A Man in Love (My struggle book 2), Karl Ove Knausgaard, Day whatever, empathy and action

Through a series of events / sets of feelings, listed below (though not an exclusive set)  I've failed to find the BBC series The Victorian Farm on watch again or Netflix, but found it on Youtube on my Nexus 7 tablet then and fixed it up so that it plays on the Mac Mini through the TV. 

The events:

1. Picking out Far From the Madding Crowd for our lodger to read.
2. First time out rabbit hunting at the back of the downs.
3. Weekend comedown misery /sadness, empathy, happiness
4. Heat and warmth and the smell of the outdoors in summer.
5. Karl Ove of course.

I'm nearly in the state of mind that I was when living and teaching drama and english in Hackney in 1979/80, a long hot autumn where i was so phased by the teaching and the urban life that I watched All Creatures Great and Small on the huge TV we had in our skip furnished living room in short life housing in Rushmore Road.  It's that longing for something a bit simpler and idyllically rural.

Then that, for some reason got me thinking about empathy and good works. If you are as lucky as I am, and have any degree of sensitivity, then you have to feel deep sadness and compassion at the plight of so many around you, and of course in the world at large. At times it's almost overwhelming. And I began thinking about those practical, energetic types who do good things, who become councilors  who become Mother Teresa's if i can use such a crude blanket term to cover all passionately driven do-gooders. And I suspect that empathy and compassion are not a great part of their lives - there is no room for it - they're driven by and ideology of compassion or empathy which is not the same thing. So for example a "mother Teresa" type will have no problems excommunicating the aborticant, the left wing ideologue has no problem with the ends justifying the means. And that's putting aside the nakedly ambitious, the sociopaths and the unreflecting. Perhaps these people are effective in that they get things done, but I think they damage as well. Single mindedness always carries bigotry on its shoulder. Good reflective people are slower to act, read books, make our society better, the others shoulder their way through the crowds, knocking the slow and the meditative aside, and, incidentally kicking the shit out of each other where their paths cross.