I was hanging out with friends on a Tuesday, doing my usual Tuesday bar trivia thing.
A woman walked up looking for the whole trivia thing, so she stopped to ask the people at our table where the bar trivia stuff was going on. She looked pretty much like the sort woman you’d imagine catfighting on that dumb show about Hugh Heffner’s many ex-wives. Her voice had that upward lilt that made every sentence sound like a question and that made her sound like, well, a typical ditzy blonde who gets through life on looks.
My friends were not particularly nice to her.
Later on I went and talked to her. She seemed like a completely decent human being.
My friends thought that my intention had been to hit on her. I didn’t tell them my real motivation, since my real motivation was hard to explain. I felt bad that she’d been made fun of and wanted to make sure someone was nice to her.
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I said in the last post that I think that you choose early whether you respond positively or negatively to misery. In reality it’s far more complicated than that. I think there’s a matrix of choices and reactions and the thing you choose at a young age is how you’re going to look at those moments and what steps you’re going to take.
You might, for instance, be kind to family and puppies and kick bums in the street.
------------------------------
Humans organize the world into groups. This is often spoken of as a negative, but I think it’s an inevitability. There are simply too many people in the world to be able to account for everyone. So we separate what we know from what we think we know from what we don’t know at all and assign labels and stereotypes to everything.
In broad strokes we identify our family, then our friends, then our tribe, then our not-tribe that’s harmless, and then our enemies. We then sort that by those who are helpful, those who are neutral, and those who are harmful.[1] Our reactions are then pretty much programmed in and we can run it all off of a macro.
What I think we choose young is how we react to seeing misery in the situation of those who are outside of our tribe and can either not do anything for us or might actively harm us. It’s easy to help your friend who is in trouble. It’s similarly easy to ignore that kid you don’t know who’s in trouble. It’s also quite easy to see that person you actively don’t like who’s in trouble and to do what you can to add to his or her difficulties.
Empathy is what allows us to say, “I would hate to be in their shoes, so I’ll try to help them.”
Empathy is also a good way to find yourself alone. If you depart from your tribe to help your enemy you might find yourself without a tribe and with the only potential assistance coming from someone who was more than happy to trip you and steal your lunch money yesterday. Choosing empathy, then, has a very real potential social cost.
------------------------------
It doesn’t surprise me that the word “empathy” has gotten treated like a four-letter word by the Glenn Becks and Bill O’Reillys of the world over the last couple of years. The very act of empathy is one of sacrifice and intentionally powerlessness. It cannot be used by the rich and powerful to increase their wealth and power. It can only be used to break down power.
I realized at the end of this last election cycle that it doesn’t really matter what happens and the outcome of the election barely mattered. Right now in America the rich and powerful have won. Sure, there were a few victories here and there, most notably on the front of gay rights. But the big questions aren’t even being fought over anymore.
What was the big question that kept getting asked during the election? “Are you doing better than you were four years ago?” It wasn’t, “Are we doing better?” All I’m supposed to care about is whether I am doing better or worse.
The first complaints I ran across from the anti-Obama folks after Election Night were complaints about the stock market dropping a smidge and the possibility that taxes might go up. Someone on Facebook basically said, “Hey, go thank your liberal friends for when your taxes go up next year and ask them how they feel about it.” I kind of wished he would have asked me, since the way I feel about it is, “I’m not too happy, but I’m pretty sure it’s necessary.”
I would love it if my country cut its military drastically and started spending more money on infrastructure, on making sure the poor are taken care of, and on making sure that our indigent and mental care facilities are top-notch. I would love it if someone admitted that, yes, sometimes taxes have to go up on some to make things better for all. I’m perfectly willing to admit that if I’m one of the some I’ll take that hit because I’m also one of the all.
That’s what empathy gets you. That’s the choice that I made when I was young. I tried to see the people around me as humans, rather than labels. I didn’t always do it well, but I always tried.
