Talking about 'becoming that beggar', I think that understanding this inherent unfairness can be eye opening in terms of understanding and empathizing with people who we'd normally be disgusted with.
One of the biggest challenges I think a person can face is accepting these unfair turns of life with grace, when it's you who falls overboard and gets left behind.
To take a personal example, my fiance left me a few months ago. That was an *incredibly* bitter pill to swallow. Honestly a ton of pretty dark thoughts crossed my mind, most being a wish to get some revenge, to make her suffer like I was suffering. What kind of person wishes that on another?! And that was over a relatively small thing like a girl deciding she didn't want to stay with me forever after all. I consider myself a nice person, yet there I was with hate in my heart. Just that easily.
It really opened my eyes to the kind of turmoil a person must go through when they lose so much more than that, and made me sympathetic to some who go on to commit atrocities because of that (though obviously not condoning their actions). When we're overboard and drowning while the rest carry on, seemingly uncaringly, it invokes such a terrible feeling of unjustness. We suddenly feel like anything we do is now justified, because LOOK AT WHAT THEY DID TO US.
So we seem to agree that we can't solve the underlying issue of having to leave someone floundering behind the boat sometimes. But is there anything we can do to try to mitigate the result of that? i.e. try to heal the hurt of the unfairly treated party? This is where I really take issue with the religious approach. I think the only true way to move up and past this is to raise a generation of people who can face these trials and reason through them, and teach their children to do the same.
One of the biggest challenges I think a person can face is accepting these unfair turns of life with grace, when it's you who falls overboard and gets left behind.
To take a personal example, my fiance left me a few months ago. That was an *incredibly* bitter pill to swallow. Honestly a ton of pretty dark thoughts crossed my mind, most being a wish to get some revenge, to make her suffer like I was suffering. What kind of person wishes that on another?! And that was over a relatively small thing like a girl deciding she didn't want to stay with me forever after all. I consider myself a nice person, yet there I was with hate in my heart. Just that easily.
It really opened my eyes to the kind of turmoil a person must go through when they lose so much more than that, and made me sympathetic to some who go on to commit atrocities because of that (though obviously not condoning their actions). When we're overboard and drowning while the rest carry on, seemingly uncaringly, it invokes such a terrible feeling of unjustness. We suddenly feel like anything we do is now justified, because LOOK AT WHAT THEY DID TO US.
So we seem to agree that we can't solve the underlying issue of having to leave someone floundering behind the boat sometimes. But is there anything we can do to try to mitigate the result of that? i.e. try to heal the hurt of the unfairly treated party? This is where I really take issue with the religious approach. I think the only true way to move up and past this is to raise a generation of people who can face these trials and reason through them, and teach their children to do the same.