Empathy – the Most Revolutionary Emotion
by: Dave Belden on March 16th, 2010 | 11 Comments »
I want us to organize, to tell the personal stories that create empathy, which is the most revolutionary emotion. – Gloria Steinem
It’s a good quote and you can find much more in Edwin Rutsch’s third Empathy Cafe newsletter just out. It’s worth scrolling through the whole newsletter–there’s a lot of depth there, from Obama to Tikkun author Kirk Schneider, Colbert to George Lakoff to HuffPost’s series on Empathic Civilization, in which various writers take off from Jeremey Rifkin’s new book of that name.
Edwin is a videographer who went to the California Republican Party 2010 Spring Convention this weekend to ask people about empathy. He has more often asked people on the political left but he tells me he had a good time. He started by asking people about their values. One student leader said “protection!” was a primary value for him, and Edwin asked about who he was protecting — it was his family etc. — and from whom. He asked if he was protecting his people from others who don’t feel enough empathy for them. “I guess so,” said the young man, a bit surprised to find he was objecting to people not having enough empathy. After another such talk that introduced the topic of empathy and made it seem relevant a student leader said, “You’re an interesting guy!” which of course delighted Edwin, promising that further connection and talk would be possible.
We have had a few posts here talking about how to talk with people across the political divide. Mike Ignatowski wrote about his Conversations at a Tea Party, and Miki Kashtan about Town Hall Blues.
If you read the illuminating article on the Oath Keepers in Mother Jones this issue–promoted as “Inside the rising movement of soldiers, cops, and sheriffs who believe it’s their constitutional duty to resist a tyrannical Obama administration”–you may be surprised by how much these soldiers object to the unconstitutional detentions at Guantanamo and the ignoring of habeas corpus. There is more common ground with liberals and the left than you might expect. For example:
He laid out 10 orders an Oath Keeper should not obey, including conducting warrantless searches, holding American citizens as enemy combatants or subjecting them to military tribunals (a true Oath Keeper would have refused to hold José Padilla in a military brig)…
Why is the populist energy rising on the right but not the left? How many empathic conversations have you had lately with an Oath Keeper or a Tea Partier? I haven’t had any recently. I am here in my little left ghetto. I’m not talking about empathy as a prelude to trying to convert someone, I am talking empathy as a way of learning what others are thinking and feeling. Once the connection happens, once you find they are interesting and they find you are interesting, anyone might change their mind a little or a lot, even you or me. I don’t think we need be afraid of that.
Thank you!
I had a conversation, recently, with a member in good standing, of the Tea Party movement. I had to, we are cousins. After several hours of listening to that person’s concerns, we discovered we had a great deal in common.
The number one similarity, we found, was a mutual love for our families and our country. The other discovery was the anger they (and those of us on the left) feel, comes from a deeply internalized and misdirected hurt.
We both grew up believing in the promise of a so-called American Dream; which over the last thirty years, vaporized. While we disagreed on the cause or causes, we came to the conclusion that we needed to work together, to restore our nation’s laws, our constitution, and the promise of a better life for our children and grandchildren.
If nothing else, and if we are honest with ourselves, one must admire their devotion to their beliefs (no matter how wrong-headed or confused) and their organized activism.
I have wondered how many, on the left, have taken the time and made an honest effort to learn about and listen to the very real fears of those on the right.
It may be much easier to dismiss their fears as though they were the stuff of childish nightmares, acted out in a truly pubescent rage. Dismissing them outright however; accomplishes nothing and keeps us, as a deeply divided nation, from talking about our hopes and dreams and planning for the future.
It may be the hardest thing a lefty can do, but is way past the time to actively listen to, and discover our commonalities.
That is so inspiring! I wish more left and right wingers could see the common values that we share, that are universal. For the last several years, I have studied nonviolent communication, as conceived of by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg. It has helped me to see people who have different points of view as more human. I can see that other people have the same basic needs as I do, but that we all have different ways of getting our needs met. This has been a transformative learning for me, because being able to see people’s needs helps me to be more connected to other people and myself, separate from any judgments that arise between people in a situation.
Recent studies in neuroscience have discovered that our brains are actually wired to be feeling other people’s experience. The research is showing that people are actually quite a bit more influenced by each other’s experiences than we thought before. All the more reason to model kindness and empathy to one another across differences.
I think that we need to listen more to one another – in a Rogerian way – hear well the other person. Perhaps when the person is well heard we can add what we think, but listening it vital.
I think Tea Party people need to hear themselves, need to hear that they repeat one liners, but then they need to have their concerns expressed out loud for them and others to hear. OUr think our concerns our similar – growing national debt, a Congress that seems out of touch, a need to have our concerns heard, etc.
I really think we could change more in the country if we truly tried to listen – and let people hear themselves.
For them to listen to themselves would require substantive introspection on their part. I grew up among such people and introspection and deep listening are not things that enter their consciousness. Not even when offered the help to do so.
