America has an empathy problem.
I want you to think, for a moment, about the strangers you come in contact with every day. The ones you don’t normally think about. Train conductors, baristas, bicycle messengers, mail delivery drivers, waiters, and retail clerks. Every single one of these people are at work when you encounter them. Think about the times you do notice them- usually when you’re frustrated because Something has Gone Wrong. The barista got your drink wrong and has to remake it during the morning rush. The line is long at your favorite deli. The waiter dropped a tray of food because it’s their first day on the job and they haven’t learned to balance it yet. The store doesn’t have a shirt you like in your size but you NEED it for an event tonight. You notice them because it’s not going your way. You notice them when they are having a bad day at work.
Think about when you last had a bad day at work. Nobody can possibly have had one hundred percent perfect days. On your last bad day at work, were strangers yelling at you? Were they angrily tweeting at your corporate headquarters to tell them you didn’t get your coffee done fast enough? Did someone forget to notice that you’re a human being too?
America is in trouble. On a global scale, we’re pulling away from our foreign allies and collaborating with regimes we’ve often condemned in the past over human right issues. We reminisce about Before while actually having serious conversations with our friends and loved ones about what we’re going to do if there’s a nuclear strike on our country. Maybe once upon a time, we joked about what we would do if we somehow landed in the world of The Walking Dead, but now that the end of civilization as we know it is even a small possibility, these conversations have taken on a more serious and terrifying tone. But how did we get here?
America is in trouble because we lack empathy. We’re angry at each other because in our leisure time, someone else, someone who’s at work failed to get something perfectly right. We forgot that they are people doing their jobs as best they can just like us. Status and money and fancy titles have created a mental divide that makes some believe they are better than others. And it has always been this way.
But we are all the same. We are all people just doing the best we can to survive. Sometimes we don’t get it exactly right, and that’s part of what makes us human. Another piece of our humanity is empathy — we have a unique ability, as far as we know, to imagine what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes. To imagine what it might be like to be that flustered subway conductor on a delayed train as we, who are late for our own jobs, sit or stand in that crowded subway car. How often do you do imagine what it might be like to be someone else?How often do you seek to understand and empathize with someone else who’s just at work having a bad day?
What’s happening in this country isn’t new. White men in power have always been here. They have always stepped on others considered “lesser” because of gender identity, cultural background, religion, sexuality, and/or the color of someone’s skin. The actors may change, but the play remains the same. Yeah, maybe we have been less outraged in the past, but that doesn’t mean it was better. The atrocities currently being perpetrated on children at the Mexican border are not the first time we, as a country, have been so needlessly cruel to others. It’s time to wake up. We’ve been so consumed with our own problems that we’ve failed to empathize with others. This is not the action of one man, but the actions of many. Of those of us who chose to turn inward because it’s easier than extending a hand to reach out and lift up those who are worse off than we are.
But this doesn’t mean this story has to continue this way. Like all good stories, the protagonists learn and grow and, usually, rise above their past selves and move forward into a future with more insight, if not hope. So how do we write the better ending to this story? It seems impossible, as one person, to feel like we can turn the tide away from hate. But we can do this — with empathy — one small act at a time. When your bartender, working alone during happy hour, takes a while to get you that precious whisky, put yourself in her shoes. When there’s an elderly person driving in front of you twenty miles an hour under the speed limit, take a deep breath and remember you’re going to be old too one day. When a homeless person asks for money, find out what else they need. Buy them some socks in the winter. Or a cup of hot coffee. We, as American citizens, have the world watching us now. Choose to lift up those less fortunate. Be kind to those having a rough day. And for all our sakes, vote. Vote because our humanity depends on it. Find that politician whose policies lift people up instead of squashing them down. Empathy is not partisan. It’s not too late.
And if you’re one of those political leaders, then this is your call to arms. Will you be a leader who values and appreciates the diversity of life? One who recognizes the humanity of those beneath them? If power in government is what you seek, then stand up against inhumane legislation and show the American people and the world that you are brave enough to face evil in government when you see it. Find power in voters who want someone HUMAN for a change. And use your power to speak for humanity. Or will you, like history’s worst villains, die a coward in a dark hole while the rest of the world cheers your downfall? It’s happened before. Once upon a time, we cheered when bad governments were toppled. Don’t let our country become the next villain in this story.
#neverforget #neveragain
American slavery
Japanese Internment camps
Auschwitz and 66 other European concentration camps
Darfur
Rwanda
Bosnia
Khmer Rouge
ISIL
Ku Klux Klan
Muslim Ban
US Border Detention Centers
School shootings
Stonewall
For genocide to happen, there must be certain preconditions. Foremost among them is a national culture that does not place a high value on human life. A totalitarian society, with its assumed superior ideology, is also a precondition for genocidal acts. In addition, members of the dominant society must perceive their potential victims as less than fully human: as ‘pagans,’ ‘savages,’ ‘uncouth barbarians,’ ‘unbelievers,’ ‘effete degenerates,’ ‘ritual outlaws,’ ‘racial inferiors,’ ‘class antagonists,’ ‘counterrevolutionaries,’ and so on. In themselves, these conditions are not enough for the perpetrators to commit genocide. To do that — that is, to commit genocide — the perpetrators need a strong, centralized authority and bureaucratic organization as well as pathological individuals and criminals. Also required is a campaign of vilification and dehumanization of the victims by the perpetrators, who are usually new states or new regimes attempting to impose conformity to a new ideology and its model of society.” — M. Hassan Kakar
M. Hassan Kakar, Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979 — 1982, University of California Press, 1995.
Take a deep breath. Reach out. Lend a hand. Let’s end this together.