. I suspected that they might get lost:

@hominid: “Is this a feeling that you only get for people who do things that you like? What do you feel when you consider him? Hatred? How does it feel to hate people? Does it make you feel better? Safer? Does hating the person – not just his actions – feel like a radical political act?”

Also, for those who express that they have reserved their compassion to the victims, I’d love to hear more. Is compassion a finite resource? Is the allocation of this resource based on a fixed supply, and means that we are bound to run out if allocate it incorrectly or insufficiently?

It’s pretty unanimous that everyone here is not feeling any compassion for Dzhokhar. In answering this way, are you stating it as a matter of fact – a fact that you wish you could change? Or are you stating that your lack of compassion is a fortunate fact that is inline with how you wish the world to be? If it’s the latter, what personal or societal advantages come with not feeling compassion for Dzhokhar?

I feel compassion for everyone that was once an innocent infant and child, but short of gross mental illness, once an adult, whatever you do is a choice. The 5 year old child does not say to itself, ” I can’t wait to grow up and be a fill in the blanks, kill my children, rape women and men, become a terrorist, bomber, murderer, serial killer etc.
However…cross the line and become a danger and menace to society, so sorry, but you need to be eliminated from the pod. Whether that is life in prison or execution.

I have expressed my fence sitting on execution after decades of being anti-death penalty. My views are shifting, and given the overcrowding of our prison system, decades of costly death row appeals, the gazillions of humans on this planet and the fact that these people will never be able to be freed without grave danger to the public, well….somethings gotta give and the way of nature is to eliminate threat.
If a rival stallion threatens the herd the leader is going to take it out or drive it away to protect the greater good of the herd.
That’s all I am going to say, I have no time or desire to debate, did that yesterday elsewhere here.

Of course I feel compassion for him. He’s young, was essentially brain washed and made stupid mistakes. Now he’ll pay with his life while others, who have done much more harm, sit in jail and at the head of governments.

Someone said it earlier in the thread. He killed the wrong people for the wrong reasons and that’s why he is hated.

I do. He was a stupid, impressionable kid (as all teenagers are) who’s mistake was to get talked into killing the wrong people in the wrong place. Had he been talked into joining the Army and killed 4 of the right people in the right place we’d all be haling him as a hero right now.

Am I alone in feeling compassion for this guy? You are not alone. I feel compassion for him. This is a really mixed-up teen who might be able to come around with the proper aid. Even if he can get the help he needs, he’ll have to live with the guilt of his actions for the rest of his life.

Is this a feeling that you only get for people who do things that you like? No. There are three people I personally know who I truly dislike. They live under the radar because they haven’t broken a law. Yet they damage people’s psyches in their wake. Yet I still hope that they will one day find a way to overcome what appears to be personality disorders and be able to experience empathy.

What do you feel when you consider him? Hatred? Sadness maybe?

How does it feel to hate people? Does it make you feel better? Safer? Does hating the person – not just his actions – feel like a radical political act? I can’t even conceive of hating a person. Their action(s), yes, but a person? Nah.

Am I alone in feeling compassion for this guy?

No. Not alone. I feel a lot of compassion, as well as pity, for this guy. The combo of genetic make-up and experience which made this kid capable of murder is tragic.

Is [compassion] a feeling that you only get for people who do things that you like?

Nope. I know I feel more compassion for people I like, but I think that’s fairly common.

What do you feel when you consider him?

I feel sad, frustrated, and a little lost. I don’t like the idea of all the bloodthirsty people in the world.

How does it feel to hate people?

Exhausting. However, it can be an emotion more comfortable than sadness.

Does it make you feel better? Safer? Does hating the person – not just his actions – feel like a radical political act?

No. To all three.

Wow, did this take a strange turn.

I don’t hate anyone – the Boston Killer, you, Osama bin Laden, anyone.

I’m surprised, in rereading what @hominid asked, that equated lack of compassion to hatred. That seems a very odd (and unsupported) jump.

Certainly not hatred, pity maybe more than anything else.

I feel no compassion whatsoever.
I do feel compassion for the friends and family who love him, and stand by him. I can understand having compassion for him, but, not knowing him personally, I have no compassion for a man that deliberately caused so much random pain, suffering and death.

If Maryland has the death penalty, he’s the poster child, regardless of my personal beliefs about the death penalty.

I don’t get it.

Sorry, I am the sans-news voice. I never saw a picture of the boy until today.
I stand by my posts.