------------------------------
Again we get to Evangelical Christianity in this discussion of empathy.
Evangelical Christianity is good at empathy for those in the tribe and terrible at empathy for everyone else. Oh, also, it’s often terrible at empathy for those in the tribe. So…yeah.
Growing up Evangelical you’re taught to divide everyone into tribes. It’s basically “us” and “them” and “we” are the forces of good and light and “they” are trying to burn down the world. As such, they must be countered at every turn and stopped at all costs. Every action they take must be place into the matrix of how it is used to mock Jesus and destroy Jesus’s people.
That’s how you end up with the absolutely mind-boggling confluence of Christianity, power, and hatred. Evangelical Christians give money to the NRA and support building a pointlessly large military while cutting money for the old and the poor because they’ve been encouraged to think of guns and the military as “us” and the poor and old as “them.” It helps immensely that it’s the evil liberals who want to take money from the rich and the fine patriots at Lockheed Martin to give it to those free-living, money grubbing homeless people.
Those who are outside the bubble are constantly baffled by the lack of internal consistency in the broad Evangelical position. There is a consistency to it, but it’s not a logical consistency. It’s simply that if [designated enemy non-tribal group] is against [thing], then I’m for it and if [designated enemy non-tribal group] is for [thing], then I’m against it. It helps, in this situation, to not remember what you were for last week, because you might be against it next week.
Within the tribe, though, there are also those who do not deserve empathy. Well, more precisely, there are those who aren’t doing enough to deserve empathy. Empathy in Christianity is a conditional thing, after all. Someone who isn’t seen as sufficiently holy will be the recipient of tough love or, from time to time, an intervention.[2]
The lack of empathy is fairly simple to understand, really. Everyone in Evangelical Christianity is encouraged to think if god as their bestest buddy and the relationship they have with god to be the most special possible relationship in the world. Everything that happens, then, is talked about as god’s attempt to teach that exact individual a lesson. People, then, stop being people and instead become object lessons or little reminders from god.
I’m not saying that non-Christians or non-Evangelicals can’t fall in to the pattern of thinking they’re the center of the universe, of course. I’m just saying that it’s encouraged in such a way as to invite absolutely no reflection in Evangelical circles. It’s barely even something that happens on the level of conscious thought, really. I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out where all of the crappy, negative lessons came from and the best I can deduce is that we all taught each other. I am just as implicated in my behaviors and actions as anyone else.
------------------------------
One of the end results of empathy is the realization that you lack control. You make yourself powerless in the face of all of the terrible majesty of humanity at its best or worst. You might help your enemy today and find yourself at the bottom of his boot tomorrow. You might also find that your friends now say that you get what you deserved by clutching that particular viper to your chest. That’s just the nature of things. Empathy is always a risk.
That is why no one ever chooses empathy at all times. I see empathy as a response that is in constant conflict with the opposite potential response. But that is something for another day.
------------------------------
[1]And, y’know, those who might take their pants off if we say the right thing. I feel like that might be a separate category, but I don’t know where it fits.
[2]I’ve talked about it here before, but the absolute worst thing that ever happened to me during my time working in ministry was after I took steps to resolve a situation that would have been completely appropriate in, say, a corporate environment (this was when I was at Western after working full time and being in and out of junior college for more than half a decade) or even at the church where I’d done most of my ministry before that. I was instead treated to several of the other leaders of the ministry I was part of springing a surprise, “Yell at two of the leaders and tell them we’re correcting them in love,” fest on me.
It obviously worked, since I still remember the event, I still say that what I did was absolutely appropriate, and I haven’t talked to any of those fuckers in years. The problem, now that I’m far enough removed from it to really understand what happened, was that the other leaders did not have a fucking clue what they were doing. They were running around playing at ministry and even though I wasn’t getting paid I was the closest to a professional they had. So when I saw a problem that needed to be fixed I went to the person that was most capable of fixing it and that, somehow, resulted in me being treated like an enemy.
