If You Prick Us: A Plea for Empathy

The Cum Laude Society holds members to excessive expectations for character. These expectations are embodied within the motto of the Cum Laude Society: arete, dike, time: excellence, justice, honor. That’s a pleasant motto, however for the world we inhabit at the moment, it strikes me as incomplete. We have to add a fourth idea: empatheia. Empathy. 

Empathy is the power to really feel the experiences of another person—the power to stroll round within the footwear or pores and skin of another person. I’m positive most of you may have some form of understanding of empathy. All of us have had moments of empathy. We’ve provided a sweater to somebody who regarded chilly, winced in sympathy when somebody stubbed a toe or lower a finger, and comforted a good friend who suffered some form of loss. This degree of empathy is easy to know. We’ve all been chilly or stubbed a toe. Most of us have skilled some type of loss. So it doesn’t take a lot work or creativeness to really feel these kinds of ache in another person. It’s additionally pretty easy to empathize with our pals or household, although generally we should work a bit more durable, suppose extra deeply. We’ve all most likely had pals whose conduct has troubled us or shocked us, and even damage us. Maybe a good friend has stolen cash or lied to you or failed to face with you when others have attacked you. You probably have forgiven that good friend, if the friendship has survived, the possibilities are good that empathy saved your friendship. Your means to empathize together with your good friend helped you perceive the conduct. Once we perceive different individuals, we have a tendency to not decide them. 

Lack of know-how, then again, normally ends in fast and harsh judgments. What a jerk. What a jackass. What a pig. Hear particularly to this language. What a pig. That is the sound of the absence of empathy. It’s the sound of exile. The particular person is not even human; he’s subhuman—an animal, a pig. We’ve all heard this voice. It’s the voice of prejudice. It’s the voice of battle, the voice that provides us permission to kill. These whom we want to destroy, we first make subhuman. We use language to obliterate their humanity. We referred to as Native People savages so we might slaughter them. We referred to as Africans animals so we might personal them. We referred to as Jews vermin so we might gasoline and burn them. And at the moment, we People are referred to as infidels—devils, who have to be destroyed. 

Do you start to get a way, an inkling, of the necessity the world has for empathy? Antipathy, hatred—the sensation that pits us towards one another—is the mechanism of battle. Empathy, identification with another person—the sensation that attracts us collectively—is the mechanism of peace. 

Sadly, there’s one thing about human nature or maybe about how now we have been raised—one thing that makes empathy onerous work. Two issues are onerous. The extra individuals we’re requested to empathize with, the tougher empathy turns into. And the higher the variations amongst individuals, the tougher empathy turns into. Most of us can empathize with our pals, however does the empathy start to fray a bit as we transfer to their pals? To their pals’ pals? Maybe we are able to empathize with those that worship in our church, however what of those that worship throughout the road? What about those that communicate a distinct language or who aren’t our shade? If we’re pro-choice, can we empathize with those that oppose abortion? Regardless of all of the positive rhetoric about celebrating our variations, we appear to dwell in a rustic and a world that’s changing into increasingly more polarized, extra illiberal, extra nationalistic, extra tribal—extra antipathetic, and fewer empathetic. 

We don’t need to look onerous or far to see the blood-spatter of this antipathy. Have a look at Rwanda and Darfur. Have a look at the Mideast and Iraq. Learn the newspapers: James Byrd, a black man, is dragged behind a truck to his loss of life in Jasper, Texas; Matthew Shepard, a homosexual man, is crushed to loss of life in Casper, Wyoming. Hearken to the lyrics of Apache’s “Kill d’ White Folks.” Hearken to the lyrics of white supremacists. Hearken to the worry and loathing within the clashes over homosexual marriage. 

However our rising lack of ability to empathize can also be evident in much less violent, much less apparent locations. Just lately, I learn a “My Flip” article in Newsweek by a pleasant, loving mother who lives in Pennsylvania. Kathy Stevenson wrote of the guilt she feels over the world her teenage son should inhabit: “I wish to inform my son how sorry I’m that he has to listen to phrases as horrible as anthrax and jihad. That he has to dwell, like the remainder of us, with the fixed underlying menace of non-public and world tragedy.” Then she goes on to jot down about suicide bombers: “There isn’t any method to clarify what can’t be defined. I’ve but to listen to any rational particular person clarify how a younger mom might connect explosives to her physique, kiss her kids goodbye and hours later blow herself up together with harmless civilians.”  

