Hmm. Somehow I thought that Compassion 2 is what most people have in a more brutal and merciless time, such as Second-Age Creation.
Can you walk past a beggar without offering money or assistance? You're not Compassion 3+.
Can you make a hurtful joke at a friend's expense? You're not Compassion 3+.
Can you drive past a hitchhiker? Shrug off the deaths of hundreds because they're in another country? Totally ignore a charity hotline advert? Cheer on action heroes as they slaughter dozens? Start a fight to feel better about yourself? Argue that some people deserve to suffer? Enjoy an iPod knowing it was assembled by Chinese slave-children? You're not Compassion 3+.
If you're Compassion 3+ and you do these things, you have to burn Willpower like a candle to get through the day - leaving you distracted, tired and unsettled. Your average human probably has two dots in
every Virtue, if that - Virtue 3+ is the point where you find people who just cannot let something go, people who will not back down or compromise. Heroes, in other words.
This is a weirdly binary way to handle it, and is only as context-sensitive as your Storyteller, so it's probably for the best that they ditched it - but it makes it clear the sort of person you are. Someone with Compassion 3+ has a bleeding heart, and will give of themselves, over and over, even unto destruction. That we live in the modern first world, where suffering is often less visible, doesn't mean there aren't people who cannot stand for it and people who shrug and say "well, it could be worse - it could be me". The latter are in the majority.
As for your example - personally, I really enjoy playing characters who don't seem to have wandered into Creation straight out of the modern West. Exalted who think nothing of slavery, or don't even understand what sexism is, or who buy totally into divine right or the words of the gods, or who are inured to casual death, or who don't really think of foreigners as people, or who consider the ability to read to be suspicious, and so on. It helps me distinguish them from myself, and produces more interesting conflict. I once played an abolitionist who was nevertheless an aggressive defender of his local caste system, because the former was the vile subjugation of a fellow man, and the other was a divinely-appointed structure for keeping society harmonious and producing useful members of society in these complex and modern days.
That said, First Age memories are a perfect excuse for a sudden shift in ethical standards.
Do you prefer to stay in the kennel?
Once, there was a maiden…
…who was always looking forward to the way things would be.
She said, "Someday, I'm getting out of this place.
"Someday, I'm going to kill that boy that put me here.
"And while I wait, I don't much mind,
'cause it's better to dream tomorrow than to be there."
***
"I'm holding at bay," she said, "what I know to be true.
"That I'll never get out.
"I won't let my dreams die!
"I'll hang on to hope," she said,
"until Time itself ends. But —"
"There's always an ending," said Time.