A woman walked up looking for the whole trivia thing, so she stopped to ask the people at our table where the bar trivia stuff was going on. She looked pretty much like the sort woman you’d imagine catfighting on that dumb show about Hugh Heffner’s many ex-wives. Her voice had that upward lilt that made every sentence sound like a question and that made her sound like, well, a typical ditzy blonde who gets through life on looks.
My friends were not particularly nice to her.
Later on I went and talked to her. She seemed like a completely decent human being.
My friends thought that my intention had been to hit on her. I didn’t tell them my real motivation, since my real motivation was hard to explain. I felt bad that she’d been made fun of and wanted to make sure someone was nice to her.
------------------------------
I said in the last post that I think that you choose early whether you respond positively or negatively to misery. In reality it’s far more complicated than that. I think there’s a matrix of choices and reactions and the thing you choose at a young age is how you’re going to look at those moments and what steps you’re going to take.
You might, for instance, be kind to family and puppies and kick bums in the street.
------------------------------
Humans organize the world into groups. This is often spoken of as a negative, but I think it’s an inevitability. There are simply too many people in the world to be able to account for everyone. So we separate what we know from what we think we know from what we don’t know at all and assign labels and stereotypes to everything.
In broad strokes we identify our family, then our friends, then our tribe, then our not-tribe that’s harmless, and then our enemies. We then sort that by those who are helpful, those who are neutral, and those who are harmful.[1] Our reactions are then pretty much programmed in and we can run it all off of a macro.
What I think we choose young is how we react to seeing misery in the situation of those who are outside of our tribe and can either not do anything for us or might actively harm us. It’s easy to help your friend who is in trouble. It’s similarly easy to ignore that kid you don’t know who’s in trouble. It’s also quite easy to see that person you actively don’t like who’s in trouble and to do what you can to add to his or her difficulties.
Empathy is what allows us to say, “I would hate to be in their shoes, so I’ll try to help them.”
Empathy is also a good way to find yourself alone. If you depart from your tribe to help your enemy you might find yourself without a tribe and with the only potential assistance coming from someone who was more than happy to trip you and steal your lunch money yesterday. Choosing empathy, then, has a very real potential social cost.
------------------------------
It doesn’t surprise me that the word “empathy” has gotten treated like a four-letter word by the Glenn Becks and Bill O’Reillys of the world over the last couple of years. The very act of empathy is one of sacrifice and intentionally powerlessness. It cannot be used by the rich and powerful to increase their wealth and power. It can only be used to break down power.
I realized at the end of this last election cycle that it doesn’t really matter what happens and the outcome of the election barely mattered. Right now in America the rich and powerful have won. Sure, there were a few victories here and there, most notably on the front of gay rights. But the big questions aren’t even being fought over anymore.
What was the big question that kept getting asked during the election? “Are you doing better than you were four years ago?” It wasn’t, “Are we doing better?” All I’m supposed to care about is whether I am doing better or worse.
The first complaints I ran across from the anti-Obama folks after Election Night were complaints about the stock market dropping a smidge and the possibility that taxes might go up. Someone on Facebook basically said, “Hey, go thank your liberal friends for when your taxes go up next year and ask them how they feel about it.” I kind of wished he would have asked me, since the way I feel about it is, “I’m not too happy, but I’m pretty sure it’s necessary.”
I would love it if my country cut its military drastically and started spending more money on infrastructure, on making sure the poor are taken care of, and on making sure that our indigent and mental care facilities are top-notch. I would love it if someone admitted that, yes, sometimes taxes have to go up on some to make things better for all. I’m perfectly willing to admit that if I’m one of the some I’ll take that hit because I’m also one of the all.
That’s what empathy gets you. That’s the choice that I made when I was young. I tried to see the people around me as humans, rather than labels. I didn’t always do it well, but I always tried.
------------------------------
Again we get to Evangelical Christianity in this discussion of empathy.
