But Jeanette, if you witnessed someone committing child abuse, for example, would you remain neutral and only appreciate the good?
I am delighted Jeanette has come back to you on this.
Permit me, if I may, to expand my own view further....
To witness anybody doing anything going against the unacceptable boundaries of their society, offending the morals and ethics of their own culture and breaking the Law is simply to see someone attached (to a greater or lesser degree) to their own suffering.
People act in certain ways because they are clinging to some form of misguided desire to have power and control over others. Sexual, physical, mental and psychological abuse, violence, cruelty, anger, harshness, nastiness, rudeness and bad manners are all forms of a desire to be in control. And we're all of us guilty of one or more of these characteristics at one time or another.
I'm not in any way suggesting that if we're rude to someone, it makes us a potential paedophile. But it's different levels of the same thing.
Recognising these factors as common attachments experienced by everyone, permits us to practise compassion and care for other human beings.
And whilst it is of paramount importance to stop, prevent and ultimately eliminate aspects of these behaviours, and punish, confine and possibly re-educate the 'guilty, we must never lose sight of the fact that these people are just as human as we are, and have the right to dignity, compassion and Love.
Indeed, this may be the one thing they desire and require above all others.
Without the essential, basic and fundamental qualities of Compassion and Love, we are lost, and nothing we do is of any value if these are not the basic motives that drive us to act.
