on empathy
Social changers need to have empathy. Trump is, of course, a social changer in his own way. But they say he and many of his acolytes lack empathy:
Within the context of mass society it’s easy to lack empathy for faceless masses of Others. Trump sees himself as doing a good and necessary social change thing re: “draining the swamp” but in carrying it out he doesn’t seem to care about those who are losing jobs and/or losing social welfare benefits. Israelis don’t seem to care about the suffering of Palestinians. Conquerors tend to lack empathy. Radical revolutionaries too often lack empathy in regard to disruptions of lifeways. Radical critics can lack empathy in regard to felt attacks on hallowed belief systems.
When there are reactions against lack of empathy there can be guilt. Many Germans were guilty (for generations) after the Nazi actions. Philip Roth was guilty for the rest of his life after his radical critique of orthodox Judaism (in Portnoy’s Complaint) was so widely read. David Watson felt guilty and remorseful for the rest of his life about the tone of his early “Mr. Venom” essays. This is all pretty common … people can get passionate about the righteousness of their cause and act or express themselves impulsively, without empathy.
Interestingly, an example of attempting social change with the inclusion of empathy was: most of the Free Palestine encampments on college campuses last year. They went out of their way to very demonstratively include shabbat services and other activities showing sensitivity to Jewish culture while critiquing the actions of the state of Israel. It was, of course, the suppressors of the encampments that demonstrated lack of empathy or understanding or toleration. When that happens, as it so often does, it’s nonetheless best if we Better World Is Possible social changers strive to be Gandhian. That usually works out better in the long run. It provokes less in the way of toxic reaction.
What’s the point here for us left-wing social changers? Don’t be obnoxious. We need to be empathetic about how and why our critique affects those who believe in what we’re critiquing. Because of mortality, vulnerability, and precarity people need transcendence. They often get it in problematic ways like religion and nationalism. Rebels, heretics, apostates, etc. have often been incarcerated or worse for their critiques of those things. Voltaire was banished from France. The Enlightenment was all very controversial at the time. Belief systems have to do with people’s identity and transcendence, very sensitive domains.
Look at them fly the flag. For many it goes deeper than just patriotism. America. Christianity. We all pine for community. In the absence of real community there’s a tendency to conflate the nation or the religious grouping with community, to find identity and transcendence there. When we activists critique those things we should keep in mind to do it in an empathetic way. Have in mind to make righteous social change in a gradualistic, sensitive way. When it’s not done that way it provokes toxic reaction. That’s why revolutions often don’t work out well.
It’s many decades now that conservatives have viewed and hated the universities as hotbeds of radical critique. There was reaction against the universities during the 1930s, 1960s, 1980s, 2000s, and now. The justifiable critiques proffered by the academics and activists are felt to be threatening to the belief systems of the patriots and the religious traditionalists. So: Yes, we should proceed with our enlightening (“woke”) analysis — and constructive social change on that basis — but we should keep the tone empathetic and we should go out of our way to demonstrate sensitivity.