And there it’s: an impassioned failure to empathize. Is it actually so not possible to think about the motives that produced this younger suicide bomber? Is it so not possible to think about the depth of despair or rage? Is it so not possible to think about the sense of dedication and hope which may have pushed a younger mom to explode her enemy in order that her kids might dwell free? May Kathy Stevenson’s need for a greater world for her son merely be the embryo, the impulse, for a extra murderous mom? Stevenson’s impulse is to guard her little one. Maybe the identical impulse grew within the coronary heart of the younger terrorist. How deep should the ache and loss and menace, and even perhaps guilt, turn into earlier than a mom would use herself as a weapon to guard her kids? If we by no means ask such questions, if we by no means work to think about their solutions, if we by no means work to empathize, we’ll by no means perceive. The world will stay incomprehensible to us. And we are able to’t repair what we don’t perceive. 

That is precisely the problem that colleges should embrace—the problem of giving younger individuals the instruments to make the world understandable. In essence, our main activity have to be to develop the capability for empathy in our younger. We should work to know the world each intellectually and emotionally. We should work to suppose and really feel. For me, these are the explanations we examine literature and the opposite arts, the explanations we examine historical past and science and languages—to be taught to suppose and really feel our manner into humanity and to know why we do what we do. 

Once I was younger, I beloved a TV present referred to as The Twilight Zone. I nonetheless keep in mind one present specifically. There wasn’t a line of dialogue in it till the final body. It was a couple of lady residing alone in a shack within the desert. Her shack was invaded by some form of very small aliens, and the present was about her terror and battle towards them. I keep in mind feeling scared, partly, as a result of we by no means actually noticed the aliens; we’d hear them within the partitions and below the flooring and outdoors the home windows as their assaults towards the girl turned extra violent. 

On the finish, the girl survived and defeated the aliens, and the digital camera panned down via the shack and the partitions to this tiny, destroyed spaceship. We noticed painted on its facet the insignia of the US Air Drive and heard the dying phrases of one among our astronauts crackling over a radio, and we realized that the previous lady was a large inhabiting this different planet, and abruptly we felt this battle of empathies as a result of we had so recognized with the girl’s terror and now we felt this jolt of loyalty to the astronauts. They have been us—People. Though this TV present was only a pop-culture lesson for a younger boy, it captures how the humanities and literature can create understanding via empathy. They may give us the instruments to know the psychology of a younger mom who turns into a terrorist. 

Shakespeare additionally gave us these instruments. Maybe a few of you keep in mind Shylock’s well-known plea for empathy in The Service provider of Venice: 

I’m a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew fingers, organs, dimensions, sense, affections, passions? Fed with the identical meals, damage with the identical weapons, topic to the identical illnesses, healed by the identical means, warmed and cooled by the identical winter and summer season as a Christian is? Should you prick us, can we not bleed? Should you tickle us, can we not snort? Should you poison us, can we not die? And in the event you mistaken us, we could not revenge? 

I hope you possibly can perceive what I’m saying to you. I’m not siding with terrorists. I’m not anti-American. I’m merely making a case for the necessity for empathy in a world more and more fractured by clans and tribes and religions and patriots. I’m somebody who’s deeply weary of specializing in our variations, weary of celebrating our variations. I lengthy to have a good time what now we have in widespread, our elementary humanity. That is what college is about. That is what the Cum Laude Society in the end honors—our want to know one another in order that we are able to work collectively for the advance of humanity. This objective is unattainable and not using a capability for empathy, with out the power to see past our variations. Empathy is a drive for unity. It’s the key to forgiveness; it’s the key to peace. Arete, dike, time, empatheia.

Alden S. Blodget

I’m retired after 38 years as a highschool instructor (theater and English) and administrator (arts dept chair, assistant head of faculty). Since retiring I’ve volunteered as a guardian advert litem within the Rutland County (VT) Household and Legal Courts, working with abused and delinquent kids and with adults who have been incompetent to face trial. At the moment, now that I’ve moved again to Massachusetts, I’m a professional bono tutor for college kids who wish to work with a tutor however can not afford the standard charges. I’ve revealed many essays, principally however not completely about training.