Empathy
Empathy
“Like most of my values, I learned about empathy from my mother. She disdained any kind of cruelty or thoughtlessness or abuse of power….Whenever she saw even a hint of such behavior in me she would look me square in the eyes and ask, "How do you think that would make you feel?" … I find myself returning again and again to my mother’s simple principle—"How would that make you feel?"—as a guidepost for my politics…. It’s not a question we ask ourselves enough, I think; as a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit."
—Barack Obama in The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Before I read this, I was already fascinated with the concept of empathy. In many ways it seemed a cure-all for the problems in our country, and internationally. If only people had to feel what others were feeling, then they would not act (or vote) the way they do. Of course, I did not realize that I should have replaced “they” with “we.”
But Barack has really taught me what empathy means. His call to Americans to empathize began at the Democratic National Convention when he defied the idea of red and blue states, standing up for the complexities and minorities in each. In his writing, speeches, town hall meetings, diner lunches, reunion rallies, and other events he speaks to what it really means to be one people. The education of an elementary school child in Roxbury, MA should be equitable to the education of an elementary school child in Newton, MA, or South Central Los Angeles, or Westwood, CA, or the South Bronx, or Chappaqua, NY. If there is a fire in an inner city apartment complex it should elicit as much sympathy and community financial support as a fire in a 6-million-dollar-surburban mansion. If members of our society—whether gay, foreign, female, disabled, or any other identification—are denied civil liberties that the rest of see as universal rights, WE need to feel like WE are being denied those liberties. The empathy deficit he speaks of indicts the conditions that not only support our widening income and achievement gap between the wealthy and the poor, but also between ethnicities and races our country’s philosophy proclaims as equal.
This golden rule is well-exemplified in folks who pay the ultimate, and perhaps penultimate price. In Iraq, conservative estimates say tens of thousands of civilians have died in the last five years, many more than died in the previous 20. More Americans have died there than died on September 11th, 2001. Empathy means not taking any of those lives for granted. If a 5-year-old child dies in Baghdad, he is our child. If a grandmother is shot in her home, she is our grandmother. If a solider is killed in a car bomb, she is our sister. Barack Obama has opposed this conflict from the start, whereas his rivals either still support it, or only ended their support for the war when it became politically advantageous to do so.
There are endless examples. Why is America okay with the idea of one in four black men spending time in prison during his life? Why is America okay with the shipping of seemingly endless jobs oversees, depriving working people of income and benefits through legislation like NAFTA? Why do Americans continue to allow lobbyists and special interests to fund political campaigns and pummel Congresspeople with requests that drum out the voice of the regular voter? Why is the cry against international human and sex trafficking, sometimes into American cities, not louder and more effective? Why do we think personal responsibility is divorced from interpersonal responsibility?
The answers to these questions are long and short. One speaks to the erosion of popular democracy in our federal system over the years, a frightened trend that has slightly rebounded with huge voter turnout in Iowa and New Hampshire. However, another answer is fear. We fear that our children or parents will not be safe. We fear that we will not enough money to go to college, to buy what we need or think we need, or to pay for dinner tonight. We fear getting into an accident or contracting the flu because we don’t know how we’ll pay for needed care. We fear losing our jobs, thus settling for occupations that make us unhappy and keeping our voices quiet from power brokers who might appreciate hearing them. We fear weapons and dictators, and decide that we will ignore the immoral implications of pre-emptive strike.
That bully on the playground at recess—an indulgence no longer available to many public school children—was full of fear when he or she pushed us around in 3rd or 7th or 11th grade. His taunts came from a place of deep woundedness. Perhaps he had learned that greed was the key to happiness. Or perhaps she was beaten at home for no apparent reason. Or maybe he had convinced himself that no one would really like him anyway. Or maybe she saw everything in life as a competition. Whatever the case, do you remember seeing a kid finally stand up to that bully despite a mismatch? That brave kid is Barack.
Barack realizes that we need to feel what the bully is feeling in order to make headway. We need to recognize what the bully has to lose, because each of has that capacity within us to turn to fear rather than hope, to competition rather than cooperation. We don’t have to change our values to do this, nor vote for a candidate who contradicts them. We just need to feel what’s it like to stand in another’s shoes, no matter who they are. This empathy is the key to Senator Obama’s political philosophy.