Thank you mud, back atcha.
Your descriptions of how you think about N-situations are quite helpful to me. I think the difference between teens who "get it together" and those who make a bee-line for crazytown... is that inner self and whether that self has decided: hey - I matter to ME, at least; I know right from wrong and I don't want to be doing wrong. The crazy-town groupies have decided that they do NOT matter to anyone... and that's a wound that's quite deep... so they stop mattering to themselves. It can be quite difficult - it's like the task of a zen master - to be in the right place, at the right time, to reach into beneath all the mystery, fear, defensive bunkers to that hidden, hurting self - to gently say: It's OK. C'mere - you need a hug. You matter to me.
It's your responses to Lighter & Hops, though, that helps me out with something I've been wrestling with: values and morality. Obviously, when you're a teen who gets stuck in crazytown, you're a tad confused about values and morality... what your own self believes, rather than what others tell you is "correct" and validation from others isn't really required for individual beliefs. There seems to be a lot to choose from these days. And I know I went through a period of experimentation with different "systems". I've hung on to bits and pieces of each that touched me; that felt "right" and "true".
I've observed a societal confusion over the shades of meaning between sympathy|empathy, empathy|compassion, empathy|expectations for personal responsibility... and personally experienced, once again, the cognitive dissonance between something that's totally faked, compassion used like a club to beat up on someone else... that kind of thing. That kind of personal observation/experience is... well, it certainly wakes up the old lizard brain!

So, I've been researching... coming at the problem with a dictionary, reading from as many different angles & perspectives as I can, talking to a lot of different and different kinds of people... collecting enough "frame of reference" to make a decision. And I think sometimes values and morality are always a "work in progress" - they can contract toward the more absolute... or expand, becoming more flexible, mutable... breathing, sort of... within the world and times we live. It's curious and fascinating.
I do have to say, I've also experienced the same kind of compassion that Hops has described. It's like a force that's around us all the time, but that we aren't always aware of - because we can only tune in our "receivers" to one wavelength at a time. Sometimes, it makes itself known to people in extreme distress... and we can learn to tweak the knob on the receiver just right to get it to "come in". But there's also a "popular" form of compassion - that alters the meaning - that's artificial and fake (the one that makes the pit of my stomach drop recognizing the cognitive dissonance). And I've found that judgement - in the form of discernment first, then a moral judgement - is my best "tool" for walking those fine lines between the two. There is nothing wrong, in my book, with moral judgement when it's a personal dictionary of how to behave...
that's not imposed on others.There's been a trend lately to adopt these changing definitions of values and morality - and hesitation or doubt about accepting this, is grounds for being branded a threat to society. Any form of "judging" - this is good, this is bad - that doesn't match up with the flavor of the month, is verboten. Where've we heard this kind of thing before?? SIGHHHHH.....
What I'm noticing is that people are becoming confused about this, in our society. And some of those artificial forms of compassion are being offered up as "better than" the originals - new & improved, you know? Re-invented for the 21st century -- like human nature evolves that fast (HA!). Narcissism is swapped in for self-respect, self-esteem that's earned through good deeds & earning it... another moral shell game.
But that's a topic for another thread. Carry on...