Amma, the “Hugging Saint” photo by The Daily News.
For everything, there is a season. There are times when dulling the sensitivity of daily fear and anxiety heaped upon us through a cathartic “Holy shit!” or point-and-laugh variety late night show is required. There are times when opening our lesser wounds and examining our existential hopes communally to bring about the all-too-slow evolution of progress is the most noble thing we can and must do.
But there are times when more is required of us. This is that time for us.
The very emotional confusion of 9/11 combusting the outset of my senior year in high school was immediately followed by classmates joining and my closest friends marrying into the military - stone baby faces flooded with patriotic pandemonium in rural Missouri where flags never touched the ground. A visual memory still loops now and again of watching bombs drop against a black sky while George W. Bush tried to assuage my group of college freshmen as we sat in a dirty bar that war was a necessity. Each of those moments were soothed regularly by tuning into Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. Nothing felt more like a magic pill for the dizziness of spinning through your twenties amidst the aftershocks of an historical marker in how much of the globe forever views time than letting a cast of B-movie misfits help you choke it down with a straight pour of the insanity that day - on the rocks with a chuckle. It eased the mind. With due respect to the originals, the list of on demand talent for satire today is deep and rich. The monologue jokes so juicy I have to lick the Schadenfreude off my lips after each punchline in delicious revelry. It’s a subtle drug I’ve let calm the same jitters for long enough I no longer imagine living without their easy effects.
There is always a place for satire. It’s how we air our dirty laundry in public while still being able to look each other in the eye at the grocery store. It’s a mean joke with a bite of truth that shines the spotlight on unacceptable things in our society we are too polite to bring up at the company picnic. It’s the necessary class clown that lets the monotony of busy work remain tolerable - always assuming work is still being done.
But I find myself not doing the work. I read more factual articles likely than the average American, but my research is still mediocre at best, often choosing my insular bubble of preferred sources and assuming my already existing knowledge from “keeping up” will fill in the gaps. Finally, with that same ego, I’ve mastered a kind of inactive activism I feel is the most required of me while watching another headliner melt that spoonful of sugar over their hot tongues for my nightly ritual of feeling slightly superior.
I’m not saying that’s you. I’m saying I wonder if I am legion.
I don’t have the scientific proof, but the evidence that does exist suggests even nature thought empathy was important and difficult enough to patch a hardwire so our experience became universal. Many animals show neurological responses to pain in others, the “mirror system” in humans triggers emotional and sensational brain patterns to recognize another being’s trauma as if you are experiencing it yourself. Those that do not experience empathy are by-in-large considered disordered, even feared by some.
Why?
Philosophers in the next millennia will have to give you a definitive answer, but let’s surmise together.
Rules make survival easier. Empathy makes the rules matter. The breakdown is clearly too simple, but whatever degree of consequence needs to be regulated, from laws of the land to unspoken norms, we base our agreements of civilization on empathy.
The extreme is publicly enjoyed on twenty-four hour networks of empathy porn: murder documentaries, reality tv, sports heroes. These are all connections with strangers that tug at our heartstrings in a masterful equation of “she reminds me of my niece/neighbor/nurse” and “oh my god, that’s horrible” that makes us all feel fortunate but essentially the same. The less extreme can be found in the middle section of any news website front page: soldiers surprising their kids at school, a goat nursing orphaned puppies, a one hundred year old birthday girl. We love to connect in limited, removed, easy ways.
The real stuff is harder, maybe that’s why biology ended up creating a system to limit your ability to ignore someone else’s pain. I’ll admit I have only ever watched one of the multitude of available police brutality videos. I have yet to make myself listen to George Floyd utter the words “I can’t breathe.” It hurts me, but I must ask the question: will the pain cause my action? Do I have to feel it to have the courage to recognize the urgency of the moment? Pain is a sensational signal of a problem. Pain doesn’t mean nothing can be done, it means do something before it gets worse - nature’s warning system. Is it coincidence that someone else experiencing pain makes your brain react the same as when you have a problem? Is it such a leap from species that play nice survive to “I am my brother’s keeper”?
Yesterday, Donald Trump stood on a stage at a state party-sanctioned event and cried wolf while people cheered. The back doors of politics are being opened for snakes and back rooms are being used for conjuring demons to do the bidding of those among us lacking those neurological pathways of empathy. The shows you watch after dark for a thrill about the monsters lurking in Everyday USA who enjoy pain and need to control on a primal level are missing the biggest story. One of those is in a headline every day but because he hasn’t chopped them up and buried them under a deck, we don’t notice him. He is a predator that haunts your news cycle instead of your nightmares.
Persuasion is most effective when a play on empathy. President Bill Clinton’s popularity with his flaws could give us all lessons on the efficiency of an “I feel your pain,” campaign. Connection helps and encourages us to work together, empathy makes you a part of the struggle and therefore invested.
In these potentially perilous days ahead, I want to embolden us to put down the satire for a moment. Snarky, sharp, true commentary on the problem has been shown throughout historical political points of strife to serve as an efficient and essential weapon for many battles we’ve fought. But it isn’t the strategy that wins the war.
Love wins. Call me a rainbow dreaming hippie with too much time on her hands, and I probably couldn’t argue. Fortunately, you don’t have to take it from me. The greatest leaders in our written and oral stories, the guys who fought uphill both ways with the boulder-heavy curse of arriving before their time on their backs, have already told you. Love wins, and it’s the only win that lasts a while.
A third of people can’t be convinced by our third of people. Call it Hatfield and McCoy irreconcilable differences, call it self-servers, call it ignorance. But that’s not our target demographic. There’s a whole other third who just aren’t sure who to trust, where to find information, how to have a conversation without ruffling feathers. These are people who don’t want an authoritarian government, who believe one person, one vote. They have no interest in the kind of chaos we’ve been experiencing but feel threatened and undervalued. We can sit around and paint with a broad brush, laughing at how stupid they all must be. But this is a time that requires the difficult action.
Open your heart, open your door, open your damn mouth and talk to people. Most people are approachable when it comes from empathy. Don’t smirk, you’re not allowed to use the word “dumb”, you must keep your mind open enough to hear the source of their words and not the words alone.
Ask questions. We can only find out how much we are alike if we learn about one another. Sometimes listening is more worthwhile than explaining, and feeling valuable or validated is where trust grows. It’s okay to disagree, it’s okay to have emotions, look them in the eye and let yourself react to those neurological mirror system sparks that Mother Nature made pretty sure you had. This third, these are people. They’re scared too. Their thoughts are valid. You’re not a criminal for being wrong, your life and reputation should not be based on a mistake. It must be based on your ability to grow, listen, and respond.
Show yourself. Let yourself be a neighbor instead of a teacher. Admit your truths in ways that only speak for you, but that make you human. Show you can be trusted to hold their truths without unwarranted assumptions.
Empathy will save us. The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, the principals of freedom are all acts of empathy. We feel vested that if my neighbor is hurting, it hurts me and therefore I have a duty to make the world better. Non-violence is hard. Listening can be hard. Fear, anger, helplessness is always hard. Love might even be hard.
In the long-game surely ahead of us and in each moment of courage and determination summoned to be better people than we were yesterday, choose love. Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly even when it’s hard. There’s no greater cause.
