Walk their walk — The lack of empathy in a world torn apart
Most of us can relate when a person is in grief. We understand the pain and their struggle at that current moment.
Empathy is that ability to emotionally understand what other people feel, see things from their point of view, and imagine yourself in their place. Essentially, it is putting yourself in someone else’s position and feeling what they must be feeling.
We are educated to show empathy towards some social issues, such as bulling and more recently Mental Health started gaining terrain in the world of empathy.
But as quickly as we can show empathy towards someone struggling, the lack of empathy, that ability of placing ourselves in the other person shoes, when it comes to a bully or an aggressor, is almost completely discarded and somehow disconcerting.
Don’t misunderstand what I am saying, I am not saying we should become the aggressor.
Most of the people I see and know are quick to judge without any intent to engage in dialog or pacify a situation.
When faced with a situation where someone is being a victim they want to push away and/or attack the aggressor. And this behavior is well instituted into our society.
Two days ago I heard on the news about a man that was trying to jump start a car in a parking lot.
When the owner of the car saw that from a window, he ran towards the car thief armed with a knife and started threatening the thief.
A few moments later more relatives of the owner of the car came and started attacking the thief by kicking, punching him on the floor. The car owner eventually caught the thief in a rear naked choke that killed him.
Somehow, some people believe this attack was justified because he was trying to steal a car.
So let’s change the narrative a bit.
Let’s say someone was trying to steal a car but instead of a 33 year old man it was a 33 year old woman or a 13 year old kid. Do you still feel this aggression was justified? Would the aggressors show such ruthless aggression towards the thief?
The lack of empathy shown in those actions where people are lead to become aggressors is completely unconsidered as a serious social problem but for me it’s up there with Mental Health issues.
Our society is taught to ignore empathy towards an aggressive person or event and focus on the victims alone. We are also heavily influenced by the media to be more aggressive, on the news, cartoons, movies, tv series, and so on, that it changed how our younger generations perceive human life.
I remember when I was a kid I’d rarely see or ear about a kid or teenager kill another teenager or even send another person to the hospital because of a misunderstanding.
When I was 13yo I got into a fight at school and the other guy broke my nose. As soon as he saw me bleeding the fight was over. He later went to check out if I was ok, while I was cleaning my blood with water.
To think that if that fight happened today he would have continued hitting me until I went down on the floor and kick me in the head.
It’s also now almost 10 years since I stopped going to bars in well known, touristic place in my hometown because kids start swinging punches with his friends or start shooting because someone bumped into him on the street.
While this is a simple example at a very micro scale these behaviors can grow to a scale where the actions taken by an aggressor can impact the whole world.
It is my personal opinion we should have the ability to see passed that “one sided story” we are told and lead to believe it’s the only version of truth out there.
And since it is not taught to us, it’s up to us to develop this skill so one day it can be taught to future generations.
The generations to come should be educated to develop the ability to take an outside perspective towards a problem and find ways to mediate conflict instead of escalating it or creating another.
Allow me to show you my perspective of how we perceive things.
We all know the world came together because of racism.
The world went to to the streets in large groups of people, some creating conflicts, others peacefully showing their support to a very concerning and valid cause. All this is perceived as empathy.
No one thought that this way of showing support escalated things to a level that created more unnecessary conflicts. In our minds, this is how we have shown and continue to show empathy towards a social injustice.
As I see it, empathy needs to be about showing love the same way two happily married people show towards each other.
Can you understand difference between the two images?
Let’s not try to stop a war by feeding it or creating more war. Let’s open the way to communication, understanding, love and compassion.
Let’s use empathy to create a better, more sustainable and peaceful world.