At the Obama heath care rally on Saturday Sept. 11 in Minneapolis, I approached several anti-reformers as a panhandler asking for a handout to help me pay my lapsing health insurance premiums, Some told me to ask the people standing in line to see Obama. Some said get on Medicaid (ironically, a government program). Some stuck their hands in their pockets and asked me how much I needed and gave me $5 and $10. I had the money in my hand and gave it back saying “I can’t take your money, you are a good person, and you put your money where your mouth is.” Many of the anti-reformers are caring and generous people with empathy for fellow human beings who truly believe what they are against is a government incursion on their freedom and liberty. They should be taken for real, as people with substantive concerns. The problem is how we bridge this gap and ease the fear of our fellow human beings so they can help ease ours. This experiment and theater totally surprised me. First I didn’t expect the degree of empathy and compassion some on the anti-health care reform had, and the degree I sympathized with their frustration.
Out here (i.e., a ‘city’ of 70,000) I often hang out (even worship, not what I’d otherwise do) with Quakers. There is something there of community (and silence worth a followup of the recent Tikkun piece) — and the best interchanges take place between myself, a contemporary kindred spirit, and someone half our age who is a serious liLibertarian involved with the Campaign for Liberty. After some months I can say that none of our conversation (most of which is political) follows ideological scripts. Dave has the essence of it –poeple are INTERESTING and touching when yiu can reach them and find common ground, which is nothing like similar positions or opinions.
I saw the love and hunger for truth of this young farther and responded. It works. The rub of course is that hunger and lovein most of us lies buried beneath our socialization to empire (Freedom), materialism, cynicism,narcissism etc. Perhaps a contemporary JC would say “Heal Thy Enemy as thou wouldst heal thyself,” — a tall order to say the least, but I suspect the one of the few things worth talking about in this context.
Great blog post. What comes up for me is the crisis created when people with whom I may well share common ground but whose “solutions” all-too real and those solutions represent, and indeed create, devastating negative impacts upon me and my family. Having encountered many tea-partiers (I routinely call them something else but, I recognize “tea-baggers” is perhaps not the most enlightened term) I have to say, it’s very difficult for me to accept that common ground is or can be enough. I don’t believe it is when their solutions are so dangerously opposed to mine/progressives’. One can pass this off as being an ideologue but when one’s values are the core of any ideology arising from it, it seems foolish to compromise that ideology because it will necessarily violate core values (beliefs, meh, they’re changeable, values are not).
MLK, Jr. said something about empathy and love back in the late 1950’s (Pacifica Archives has the talk he gave) and pointed out that empathy only works if you honestly want to have a relationship with the other (who is working for the system; he also said love mans not allowing ourselves to confuse the “apparatus of oppression” with the agent of it–which still just doesn’t compute to me; I’ve walked away from things that violated my values and feel sacrificing for the good is what’s required. If you’re an agent of oppression, you picked your quiksand, I’m not about to let you off the hook for that choice–MLK, Jr. was just a better guy than I). Sure, there are some people in the Right that I do want to have a relationship with and for them I struggle to apprehend and possess the requisite empathy. But for others, I have no interest in any relationship with them. I don’t respect them, I don’t care about them, and it’s real easy to want them just plain gone so I don’t have to bear the brunt of their misbehavior, hate, etc.
E.g., when a tea partier began to spout off with a white supremacist vitriol about Obama, sure our common ground is that we don’t like what his policies and decisions have been and the consequences of them (well, some, he was pretty looney about some consequences–I’ve gone hungry and been homeless to foreclosure while that dude has not and still owns his house) but I will NOT tolerate white supremacist polemics as a solution to disagreement with Obama. That violates my core values. I cannot see “the good” in such a person. The Neo-Nazi sickness gets in my way, and it feels very dangerous (to my personal and family’s safety) to try to see any good in such a human being.
Frankly, because of that, I simply am at a loss when it comes to what to do with the common ground, whatever that may be, when the solutions are diametrically opposite. When it comes to hate, it’s no longer a matter of opinion; there can be no compromise coming from me with white supremacy, homophobia, etc. And I have yet to see someone from such an ilk change their mind either. So, all that to share that Empathy is a pretty tough road when it comes down to it. It’s a lot easier to write about it than to actually practice it.
JustJack
do you have a direct link to what MLK said about empathy?
I like to track down all those comments for my website as a reference.
thanks
I don’t have a link. I heard it on the radio one night driving home. However, it should be searchable via the Pacifica Radio Archive. I believe it was circa 1958.
It could be in this recording, but I’m not certain. I’ve asked the archives folks about it as the talk MLK Jr gave was aired within this past month or two… http://pacificaradioarchives.org/browse/recording.php?recid=13&catid=1
How I understand empathy is that we try to understand what has made people as they are. This helps to inspire patience for the person without interfering with rejection of their ideas.
Their ideas are ingrained and they are often unwilling to be introspective as you say. We may not like their ideas, but we recognise that they are human beings no less than we are.
It’s not really so much about them. It’s about us. Will we reduce our humanity because of other people’s attitudes and behaviours?
We can accept their humanity while vigorously opposing their ideas and actions. To do less is to jeopardise our own humanity.
This kind of detachment takes a lot of effort and practice and we can’t always pull it off, but I believe it is worthwhile in the end.
From a practical point of view, it is more effective and healthier than the alternative.
Aren’t we more likely to act effectively if we are clear-thinking and determined rather than blinded by indignation and impatience?
And…who gets high blood pressure from the angry feelings? Not the Tea Partiers