I think compassion is more of a scale where 0 = indifferent and 10 = deep heartfelt empathy.

At 1 we have the sentimental compassion you might feel for humanity as a whole. I have an infinite capacity for this type of compassion. As I move up the scale, I need to have more empathy for someone. I need to invest some time and attention to get to know them, what they experience, what they might feel. Time and attention are finite and so my capacity for this type of compassion is finite.

I suppose you could say I have compassion for the killer, but he’s about 0.001 on my scale since he did kill and maim innocent civilians – something I frown upon.

What do I feel when I consider him? Disappointment in myself for letting the media determine who deserves my attention – feeding it to me with a spoon. Yes, I could probably spend more time reading his back story. Maybe I’d start to empathize with him on some level and he’d move up a few points on my compassion scale.

But I’d rather focus that attention on “the wrong people”: Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi and Martin Richard.

If I had been born into his life, I would like to think I wouldn’t end up making those same choices, but how do I know?
The death penalty seems fitting here, but I wish we could somehow destroy the environment that made him what he is.

Thanks again, everyone.

@filmfann: “If I had been born into his life, I would like to think I wouldn’t end up making those same choices, but how do I know?”

If I had been born as Dzhokar, with his genes, with his upbringing, I would have done the same thing. Other than our biology, experience, and prior causes, what else is there? If he had been born with my genes, to my parents, and had the same exact experiences, well then “he” would be typing these words right now. I can’t take any real pride in not having detonated those bombs at the marathon. The mechanisms that make me “me” are the same that made him “him”. And in a very real sense, Dzhokhar is another victim in this tragedy.

This isn’t to say that I’m justifying his actions in any way. But I’m trying to figure out why when I read and hear people’s thoughts on Dzhokhar, it appears to be a deep hatred. I could be wrong. But I know what hatred feels like, and it doesn’t feel good. It’s quite possible that I’m wrong here – that it’s not necessarily hatred, as @elbanditoroso states. Maybe it’s something else. I’m curious.

So, when I try to express (poorly, I know) why I actually feel compassion for Dzhokhar, it’s not that I am spending an excessive amount of my time and attention thinking about him. My expression here is in reaction to what I see as a complete lack of compassion for someone. And I’m currently having a difficult time making a special case for him. To consider him something excluded from cause and effect and inhuman seems odd. And it also doesn’t feel good. A reduction in universal compassion has an immediate affect on how I feel. It feels even self-compassion takes a hit.

I have no problem feeling compassion for someone like Dzhokhar. He is dangerous and should be locked up. But he is human, and he suffers like the rest of us. Sure, he caused a great deal of suffering. But if I care about the suffering of humans (and conscious creatures), then I care about the suffering of humans. That includes Dzhokhar.

@hominid, good reply, and thought provoking.

And it leads to another set of questions. You wrote: “But he is human, and he suffers like the rest of us. Sure, he caused a great deal of suffering. But if I care about the suffering of humans (and conscious creatures), then I care about the suffering of humans.”

Are all humans equally valuable? Is your concern for humanity across-the-board, meaning: does a mass murderer (Charles Manson) deserve the same empathy that, by contrast, Mother Teresa did?

MY view (as always) is somewhat more nuanced. We live in a civil society, governed by various social contracts. Does a civil society have the right – even the obligation – to keep itself civil? Perhaps by weeding those people who deny others their civil rights. Do those of us who live under a societal social contract have the right to punish those who break that contract?

I would argue that society, as a whole, does have that right.

@elbanditoroso: “Are all humans equally valuable? Is your concern for humanity across-the-board, meaning: does a mass murderer (Charles Manson) deserve the same empathy that, by contrast, Mother Teresa did?”

I am having a difficult time with “valuable”, so it may change my response. However, I’m not talking about intention or even action. There are intentions and actions that I see as better than others. As an aside, Mother Theresa is a rather controversial figure whom many see as a monster. But I get your point. Manson and Theresa had little real choice in what shaped their intentions and actions. This doesn’t mean that I can’t evaluate their intention and actions and make a value judgment.

So, do I feel the same compassion for Manson and Theresa? Good question. I’m not sure I am able to accurately evaluate this quantitatively. This is why I had asked about compassion and supply/allocation earlier. When I feel compassion for Dzhokhar, in a way that’s difficult for me to explain, I’m feeling deep compassion for myself simultaneously. But it doesn’t seem like an allocation of quantities. Crap, I’m horrible at expressing myself here.

