I HAVE WRITTEN A NUMBER OF POSTS lately that talk about the lack of empathy that I see dissolving many efforts and alliances among the politically active, or just feeding unnecessary negative exchange. By “politically active,” I mean those who care very much about people and how we live and grow or suffer or progress. That is, at least, the idea. That is the purported agenda. Sometimes in reaching for precious and important things, though, we forget that the journey is the Now, and the goal but a trajectory in reality, a direction. How we do is the room in which we sit, and What We Fight For a map tacked on the wall.
Online, given enough commenters, we so often see so many threads on topics important to people devolve into anger and flaming, and in its worst instances, abject ugliness and vile hate. You say what happened here? Why is it that we must tilt in this direction? People burn out in their efforts. Not simply from frustration born from bearing a heavy load or fighting hard against tough odds (not that those are not enough). But from meeting endless barrages of anger, or negativity, or disrespect, or non-understanding. This does not replenish us, it drains. It does not nourish us, it does not unite us, it convinces nobody of any point, it is not effective for much of anything, it overwhelms, and one day, in the middle of it, you say What the hell am I doing here, anyway? What was the purpose of this?
Somehow we have lost the capacity to recognize ourselves in each other. You know, people talk a lot about the federal deficit, but one of the things I always talk about is an empathy deficit.”
—Barack Obama
There is a false dichotomy available in what I imagine is every person’s mind, one easy to buy into. Sort of a built-in downhill slope, path of least resistance that leads into imaginary constructs…that become traps. We become guided into these divisions, these paradigms, told these are the two options. We become “Pro-this” and “Anti-this,” “Democrat, “Republican,” “Left,” “Right,” etc—and that is the end of it. We fall fast upon one side or another…and there we grab tight. And we do this in so many areas. We hear a word or two or phrase from someone, imagine we have sussed out their angle on an issue, and/or know of their sex/ethnicity/background or party, and summarily slot them into the “opposite” camp. That is the end of it, and we treat them with all the consequential anger or invalidation we feel the Opposite Campers deserve. We go head-to-head as if after enough battering, one side must give way, revealing a victor. And even if we say we do not believe in this shape of contest, our actions testify otherwise.
Our capacity for empathy in public life has been diminished, and not solely because of inattention or callousness. Habit, custom, and our political and philosophical theoretical orientations have conspired to make the political sphere a colder place.
Since the Enlightenment, empathy, friendship, intimacy, and companionship have been all but exiled from the political sphere, a place ideally reserved for dispassionate and objective deliberation about brute facts. This was a radical break from classical political theories. Aristotle believed the health of the polis depended upon close bonds of friendship among citizens. But Kant believed ethical relations must be based on universal, disembodied reason. Empathetic acts might be good, but they are not legitimate cases of moral action because they are not based upon purely reasoned obligation and duties. Adam Smith, of course, believed the invisible hand of the free market could do for us what fleshly hand-holding could not do in modern society: reduce frictions among people and make for more amiable if more superficial interpersonal relations based upon commercial transactions.
Furthermore, empathetic bonds between citizens threaten loyalty to the state, or even to lesser organizations like businesses. […]
—Seeing with Tucker Carlson’s Eyes, Glenn Smith, Huff Post
Theory (at least theory I learned in one of my Soc classes) would tell you that the more social marginality someone suffers, the more empathy they have. But that is why Theory is not Truth. It is thought. Because while the social marginality = empathy formula is very often true, sometimes those who have suffered being an outsider or being stepped upon turn to making others into outsiders or doormats, as a way of compensating. But it is these very traps that truly stab at my heart; to see us perpetuating what it is we seek to escape. It is so very human, and I know that path too well. Sometimes, even for moments, we trade off the risk and pain of personal work and growth for the readymix of self-righteousness and anger. But I suppose that is, funnily enough, another false dichotomy. Maybe they are both the same thing at moments, or related in a cause and effect way, rather than an either/or.
Yet, sometimes I think we do “other” our pain onto people, and turn others into the symbol of the wrongs we feel; make them our problem. Actually, I’m sure we all do this at different moments. I assume that it is another internal path of least resistance for a human. And bound to be utterly counterproductive to all the good energy we pour into moving against the tide, working for change. Batting at others, fighting ourselves….
As far as much of our modern-day arguments, I have no idea when we decided we were all so simple, so easily bisected. It seems everything from our political party system to each and every political issue is cloven into two warring sides, arguments, paradigms. And if there is only one of two sides to fall on, what more choice does one have? Acting and thinking as if there are only two viable positions to take in any area curtails reasonable conversation, thought, and alliance. It necessitates division. Is this how it has always been? Does it really need to be that way?
