How to and Why Educate and Raise Children to be Compassionate

READING TIME: 5 minutes

Whether members of the executive branch of the government or average Joes in the streets, Nepalis in the highly stratified society along caste and class lines grow up not giving sufficient consideration — where and when it matters — for the lives of people who are not within their circle of concern.

What is the reason behind our lack of practice with that?

While Nepali society is highly multi-ethnic and outwardly appear to be a melting pot, we live pretty exclusive lives — from who we marry to who we socialize or spend most of our time with to the social and professional network we move within etc. We clearly define “us” and “them,” — the “them” or the “other” are those from ethnicity and/or caste they have limited engagement with or understanding of. Worse, forget expend limited time, energy, and effort to understand the “others,” Nepalis maintain a safe distance from them most of the time, as it were. Consequently, we learn to value human life differently.

That is, the value a Nepali places on the life of another person is dependent on their direct or indirect relationship to/with the person, their gender, caste (Nepalis are still very highly tribal), financial worth, and the person’s connection(s) to the influential and powerful, among other things.

The State demonstrated not all lives have equal value in the aftermath of the earthquakes of 2015 and the coronavirus pandemic…as it has always done throughout history BUT dramatically, flagrantly, and regularly during the two calamities!

As for ordinary citizens, the following two-tweet thread partly reinforces their mentality.

At the extreme end, there are cases of Nepalis committing murder on the basis of caste — such as Dalits — as well as raping and murdering disproportionately highly Dalit females.

Valuing human life differently, not thinking through the consequences of one’s actions on the lives of others, not giving sufficient consideration to that which we should (such as ignoring minor but important details) etc. etc., as far as I am concerned, is one of the many reasons behind Nepal’s failure to tackle the coronavirus pandemic adequately.

Again, privileged, well-to-do, and entitled Nepalis as well as others who think or believe their life to be more valuable than that of others, for whatever reason, don’t think twice about making other people do work that they don’t want to because they are too “important” to be “stooping so low” and “getting their hands dirty.”

What they are failing to recognize during these unprecedented times of the pandemic is that, to put others in danger, even those whose lives they aren’t really concerned about, is to put oneself in danger, potentially! That, of course, is no different from a vast majority of ordinary Nepalis not following traffic rules and, at the same time, not realizing how that affects them — how that puts their own selves in danger!

But again, how many think or have thought about that?!

Not doing so has had devastating consequences for the population of the country all throughout its modern history and, not surprisingly, glaringly during this ongoing coronavirus pandemic. As a matter of fact, the following is my own take about the reasons behind many of the pain and suffering of the population the last two years.

So, in a twitter thread, I shared the need to raise and educate children to be compassionate, to show empathy, and how to do that. Here it is.

My recommendations are NOT exhaustive, of course. If interested in more, see the additional reading materials below.

What do you think?

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Additional Reading Materials

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