Some Thoughts On Empathy

Humanity groans, overwhelmed by the weight of the progress it has made, the daily stresses, the unintended consequences, the ecocide, the dive to the bottom. Humanity has trouble realizing how much it affects the future. Which in no way prevents it from borrowing from the future. A future that doesn’t exist. Except as junk bonds and credit default swaps and a crazy belief that the resources on our planet allow for infinite growth.

The real question we should be asking ourselves is do we just want to live, to survive, or provide the support and effort necessary – even on our refractory planet – to fulfill its essential function, which is a machine for making gods.

After having been infused, like a tea bag, with the assumed virtues of our culture, our personalities become prisons. We replace our fundamental being with narratives belonging to the giants of the culture, the billionaires, the industrialists, the flimflam of meritocratic elites. It’s all a scam. A scramble. A stinking pile of shit.

Empathy is stifled by greed. This cools the machine. The engine of metaphors. The springs of curiosity. The lucky are infused with a sense of alienation. The not-so-lucky fall into line.

What makes speech at any given moment find a way to express itself?

Any sense of being surveilled by a ubiquitous apparatus of hidden agendas and artificial intelligence stifles the mind, kills the ability to speak freely.

The important thing is not to remain fearful in the face of emotionally strong situations, and to maintain vigilance for the emotional dictatorship of the social networks: the unhealthy ambiguity between emotion and propaganda which parasites and paralyzes the ability to think. A healthy neutrality can work wonders. Paradoxically, empathy is helped by a certain amount of detachment – not indifference – but what in Buddhist literature is referred to as sunyata, a Sanskrit word meaning emptiness or void, but as a Buddhist concept has multiple meanings depending on its context. It can either be an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience. As a state of awareness, it prevents the spirit form being overwhelmed by emotional contagion, the miasmic suck of emotional pain, and allows compassion and empathy a space to grow and catch the light of the sun.

Empathy comes by helping.

Empathy is food. Altruism, theorizes neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland in her book Conscience: The Origins Of Moral Intuition, begins with sharing food and caring for young. It provides the basis for social connections. Which makes me nervous. Because if the food disappears, social connections disappear. Savagery ensues.

We still have food available on the grocery shelves. Thanks, in large measure, to the men and women driving trucks over dubiously maintained public highways. This is a system frighteningly vulnerable to climate change, as is the growing of food.

It’s odd to think of my ability to empathize and show compassion being dependent on strangers driving trucks. But thanks to the fleet of Freightliners and Peterbilts and Kenworths and PACCARs out on the broadloom of our interconnecting highways, I have empathy. I remain sensitive to the feelings of other people. At least, when I can. I strive to maintain that awareness, but I’m rarely that successful at it. Maybe I just need to eat more.