Speaking of Change

Is it a coincidence that when the world was on pause, a small revolution began?

I am finally sitting down in front of the half-written essay I wrote almost four months ago as a response to the Futurist Writers’ Room session I attended — imagining 40 years before and after this moment. I was trying to write about a group exercise for building trust that I learned in a movement workshop many years ago. I thought that this exercise could be a building block for the imagined future we were discussing. I lost confidence in my thesis and I stopped writing. I put it away hoping that the idea will grow roots on its own.

In the months since that Futurist Writers’ Room, on April 16 to be precise, the pandemic death toll in the US has increased by almost 140,000. And during that time several non-COVID-related deaths triggered a global Black Lives Matter movement that has the potential to bring forth some positive change in this country. Is it a coincidence that when the world was on pause, a small revolution began?

Speaking of change, a few years ago, not long after the 2016 election, a New York lawmaker (the Attorney General at the time) said to a gathering of artists that there are two kinds of change. The first kind is what he does, through the law. This kind of change is imposed from the outside and may be subject to the whims of the people in power. (By the way, this lawmaker has since resigned because of allegations of domestic violence.)

The second kind of change, the more profound and lasting kind, is by changing people’s hearts and minds. And that, he said, is the work of the artists. It’s debatable of course, but the fact that it came from the Attorney General of New York was surprising and validating. The arts seem to always have to justify their existence with every change of regime and every new government budget being passed. Regardless of whether artists are able to inspire profound change, this little speech made me think of the laws and systems that have helped move us toward a more equitable society. Some of us would not be here today if not for those laws.

But at the same time, people who abide by the law of the land do not necessarily believe in what the law stands for (think environmental laws, abortion rights, gay rights, anti-discrimination law, 13th amendment…). So, to the lawmaker’s point, lasting change comes not from the law but from changing hearts and minds.

All that was just my circuitous way of saying: the most urgent project for an equitable future is perhaps empathy.

Naive? New agey? Maybe. Empathy is often defined as the capacity or ability to imagine oneself in the situation of another. One may argue that cultivating empathy is a long-term project and can hardly be more urgent than dismantling any of the current systems upholding racial, gender, income inequality. It is also one without immediate quantifiable results. That may be true.

But perhaps I can use as an example of empathy on display the hundreds of thousands of non-BIPOC people who have participated in the recent Black Lives Matter protests. I can also turn to our current fight about whether wearing masks should be mandated. What does that have to do with empathy, you may ask. I’d say that if empathy had kicked in before any of the determining factors like political ideology, economic concern or civic duty, then the first question one would ask is how not wearing a mask may affect other people, and not how my constitutional right to get sick has been violated.

I had thought that empathy is a trait that you were born with, or that was instilled in you at a young age. But according to Jamil Zaki, author of The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World, empathy is a skill that one can cultivate over time. It comes more naturally to some people than others, and it is usually easier to be empathic when it pertains to family, friends, and people from the same “tribe.” We often struggle (or don’t bother) to understand people who are not like us but find it easy to hate them.

In 2006, Barack Obama said that the United States was suffering from an “empathy deficit” and things have only gotten worse since then. Let’s face it, empathy has never been the focus of a democracy that values above all the individual right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But what if starting immediately we make empathy the lens through which we think, act, behave, create, build?

What if parents consciously embody empathic behavior as an example for their kids as a daily practice? What if schools center empathy, especially in subjects like history or literature through the stories and perspectives of others? What if universities center empathy in every discipline, even in non-liberal arts areas like technology (especially technology)? What if before we make any decision we consider how our actions may affect others?

A lot of hypothetical dreaming. Well, I work in the arts so that’s part of my DNA. I like to believe, as the lawmaker suggested, that the arts can change hearts and minds. I also like to believe that art is an embodied experience, even as an audience member sitting in the dark theater. Whether it is watching a performance, or film, or looking at an exhibition, listening to music, reading, etc, it comes through the eyes and ears, goes to our minds and if the art does its job, it lands in the heart (I’m roughly quoting the choreographer/director, and my colleague, Bill T. Jones). I would add that from the heart it moves through the body with the oxygen and blood coursing through our veins. And if we are lucky, the experience can be transcendental and transformative. Next time you experience art that moves you, notice how your body feels at that moment. Notice what lingers the next morning.

And while we are talking about embodied experience, I secretly believe that everyone should dance (that’s a no-brainer), and that everyone should try movement improvisation in a group (that’s more intimidating). It is a choreographic tool in contemporary dance and sometimes adopted for devised theater. Without getting into the many strategies and variations, at its most basic a group improvisation involves participants moving through space and time while making decisions about what, when and how to go about it.

You have to consider and juggle multiple activities and ideas concurrently. You have to take care of your own objective and pathway in relation to, in spite of, or because of others who also have the same concerns. You have to adapt to the space you are in, and the unforeseen obstacles. You have to continuously make choices based on what happened before and anticipate what may be coming. And here is the most challenging element, you have to take care of the larger picture. You are responsible not just for your own actions but for being mindful of how each move you make affects the whole enterprise. And ultimately, it is a group activity and hopefully the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. I may have just described an exercise in empathy, or a version of democracy in action.

This leads me back to that trust building exercise (which I also learned from Bill). It’s called the “Me Game” and it’s basically a group improvisation with a wrench thrown in. At any moment anyone can choose to shout “Me” and begins to fall like a plank in any direction. The rest of the people must run towards wherever the voice is coming from and stop the person from falling flat on the ground. Everyone resets and the game continues. It’s supposed to encourage the falling person to let go and trust that the group will be there, which is harder than you think, especially for the (perceived) bigger or stronger ones in the group or those who never want to ask for help. But it always amazes me to see how everyone is willing and ready to help. The smallest person will not hesitate to run and save the biggest person, trusting that the rest of the group is not far behind.

I am still unable to articulate what this has to do with reality, or how this relates to empathy. I also cannot say if empathy will affect who we are as a society. Will we stop putting a knee on someone’s neck? Will we stop putting children in cages? Will we behave better on social media? Will we have universal healthcare? Will we try to leave the earth a better place for future generations? Will we be able to say “we”? And what will we be like in 40 years? But perhaps the answers can only be discovered in the doing.