Auditioning for Empathy: The Theater of Deservedness

How conditional compassion, performance-based charity, and inherited trauma built a system we were never meant to survive alone

🎤 I Was Asked to Name What Hurt Me

In therapy, I’ve been unpacking the harm I’ve endured at the hands of so many people—people whose choices stole my innocence, my light. Realizing there is so much I locked away—knowing it would hurt too much to remember.

I can name them. The actual people, persons, individuals—I know who did what—at least, most of it.

The rest? My body remembers.

It lives in the tension in my neck.
The constant reminders in my shoulders.
In the worry that knots my stomach.
In the startle response I can’t unlearn.
In the insomnia that always comes for me when I need sleep the most.

Growing up, I was taught—not explicitly, but through a thousand subtle messages—that the abuse I endured was my fault.
That I should be grateful for what I had.
Even though I can name the people who hurt me most with titles familiar to everyone.

I was told these people were sent to me by God—or worse, that I chose them. That my suffering was part of a divine plan. That I came to this earth to be tried and tested.

But what if that plan was written by men?
What if the God they described only ever sat beside the rich?

Over time—through books, therapy, and the stories of others rising from their own ashes—I started to see something I couldn’t unsee:

The people who hurt me were hurt by a system that convinced them pain was part of the plan.
That love had to be earned.
That help was conditional.
That only the grateful, the good, the obedient—deserve to be saved.

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🫂 But I Know What Real Compassion Looks Like

It isn’t televised.
It doesn’t come with applause.
It doesn’t ask you to smile through your pain.
There is no PR team or cameraman calling the shots.

I’ve seen compassion in action from people who have just as little as I have to give—and yet still do.

Compassion is the instinct to look behind you and see who needs a hand—
not because you pity them,
but because you remember.

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🧬 A History of Hurt That Forgot Its Author

We carry it in our bodies.
This architecture of pain.
This trauma blueprint,
written so long ago
we forgot there was ever a blueprint at all.

The code was carved in the time of kings—
and priests who said God loved the poor
but sat beside the rich.

It was written by colonizers
who renamed theft as destiny
and forced gratitude from the ones they starved.

It was passed down like heirlooms:
“Be humble.”
“Be grateful.”
“Be quiet.”

Because if you are loved,
you will not be spared.

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❓ But What If That’s the Lie?

What if we were never meant to do this alone?

What if the test was never about endurance—
but about remembering each other?

We know now:

• Trauma rewires the brain.

• It lives in the blood.

• It doesn’t stop at the skin—it passes on.

So what happens when the trauma gets so deep
that the only way to feel alive
is to perform your pain
to prove your worth?

To say:
“See? I survived. That must mean I matter.”

But we already matter.
We always did.

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🎭 The Theater of Deservedness

Somewhere along the line, we stopped just surviving and started auditioning for survival.

We stopped asking our neighbors and our communities and started asking those at the top. Maybe because our communities had to ask the top, too. Maybe because the top had hoarded the wealth that was never meant to be theirs in the first place.

And instead of seeing the gap they created, they asked for a performance.

Charity became content.
Generosity became PR.
And reality?
Reality became just far enough off that it could tell us what truth was supposed to feel like.

Exhibit A: Reality TV
Shows like Rich Kids Go Skint, Undercover Boss, even The Simple Life drop wealthy people into temporary poverty like it’s a museum of our suffering. They gawk, they cry, they say, “Wow, I never knew.” Then they go back to their mansions, donate to charity, and pat themselves on the back while we stay in the wreckage.

Empathy cosplay.
Performative compassion.
It’s not change. It’s content.

Exhibit B: The Mormon Church

A church with over $300 billion in hidden assets…
…Relies on unpaid labor, but pays those at the top.
…Tells poor families to tithe 10% before eating.
…Builds malls, ranches, and condos—but hands out hygiene kits in disasters.

You give your labor.
They get the legacy.

It’s spiritual capitalism dressed in salvation.
And we’re expected to be grateful for it.

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📎 The Receipts (Because They’re Not Even Hiding It)

• Oprah & The Rock gave $10M for Maui wildfire relief—0.1% of their wealth—and asked the public to fund the rest.

• GoFundMe is now one of the largest “healthcare” systems in the U.S.—powered not by billionaires, but by strangers.

• The Mormon Church spent just $1B on humanitarian aid over 30 years. That’s 0.3% of its assets.

• MrBeast films charity because it gets views. Translation: your survival is content.

• Warren Buffett and others signed the Giving Pledge—but most haven’t given much. They pledge to maybe give it later, through tax-friendly structures.

• The average billionaire donates less than 1% of net worth annually. The Institute for Policy Studies calls it what it is: “Hoarding with a halo.”

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📜 We Were Warned—Are We Ready to Listen?

Six months after calling out performative charity and billionaire benevolence, Living Issues ran another piece—still trying to shake the public awake:

“So long as the people are foolish enough to pass laws that enable one man to rob another, the robberies will continue... He does not believe that the remedy consists in stealing from the poor man all he possesses and then giving part of it back to him and calling it charity. Stop the rich from stealing and the need of charity would disappear.”
—Living Issues, December 1898

They knew.

They were telling us—it’s not the people, it’s the system.
It’s not a lack of compassion. It’s legislation written for looters.

And still, 125 years later, we’re begging for the same scraps from the same hands that wrote the script.

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⛔️ So, What If We Said No?

What if we stopped auditioning?

What if we stopped trying to out-cry each other for crumbs?

