We are living in a time of great discord, when stridence and hostility mar our public discourse. People have little trouble demonizing others with whom they disagree. Yet we seem unable to perceive the connection between this and mass killers who are able to dehumanize their victims. In such an atmosphere, why are we surprised by the resulting cruelties large and small?
In speaking about terrorism, former President George W. Bush referred to terrorists as evil-doers, not as evil in themselves. This recognizes that the seeds of good and evil reside in all our hearts. We must choose between the two, acknowledging that, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, sometimes we may love evil too much to give it up.
In the Science of Evil, Simon Baron-Cohen gives us a lens through which to see evil acts and understand them. His focus is empathy. Human acts of cruelty happen when there is a lack of empathy in the perpetrator, preventing him or her from seeing others as fully human and worthy of his or her compassion and respect.
Baron-Cohen defines empathy as “our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion.” He contends that by nature and nurture we all fall somewhere on an empathy spectrum (a bell curve). At one extreme are people who feel little or no empathy (e.g. sociopaths/psychopaths, borderline personalities, narcissists). At the other extreme are individuals with remarkable empathy, who are “continually focused on other people’s feelings and go out of their way to check on them and to be supportive.” The great majority of us are between these two extremes.
But that does not mean we are locked into that level – emotional events can cause empathy erosion. Strong feelings – anger, fear, hate, envy, hurt, greed – can cause us to become less empathetic and more capable of committing cruel acts. Empathy erosion can also happen when we single-mindedly pursue a goal, embrace an ideology or harbor resentment. When large numbers of people experience empathy erosion together, great tragedies are possible (e.g. Rwanda, the Cambodian killing fields, the Holocaust).
How, then, might we perceive the issues that divide us as seen through the lens of empathy? Take gun violence. The NRA and gun manufacturers tell us that the only way we can feel safe is more guns – so the “good guys” can stop the “bad guys.” But we’re all capable of becoming bad guys through empathy erosion. The more guns we have, the more likely hurtful acts will occur. Add to that carelessness, miscalculation, lack of good judgment, ignorance and children’s access to guns, and we have an atrocious 30,000 gun deaths a year.
How might we see the issue of race through the lens of empathy? It’s hard to ignore 400 years of oppression, persecution and suffering of people of color in this country, but our history of institutional, social and individual racism has revealed a startling lack of empathy. The divisive ideology of white supremacy dehumanizes others, making inhumane acts possible. When have we ever had a meaningful national discussion on this topic, which has been so corrosive to our national soul? Consider the opportunity we squandered when we had a president born of a white mother and father of color.
Why is empathy never spoken of when we choose our leaders? We currently have a president who is a narcissist and arguably a sociopath, who functions at the zero empathy end of the spectrum. He is a master of manipulating people’s fear and anger to his own ends. His tweets are demeaning and divisive; he routinely lies and never apologizes. He evaluates humans based only on their loyalty and use to him. He has successfully divided both our country and the international community. Expecting him to be either a healer or a unifier is simply unrealistic.
Baron-Cohen feels that empathy is an important national resource that is underdeveloped and underutilized. Why is empathy not taught and modeled in our schools with greater urgency? Why is cooperative learning, a research-based system from the University of Minnesota, not a part of every school district K-12? Why are there not more public forums for the safe discussion of topics that divide us?
In the Book of Joy, which features conversations between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the author, Douglas Carlton Abrams, refers to the Overview Effect: “Many astronauts have reported that once they glimpsed Earth from space – a small blue ball floating in the vast expanse, lacking any human-made borders – they never looked at their personal or national interests in quite the same way again. They saw the oneness of terrestrial life and the preciousness of our planetary home.”
Most of us will never have that opportunity, so what will help us extend our empathy to those who are outside our group or tribe? What will convince us that we are first and foremost one group: humanity? When will we realize that we are all co-stewards of this one Earth and all its life, and we are in it together?
The sad irony is that a unifying crisis already exists: global climate change.
(Allan MacDonald lives in New London.)