Evangelical Christianity is good at empathy for those in the tribe and terrible at empathy for everyone else. Oh, also, it’s often terrible at empathy for those in the tribe. So…yeah.
Growing up Evangelical you’re taught to divide everyone into tribes. It’s basically “us” and “them” and “we” are the forces of good and light and “they” are trying to burn down the world. As such, they must be countered at every turn and stopped at all costs. Every action they take must be place into the matrix of how it is used to mock Jesus and destroy Jesus’s people.
That’s how you end up with the absolutely mind-boggling confluence of Christianity, power, and hatred. Evangelical Christians give money to the NRA and support building a pointlessly large military while cutting money for the old and the poor because they’ve been encouraged to think of guns and the military as “us” and the poor and old as “them.” It helps immensely that it’s the evil liberals who want to take money from the rich and the fine patriots at Lockheed Martin to give it to those free-living, money grubbing homeless people.
Those who are outside the bubble are constantly baffled by the lack of internal consistency in the broad Evangelical position. There is a consistency to it, but it’s not a logical consistency. It’s simply that if [designated enemy non-tribal group] is against [thing], then I’m for it and if [designated enemy non-tribal group] is for [thing], then I’m against it. It helps, in this situation, to not remember what you were for last week, because you might be against it next week.
Within the tribe, though, there are also those who do not deserve empathy. Well, more precisely, there are those who aren’t doing enough to deserve empathy. Empathy in Christianity is a conditional thing, after all. Someone who isn’t seen as sufficiently holy will be the recipient of tough love or, from time to time, an intervention.[2]
The lack of empathy is fairly simple to understand, really. Everyone in Evangelical Christianity is encouraged to think if god as their bestest buddy and the relationship they have with god to be the most special possible relationship in the world. Everything that happens, then, is talked about as god’s attempt to teach that exact individual a lesson. People, then, stop being people and instead become object lessons or little reminders from god.
I’m not saying that non-Christians or non-Evangelicals can’t fall in to the pattern of thinking they’re the center of the universe, of course. I’m just saying that it’s encouraged in such a way as to invite absolutely no reflection in Evangelical circles. It’s barely even something that happens on the level of conscious thought, really. I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out where all of the crappy, negative lessons came from and the best I can deduce is that we all taught each other. I am just as implicated in my behaviors and actions as anyone else.
------------------------------
One of the end results of empathy is the realization that you lack control. You make yourself powerless in the face of all of the terrible majesty of humanity at its best or worst. You might help your enemy today and find yourself at the bottom of his boot tomorrow. You might also find that your friends now say that you get what you deserved by clutching that particular viper to your chest. That’s just the nature of things. Empathy is always a risk.
That is why no one ever chooses empathy at all times. I see empathy as a response that is in constant conflict with the opposite potential response. But that is something for another day.
------------------------------
[1]And, y’know, those who might take their pants off if we say the right thing. I feel like that might be a separate category, but I don’t know where it fits.
[2]I’ve talked about it here before, but the absolute worst thing that ever happened to me during my time working in ministry was after I took steps to resolve a situation that would have been completely appropriate in, say, a corporate environment (this was when I was at Western after working full time and being in and out of junior college for more than half a decade) or even at the church where I’d done most of my ministry before that. I was instead treated to several of the other leaders of the ministry I was part of springing a surprise, “Yell at two of the leaders and tell them we’re correcting them in love,” fest on me.
It obviously worked, since I still remember the event, I still say that what I did was absolutely appropriate, and I haven’t talked to any of those fuckers in years. The problem, now that I’m far enough removed from it to really understand what happened, was that the other leaders did not have a fucking clue what they were doing. They were running around playing at ministry and even though I wasn’t getting paid I was the closest to a professional they had. So when I saw a problem that needed to be fixed I went to the person that was most capable of fixing it and that, somehow, resulted in me being treated like an enemy.
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