The call for action: Empathy
Let's ramble on about empathy as the world continues to implode.
I don’t need to be the one to tell you this, but the world is kind of fucked right now. In reality, it always has been, but our exposure to the pains of the world reaches us differently. The constant pressure to be bombarded with information, to respond immediately, to take a stance, our nervous system is not ready for this. On top of it all, our society pushes this sense of hyper-individualism and encourages us to feel as if every pain across our world is our sole responsibility to solve. We intellectually understand that one of us can’t solve the violence in the Middle East, the migrant crisis, or the growing wealth inequality, but do our bodies know that? We are seeing red, we are infighting. We've lost our empathy.
Social media is one of the strangest places right now. My Instagram reels go from niche classical music memes, to the bodies of dead children and back to photos of a meal someone prepared. It’s too much for all of us. But this isn’t going where you think it is. I’m not going to tell anyone to just limit their time online and shelter themselves from the pains of the world. I’m also not asking you to inundate yourself with news so you can be as informed as possible. I’m asking you to lean into discomfort. Not the discomfort of constantly traumatizing yourself, but the discomfort of empathizing with your perceived rivals.
Trying to empathize with your “enemy” isn’t ambivalence; it is radical.
I was recently listening to Gianmarco Soresi’s podcast “The Downside,” and his guest was Robby Hoffman, one of my favorite former Hasidic lesbian comedians. In the podcast, she exclaimed that everyone is 100% right, all of the time. The idea is that we all are the leads of our own movies and our perspectives are the only ones we know, so of course we’re adamant that we’re correct. The good news is that we are always right. The bad news is that so are our enemies. Of course the far-right is wrong. Of course the far-left is wrong. Of course, centrists are wrong. But to each of these groups, they are 100% right. Well damn, where does that leave us? Once again, this isn’t a call for Kumbaya. I have my own fervent political beliefs, and as we’ve established, in my universe those ideas are 100% correct, so this is not about ignoring serious socio-political crises.
We have the urge to silence those we don’t agree with before we try to understand why they feel that way. I’ll speak from my lens of experience and identity. After several celebrity antisemitic social media showdowns, there was an immediate massive uproar from those who opposed and those who defended them. Obviously, as a Jewish person, I don’t love the idea of conspiracies about Jews ruling the world or being lizard people and whatever else is out there. But the immediate silencing and forced apologies concerned me. What did that solve? If you think that solved anything, let me point you to the comments section of nearly anything published on the internet. The irony of doubling down on penalization will often result in greater disillusionment and resentment. The only way to stop these ideologies is by understanding why people gravitate towards them and what the circumstances were that led them there. And that leads us back towards empathy.
Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Israel and Palestine. This is an example of everyone being 100% right. I am not minimizing the atrocities but I’m trying to look at the discourse around it. It is too easy to look at things as a binary and see one side as good and one side as bad. More importantly, it doesn’t solve anything. Everyone from Netanyahu to the leaders of Hamas feels absolute in their convictions. And I’m sure all of you feel strongly as well. So do I. But why? What I do know is that we all exist in our own bubble which makes us 100% right. We are all consuming media that reinforces that we are 100% right. I’ve just read two social media posts, back-to-back about the same event that completely conflicted with each other. How do you tell the other that they are wrong when they are convinced that they’re 100% right? You can’t.
My mother always told me that life isn’t about having the right answers, but it is about having the right questions. Right now, I don’t know what the right questions are, but no one does. I do know that we need to ask why people cause harm to others. We have to tackle this radicalization from the seed rather than chopping down its branches. This is no call for passivity. Defiance and self-preservation still stand. Continue to protest, boycott, call your representatives, and build community. Continue to rage and mourn and weep and be confused. These actions can co-exist with empathy, but without it, we are doomed to continue this cycle of destruction.