@elbanditoroso: “MY view (as always) is somewhat more nuanced. We live in a civil society, governed by various social contracts. Does a civil society have the right – even the obligation – to keep itself civil? Perhaps by weeding those people who deny others their civil rights. Do those of us who live under a societal social contract have the right to punish those who break that contract?”

Don’t get me wrong. My conversation has nothing at all to do with our ability to keep ourselves safe from dangerous people. Dzhokhar is not someone who should be released to the public.

“To consider him something excluded from cause and effect and inhuman seems odd.”

The important thing is to be consistent. If you want to embrace the hard deterministic model, then every action that any of us makes is a product of an infinite causal chain which includes our biology and experiences. You had no real choice in asking this question and I have no real choice in writing these words. We have no real choice about the compassion we may or may not feel for anyone at all.

If you want to accept that any of us have a choice about compassion, then you need to accept that he made a choice to detonate that bomb.

So which model would you like to embrace? The choice is yours (or is it)?

I agree 100% with @Lawn‘s first post. I haven’t expended the energy to feel strong compassion or hatred for Dzhokha. I think that energy is better spent locally, with people I know and interact with personally, for the most part.

Not to dismiss @Lawn‘s thought provoking second post.

@Lawn I think going down the Advaita Vedanta path is a little too much for most folks even though “you” pose a thought provoking POV.

@ibstubro I agree, compassion begins a home.

@Lawn Excellent post!

@Lawn: “The important thing is to be consistent.”

I’m not sure that is the important thing in this case for me.

@Lawn: “If you want to embrace the hard deterministic model, then every action that any of us makes is a product of an infinite causal chain which includes our biology and experiences. You had no real choice in asking this question and I have no real choice in writing these words. We have no real choice about the compassion we may or may not feel for anyone at all.”

I have no real problem with any of the above, but I suspect that all rests on the definition of “real”. I am going to type a number right now: 5. I “chose” to do this. But I’m not privy to why I chose this. I only became aware of my choice. I’m not saying that we don’t make choices. It’s just that on some level, I am not sure that the model of self we have – one that is an entity that authors thoughts – makes much sense (to me, anyway).

Although, like I warned, any attempt that I make at explaining why I feel compassion could possibly be incomplete or wrong. The fact is that I do.

@Lawn: “If you want to accept that any of us have a choice about compassion, then you need to accept that he made a choice to detonate that bomb.”

I’m not necessarily making an argument that people should choose compassion (I’m not even sure what that would look like, or if it’s possible). Rather, I’m trying to work out my own feelings on the matter. But remember – I’m not only an effect. I’m a cause. There was a time that I didn’t feel compassion for anyone other than those people who did things I liked. But some mixture of experiences and influences may have led me to contemplative practices that have led me to either feel more compassion or simply be more aware of the compassion I feel. Dzhokhar didn’t read these words, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. But he did have influences throughout his life. It doesn’t matter that those influences were also caused.

I believe that it’s a trap to involve compassion or any other emotion in consideration of the issue. The question (to paraphrase @hominid) is which of the 2 positions is more “civilized”.

@hominid If experiences, genes, and upbringing are the same between siblings, how do you explain very different personalities between siblings, (like my brother and I, who are a year apart, yet have very little in common),

@filmfann: ”@hominid If experiences, genes, and upbringing are the same between siblings, how do you explain very different personalities between siblings, (like my brother and I, who are a year apart, yet have very little in common),”

You and your brother do not have the same genes, brain, experience, etc.

@filmfann

Experiences, genes and upbringing are not the same between siblings.

There is personality theory involved as well. Introvert/extrovert, intuitive/sensor, judging/perceiving. Many vast natural differences in how we all show up regardless of nurture.

@filmfann: The birth order of siblings can make a huge difference in their personalities and outlook, and also the way they may be treated and perceived by their parents.

I read his mother coerced him to do it along with the brother. His mother, a foreigner, a welfare recipient of U.S, and a shop lifter.

He’s muslim and his beliefs are since he’s killed three “infidels” (as muslims call us non-muslims infidels), that he should go to paradise and receive 72 virgins. Any other muslim bomber would want death. He should want to die. He should be exuberant!

It doesn’t make any sense that he isn’t wanting death, unless him and his family were trying to get him off the charges so he can go murder some more “infidels” for muhammad.

I bet his mother put laxative in the cookies she baked for her kids’ kindergarten class too.