We need the constant presence of a “third party”—and not just in terms of our political parties. We need a third party showing up in all our bisected ideologies; to personally install a reflex that deemphasizes or counters the “Fallacy of Bifurcation” wherever it attempts to assert itself, and in any of its aspects. How on earth do we reintroduce this kind of paradigm shift into such a well-entrenched system of reinforced dynamics that claim otherwise?
Sometimes I use the word “labels” when talking about these traps. Some say “othering,” as in when you Other someone; make them alien to you, distant from your experiences, essence, and empathy. I guess another way to say it is that this habit or approach is about reducing wonderfully unpredictable and complex human creatures and their realities into pre-conceived boxes and slots and theories and doing it to bolster one or more old arguments that we are pleased to continually reinforce. And in the interim, forgetting the interconnectedness of all of us. That is—and not to lose anyone in HippieSpeak, I mean this very literally—forgetting that if a person is allowed to speak their truth honestly, to the Whole, and without pressure to conform to anything/side, theywill bring an angle to the common reality that the larger whole very much needs; a piece to the puzzle of what is best for all.
“Every dictator and tyrant is aware of the potential threat of friendship.”
—Kurt Riezler, philosopher
Speaking for myself, I find that regardless of what I say right away in reaction to a new thought or even just the introduction of someone else’s thoughts, sometimes I still need time for everything to stew, to move on its own, to reach out and touch the other pieces of my awareness and experience base and thus find its own scale and sense. We are so quick with our conclusions and classifications. Not every statement or idea or essay needs to be immediately shaven and plucked and sized up and tossed on one or the other side of the truck. Maybe we need a little more time, or to shift down a gear.
Maybe there is no Two Sides. Maybe that is an illusion whispered into our ear over the course of many years. Maybe there is a snapshot or portrait of where we should go, an image we all paint together, every view and voice needed to create the large, multi-shaded and colored mural of our collective karma. Doesn’t it seem that way with all the varied types of people with varying views who all feel their voices are crucial? Could we all really arrange ourselves so dichotomously as to fall on opposite sides of a hundred different divisions, and yet, feel harmonious? I am just recently understanding so much of this. Again.
Maybe the shape of This vs. That—this dynamic of two armies clashing vanguards and one falling away is a socialized political shape, and that rasping bugle of reveille not a call we need to heed.
and I think in the end it’ll be the kindness that makes all the shit come crashing down, eventually.
not the theory. the kindness.
—The Strangest Alchemy
Taking firm sides and intense sparring have their places, just as internal cellular forces in our own bodies continually attack and defend as processes crucial to our healthy physical functioning, just as heat produces a diamond (well, sometimes forces more sinister than heat are involved). We will always disagree and seek to test each other’s arguments. Sometimes it’s just plain fun.
But so much is in the approach. I must remember I am always in between one thing and another. (And that so are others.) And my relationship to everything need not be fixed. What would make me hostile to someone’s thoughts or ideas but my own fear that I could have mine so easily shattered? This is a death grip. No Thing is fixed, and rarely any person truly unreachable until they have decided they won’t be reached or that they have reached their own end. And if we leave so little room for our commonality, and our humanity, what do we hope to become through these hostile and aggressive means? What will be left standing when all the dust settles?
If we treat people around us with an angry heart, people will inevitably respond with anger. We then have an environment of violence vs. violence. However, if we treat people with kindness and compassion, they will not find it so easy to remain angry with us. So we need to start from within ourselves and learn to cultivate an attitude of non-harming and non-violence. Then we will have a standpoint from which to build peace. If we have peace in our minds, then the world we experience will be at peace, even when from an objective point of view, the world is in conflict. When we are at peace in our mind and we are not generating conflict and violence, then we can truly begin to help others attain peace and eliminate conflict.”
—A Buddhist Master’s Advice to Young Leaders, Master Sheng Yeng, Shambala Sun Magazine, July 2007
If you watch over your own shoulder, you realize that when you listen or read, you do it in different ways. Sometimes you do it very openly, accepting; you feel something resonate and you open to it, let it flow through you, ring you up and down like a silver bell symphony. Sometimes you listen very carefully, guardedly, a voice in your mind almost sounding out after each statement you hear—to provide context, refutation, or doubt. Sometimes you listen with a pointed agenda, blurring anything but words or ideas that you maintain a “Search” for, as the information passes into your ears and through your filter. I’m sure we shift gears back and forth, for different reasons and purposes. But clearly there is no one way to “listen.” (Despite the fact that we speak of “listening” or “not listening,” as if there is a switch that only flips back and forth, two slots).
Sometimes a “conversation” or “debate” moves into an area and there are no more open hearts or minds. I don’t think it is always so irreversible. But then, sometimes you have to know when to walk away, as Mister Harper said. Because sometimes the “fightbuzz” takes over, and the fight forgets its reason for being. Or adopts a new one—a dull, and inertia-driven and pointless one—along the way.
