I was leaving a comment on a blog post by my friend Nance, Mature Landscaping, when I realized that my comment was getting a bit long. Thanks, Nance for the inspiration for my own post.
I don't recall when it was that I first realized that there was a lot of meanness in the world. I do know that by the time that I read The Diary of Anne Frank, that I suspected that she was wrong, and that people were not really good at heart. I think that I was 12 years old when I first read Anne's diary.
Sometime during my twenties, I became absolutely certain that people are not essentially good at heart. I don't think that I'm a cynic, just a realist, and it's a realism born of experience.
Neither do I believe that we are essentially evil. I think that we are neutral until we choose to act on the specifics of our experiences and/or circumstances. Life is all about choices yet far too many of us consistently make those choices based on misinformation, prejudicial beliefs, and self-interests.
I think that we confuse aging with maturity, and make the fallacious assumption that empathy is an innate quality that develops as we mature. As children, we are all motivated by self-interests, by instant gratification. Small children are adorable but they are also inadvertently cruel in their actions. If you don't believe me, spend some time with a group of two-year-olds. Each wants whatever he or she wants when they want it. There's crying, biting, a blow here and there, and a lot of run by toy snatching. As we age, left unchecked, those desires continue to predominate. Empathy has to be taught and it has to be taught by example.
Empathy--the ability to identify with others, to put yourself in their shoes--is the most powerful force for good in the world; sadly, it is the emotion most lacking in so many of us. We're taught not to hit and to share our toys, but most of those lessons are narrowly applied to our immediate circumstances and we never learn to adopt the empathy model as defining our world view.
Listen to the tea partiers, they are obsessed with making certain that undeserving people do not receive a free ride. Who's undeserving? Anyone whom they deem to be so. Of course, that translates into anyone who doesn't look like them, or who speaks with a foreign accent. A free ride includes basic necessities like medical care. One of the biggest objections to the Health Care Reform Act was the belief that illegal immigrants would receive free health care at taxpayers expense. Even the terminology indicates the distancing from any identification with the perceived "other." Typically, the language refers to illegal "aliens," not people but creatures from another planet, inherently different and dangerous.
The recent anti-immigrant law passed in Arizona is further progeny of the empathy deficit. Angry supporters of the law insist that it is fair, secure in the knowledge that they will not be the ones stopped and challenged as to their legal right to be here. In their minds, the fallout from this law is not their problem.
The slide from disinterest in the well being of others into outright evil is accelerated by the fear mongers that appear in every generation. The Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs who nurture the fear and feed the hate. These people make conscious choices to ramp things up, to stir up a frenzy among the masses. They are not unique; history is full of these depraved folks who for profit and egoism disseminate malicious lies and half-truths designed to fuel the anger of those who believe that they have an entitlement that separates them from those they have designated as other.
I don't believe that there is some essential goodness in humankind that will simply win out. I'm not a total pessimist; to the contrary, I think that we have the ability to teach people to make more humane, informed choices. However, it means that we have to continually reiterate the need for change. We can't simply live locally and hope that the global issues will resolve if we build a sense of local community. Humankind is interconnected and we are global, regardless of what we may want to be. I understand the desire to withdraw from the larger world and to focus on one's community, but we do not live in isolation. There are no walls that can be built that are high enough to keep out the rest of the troubled world. Our local community is global.
Sheria,
ReplyDeleteYour fine post recalls me to a statement I’ve often made in a variety of contexts: we take our civilized status for granted, but the truth is surely (as Kant and other Enlightenment philosophers stressed) that civilization is an exhausting task, a labor of great energy and persistent love. It cannot be treated as a given, but rather as the combined effect of audacity in seeking knowledge and nurturing attention. “Dare to know” was Kant’s motto – humanity, he insisted, needed to stand ethically on its own two feet rather than cower behind supernaturally derived codes of conduct.
I find Saint Augustine’s Confessions remarkable in patches for its insight into human depravity. His remarks about children’s lack of power to do harm – not lack of intent -- being the only thing keeping them back from adult-level wickedness may sound cruel, but at the same time, it’s perhaps closer to Freudian insight than to the simple notion of original sin.
I suspect that humans are an incongruous, incompatible, unpredictable and explosive mixture of innate sociability and innate violence, much like their primate ancestors when they are observed in the wild.
As a species, humanity is like the perennial drunk who walks into a bar, sits down next to you and is one minute your friend and the next your murderer for absolutely no discernible, sane reason.
I like Augustine’s Confessions chapter about his boyhood theft of some pears – he concludes that it was hardly necessity that drove him to it but rather the love of similarly depraved company, a feeling of belonging to a society of scoundrels.
Of course, even that doesn’t quite go to the heart of the matter; it doesn’t explain why there’s a community of potential or actual scoundrels in the first place, rather than just a community of good people who do kind things for one another. For that, I guess we need old Ziggy with his pessimistic nattering about our investment at birth with “a powerful share of innate aggression” (or words to that effect, in a late chapter of Civilization and Its Discontents), and of a Thanatos Drive or death instinct that leads us to lacerate ourselves or to lash out in rage as we seek ultimate quiescence, oblivion.
