Blanket compassion will shift the distribution decisively towards the manipulative end of the spectrum, and may paradoxically decrease the compassion with which the genuinely despairing are treated: for they are apt to get lost in the great mass of pseudo-distress and manipulation, and often their conduct draws less attention precisely because it is less attention-seeking.

Theodore Dalrymple on Terence Rattigan, Suicide and Prison - or how incontinent compassion has become a Keynesian stimulus to the economy of the caring profession (April 18, 2008). - The Social Affairs Unit (2006 - 2008)