Watching King Kong, I kept thinking about how strange it is that we find ourselves siding with Ann Darrow’s attempts to defend Kong in spite of the fact that her compassion causes as many of the deaths in the movie as Carl Denham’s greed. Compassion is really a remarkable thing, especially because the compassionate cause so much of what is wrong in the world. The truth, as far as I can tell, is that emotionally driven morality is as worthless and destructive as willful immorality. Our emotions make us into monsters — not monsters of cruelty or greed, but of shortsightedness. We save our children at the price of thousands of other children, we kill the fathers of others in the name of keeping our families whole, we destroy countless things to save the ones we love.
Goodheartedness is as much to blame for man’s state as selfishness. What is needed is intelligence and consideration, not compassion. Compassion is another misguided abstraction that covers too large a field of experiences to guide us well through life.