One of my simple-dino thoughts is that evildoing and lack of empathy is just plain easier than doing right and fostering and acting upon empathy for one’s fellow being. Being a callow, ignorant, mean-spirited pezzo di merda is the default button, it would seem….
As always, your argument is both carefully crafted and right on target. Even if care of the planet and the consequences of past decisions force us to live smaller physically--as apparently we must--we will simultaneously grow in a digital dimension; the world won't shrink again. We are all world citizens for good and all.
ReplyDeleteAfterthoughts on the same topic –
ReplyDeletePerhaps a lot of the wickedness done in the world is done by individuals to reconfirm an already extant pattern of bad thoughts and bad acts. If that is the case, each successive act of wickedness gives the “evildoer” a sense of intelligibility about his or her life, a sense of coherence rather than chaos. It may be that our need to make sense of the welter of chaos that is ourselves leads us to do things that help us see patterns in our present and our past – even if those things are ignoble or dastardly. The murderer murders to confirm himself a murderer, the thief steals to prove herself a thief, and so on. The Church would probably say this is a repetition-engendering function of spiritual despair – a useful framework whether one is a believer or not, I think. Couple this with plain old moral sloth (the “default button” I mentioned previously), and one has a powerful combination working towards evil in the world. Makes it easy to see why some concept of redemption is so vital for both individuals and whole societies: without it, we drift and seek the bad just to be able to lend meaning and coherence to life.
I cannot help but wonder how much of the current phase of anger we see in this country is directly related to prosperity theology and a sense of resentment, of being left behind.
ReplyDeleteWith prosperity theology and the belief that ones wealth is derived from the fact that God has blessed you for being a believer then what does 'redemption' mean anymore?
Then I cannot help but believe that alot of the anger today is directed at all the wrong things...its more frustration that is being channeled than it is actual anger.
The whole idea that big government is a threat to an individual...how many times does the federal government come into direct contact with an individual? Outside of April 15th?
I think that I enjoy the comments on Swash Zone equally as much as I enjoy the blog posts. Y'all take commenting to a whole new level of intellectual and emotional engagement.
ReplyDeleteBtw, bloggingdino, Saint Augustine's Confessions has influenced much of my thinking on human nature. I very much enjoyed reading your thoughts on Confessions.
I am also think that huimankind chooses the easiest path and that selfishness is far easier than empathy.
Tao, I also think that your reference to prosperity theology is very much on target. Resentment and anger are like twins, they come as a paired set.
Beautifully put, Sheria.
ReplyDeleteEmpathy--the ability to identify with others, to put yourself in their shoes--is the most powerful force for good in the world; sadly, it is the emotion most lacking in so many of us. We're taught not to hit and to share our toys, but most of those lessons are narrowly applied to our immediate circumstances and we never learn to adopt the empathy model as defining our world view.
So true. Our capacity for empathy, although typical for our (and not only our) species, is fragile. We can employ it toward our closest relatives -- if even that -- but to be able to empathize with those "not like us" takes an effort and often skills that not everyone possesses. And even if the ability is there, it is too often overridden by our egocentric interests and primitive desires (for status, power, what-have-you).
But, yes, cultivating empathy is our only chance for salvation and survival -- individual, societal, and global. Too bad that we have such a hard time understanding this simple (and yet so difficult to realize) truth.
BTW, your post touches upon a subject that has been on my mind for a long time, but which I cannot tackle any time soon, because I'm preoccupied with the so-called life lately (it's taken me several hours just to complete this one comment).
It is the role of empathy in politics, specifically my perennially unanswered question whether we can (and should?) empathize with our political opponents. And if so, if this is at all possible, what would be the implications of such a courageous stance on our relationships -- would we still dis each other so mercilessly? Would we actually manage to be kinder toward each other?
More importantly (somewhat wicked grin), would I ever be able to say that I understand Rush Limbaugh, even though I don't agree with him? But if so, would it mean that I'd become more tolerant toward his views, which, as of now (and always), I find abhorrent? And would such tolerance be at all desirable?
A subject for a blog post perhaps, to be written in retirement, I suppose (should I be so lucky to get there).
Two years ago, Robert, of Conservative Convictions ( or ‘Conservative Convicts’ according to our esteemed Captain) invited me to participate in a ‘live’ debate. Early in the debate, I asked the question, “What is your fundamental view of human kind? Do you view our species as inherently corrupt, i.e. the bellum omnium contra omnes of Thomas Hobbes, or the ‘soft’ primitivism of the Noble Savage.
ReplyDeleteThe answer from the conservative camp was ‘Hobbes’ which I thought was an easily won gotcha moment upon which to build a case for tighter government regulation; but neither historical accuracy nor logic nor philosophy are their strong points. In their view, free market forces are natural and self-regulatory; therefore government intervention is unnecessary, unjustified, and inherently oppressive. What about ‘rules of the road,’ I asked. With overstated sarcasm, they said something about running stop signs, speeding, and terrorizing women with baby carriages.
Stanley Kubrick mirrors my own thoughts:
“Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved … And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.”