I feel expansive and at peace, when I can listen to a fellow human being with a different kind of intent. Where I remember that the person in front of me may be just like me. Too often, instead of using the facelessness of online dialogue to strip away those visual and aural cues that might make someone Otherly and thus more easily identify with them, we use the anonymous, dissociated vehicle of online text to dehumanize; to strip the message of worth or heart or meaning so that we can pounce or perhaps just to rouse the negative energy buzz.
Sometimes people talk to me certain ways in threads and I say to myself Where are these people? Who are they? Because they only seem to exist online. I do not meet them in my life walking about. I have lived and grown up in a number of places, and for almost forty years and in city, country, and suburb—and I have never seen a conversation in a room progress, on a regular basis, into people rising up, shouting, leering, screaming, getting high on mob fever, dropping cruel and indiscriminate barbs. That’s jail behavior, if anything. But in everyday life and society? I do not run into people spitting invective or insult at me in our disagreements during the course of a day or in their very first statements to me being utterly and blatantly unfeeling. Nope. It does not happen. I do not instigate it, and people do not bring it on me. Not unless they are intentionally attempting violence. Or mentally ill, in which case it’s hardly personal.
So the Internet sometimes becomes surreal. Where is this place where people talk like this upon first meeting? Who are these people? Where the hell did they grow up? What are they thinking???
But what happens if you take an utterly infuriating comment someone says or writes and you imagine it as being said by your best friend? Or family member, loved one, sister or brother or child? A (possibly—) hateful, irritating cluster of words is then transformed, at worst, into a misguided view that you hope to temper with what you feel is truth, and at best, it is sentiment you don’t quite agree with, but might consider plausible. Maybe before it would make your belly knot up, but once you imagine a sibling saying it, you laugh.
What do you opt for in your life? Fear or trust? You can reason and find fear. But with understanding, you realize there is so much more beauty than I could ever fathom… .”
—Fear, or Trust?, Prem Pal Singh Rawat
What makes the difference? Whereas first it was a statement beyond understanding or tolerance, you have added love and understanding to those same words. And now they are not the same at all.
When listening, when speaking, when conceiving—I feel that the more we find those things that unite us, the stronger and larger we become. I must be larger than my habits and my comforts and my fears if I want to make something new. I am not always up to it. But I know that nothing worthwhile is made without love. Love is revolutionary and irresistable and positive change is impossible without it.
Here’s how Kurt Riezler, philosopher, pre-World War I assistant to the German chancellor, and friend of Leo Strauss, summed up authority’s dread of interpersal bonds among its subjects. His is not an extreme view. He just had the guts to say out loud what other theorists of authority disguised in less blunt language.
‘Whichever way friendship is defined in a given society, whether it is considered a private concern or a public matter, it always is a political phenomenon…friendship can easily become the basis of conspiracy. Every dictator and tyrant is aware of the potential threat of friendship. Dictators know that friendship often provides a bond more enduring than other social bonds and hence can become a power base from which their power can be assailed. In political persecutions and proscriptions of all manner, inquisitors have always included the friends of their primary enemies in their attack. History has numerous examples to support this point.‘”
—Seeing with Tucker Carlson’s Eyes, Glenn Smith, Huff Post
We are so many people, with many different interests. With different ideas of where to go and how to get there. With different needs and different hurts and different backgrounds and different histories. We can focus at every moment on all these differences, and this keeps us splintered in myriad miniscule ways. Note, this is not the common mainstream line out to knock “Identity Politics” or “Special Interests” or “Feminism” or any other group not in the mainstream of power that feels the need to address differences. To my mind, those are crucial agendas and needed areas of thought and action. I am saying something very different, although I know the “O, you’re splintering our unity” argument is made against these groups.
But the splinters do not lie in varying experiences being joined, or varying approaches to life, the political arena, and public dialogue coming together. The splinters lie in batting away people who—upon first blush—do not think or look or sound or talk in the manner that you do. The splinters lie in our tight grip upon the conceptual bat that we too often use to whack down that which immediately seems at odds or strange—or resembles closely a thing we already dislike, or to prop up a scarecrow in the fields of our own imagination.
So, many differences, but there are also a few basic feelings common to all of us. And a few basic rights that we feel all people, all humans, should have. A few things that no person should suffer. A certain dignity and kindness that all of desire shown to us. I’m sure that rather than getting mired in the myriad of variances between all our positions, we can agree on these basic things as guiding forces in finding our way to higher ground.
Imperfect, foolish, zealous, passionate—we are what we are, we make our way there. I just want to remember to keep my sight on the horizon, not on the guardrail. I tend to steer toward my eyeline.
—Crossposted at The Unapologetic Mexican