What if we stopped performing our pain for algorithms, for corporations, for churches that call it love while hoarding the means to actually help?

What if we stopped letting billionaires choose which lives are worthy of saving?

What if we looked at the people next to us and said:
“You don’t have to prove a thing. I’ve got you.”

No application.
No crying on camera.
No audience.
No deserving narrative required.

Just care.
Because you’re here.
Because you exist.
Because you matter.

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💡 The Collective Is the Key

We don’t need a billionaire.
We don’t need a bishop.
We don’t need a celebrity.
We don’t need a brand. A corporation. A campaign.

They say: “We’ll help the poor… but only if you make them perform first.”

We’re taught to prove our pain
to be palatable
to be polite
to make trauma inspiring

So the rich feel good about helping.
So the Church can post stats.
So the audience can cry without changing anything.

We’ve seen what happens when regular people show up for each other—without needing a story that makes them cry.

That’s compassion.
It doesn’t trickle down.
It moves sideways.
Hand to hand.
Human to human.

We already are the safety net.
We already are the rescue.
We just haven’t been told that’s what we’re doing.

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⚒️ Let’s Build Something Real

Let’s name this system for what it is:

It’s not compassion.
It’s not charity.
It’s not godly.
It’s not generous.
It’s not moral leadership.

It’s control.
It’s branding.
It’s engineered inequality dressed up as empathy.

It’s the illusion of care designed to keep us compliant.

This is not compassion—
It’s moral theater.
And we’re not the ones being entertained.

But we’ve seen the truth.
We are the receipts.

We were never meant to audition for survival.
We were meant to remember each other.

And remembering is the first step to rebuilding.

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❓ So Let’s Say No

What if we stopped pretending they were doing us a favor?

What if we stopped dressing up desperation in polite language and calling it a success story?

What if we said:

• No, I will not cry on camera so you can feel good about giving.

• No, I will not say thank you for the crumbs that came with conditions.

• No, I will not let you sell my suffering for clicks and call it compassion.

• No, I will not perform my pain just to be seen as human.

Because what they’ve built isn’t a safety net.
It’s a stage.

And the ones who fall through it are told it’s their fault for not acting grateful enough.

We are not props in your redemption arc.
We are not pawns in your press release.
We are not broken things to be saved by the same hands that created the wreckage.

What if we looked around and said:
“You don’t need to audition to matter. You don’t need to beg to belong. I’ve got you.”

Not because a brand sponsored it.
Not because a church approved it.
Not because a billionaire saw a headline in it.
But because it’s what we do.

Because we remember each other.
Because we are the system now—whether they want us to be or not.

No middlemen.
No gatekeepers.
No performance.

Just people.
Just care.
Just enough of us saying no to the audition and yes to the rebuild.

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⚒️ Let’s Write It Together

This system is designed to extract wealth, not redistribute care.
It trains us to perform pain to prove our worth—while those with power grow richer by watching.

Wealth rewires the brain. It blunts empathy. It builds delusion. It tells a story about earned success while hiding the scaffolding of inherited advantage.

That story becomes a script:
“You made it. They could too. They just aren’t trying hard enough.”

The wealthy are taught that they’re generous.
The rest of us are taught to be grateful—for scraps.

We’re promised we’re almost there—just one more hustle, one more sacrifice, one more filter on your suffering.

But we never arrive. Because the goalpost moves. The system depends on us being tired, compliant, and just hopeful enough to keep performing.

But here’s the truth:
You don’t need wealth to be well.
You don’t need a platform to be powerful.
You don’t need permission to matter.
And you don’t need to audition to be cared for.

We could design a world where people thrive—not just survive.
Where enough is enough.
Where we measure success by collective safety, not individual accumulation.

We’ve already seen glimpses of it:

• Mutual aid

• Rent strikes

• Fridge shares

• Community childcare

• Survivors showing up for each other when institutions looked away

That’s the real system.
That’s the rescue plan.

And it’s not coming from above.
It’s rising from below.

So we say no.
To auditions.
To applause traps.
To the trauma economy.
To the performance-based mercy machine.

And then we start building something else.
Something real.
Something ours.
Something that remembers what they wanted us to forget.

Compassion was never meant to be a contest.
It was meant to be our code.

Let’s write it together.

📚 Keep Reading & Keep Questioning

This is just one part of an ongoing series where I’m unpacking the economic history that got us here—and exploring how we build something better.

I’m nobody special in the grand scheme of things. But this—this moment, this fight—has me thinking deeper. And when I think, I write. When I write, I learn what I don’t know. And that learning pulls me down rabbit holes I can’t ignore.

This project has pushed me beyond my usual topics. It’s lit a fire. And I hope you’ll come with me—while I trace the socioeconomic roots of where we are, and use what we know now to imagine something more just, more honest, more human.

This isn’t about waiting for the elite class to wake up.
It’s about showing them we already understand how they got there—and that we’re paying attention to what happens if we let them keep going unchecked.

No threats. Just facts.
The game of monopoly always ends the same way.

But we don’t have to play it out like that.
We can choose a different ending—one where we all get to live full lives, where we learn, grow, and heal from what came before.
One where the world we build actually lets all of us thrive.

Start with Part 1 to trace where this rabbit hole of connections all began.

If this resonated with you, please share it.
Share the ideas, the questions, the frustration.
Do your own research. Challenge it. Critique it.
The only way we move forward is by thinking, learning, and building—together.

If you want to follow me you can find me @anOriginalCreation on TikTok.