Death of Empathy
Empathy fascinates me. It’s free, can give everyone a high and has no known negative side effects. Yet all too often its potential for transforming somebody’s day is overlooked. Why?
When I started writing Charli’s story from the perspective of my alter ego, Blue Skeleton, I wanted to explore what happens when someone pours their efforts into being empathetic. That’s why, despite being poor and mostly raising herself, my protagonist, Charli, has an uncanny awareness of others. It’s a quality I admire.
On our side of the Graveyard…
Those rare moments when I turn on the news, leave me unsettled and with a profound feeling that life is sometimes nothing more than a series of tragedies. The reasonable side of me knows that the news is a ratings driven mechanism and thusly it shines very bright lights on very dark matters. However, it makes me wonder if there’s an adult in charge and what it would take to change the world for the better?
Neither the media, nor the Government will likely ever have an answer. They’re all about serving themselves rather than the people who can’t escape them. Fear sells papers, while knowing what people’s fears are and then offering them protection can help a manipulative government hold onto power. Some might say religion operates along the same lines.
The New York Times recently published an interesting article on whether or not the Religious Right is privileged. It questioned the contemporary intentions of organized faith. What purpose does is it now serve, particularly given the divisions it creates?
Religions have had centuries of time, endless resources and countless lives to get it right and they still haven’t. For me old world religion has become akin to my fat friend…. bless his heart. Let me explain…my friend is overweight and no matter how often he goes to the gym or diets; he’s still overweight. But he’ll judge my life and tell me how I’m eating wrong or how I shouldn’t dead lift free weights. Maybe he’s right or maybe he’s wrong. In either case I don’t see results in my friend much like religious folks telling me what I should or shouldn’t do. It’s a lot of talk, rules and ceremony without foreseeable positive results.
What I see are people who can’t get along despite professing a higher spiritual nature. And some might say that is simply my opinion and where that might be the truth there are still the countless religious wars fought over centuries that have nothing to do with my opinion. At this point they are an irrefutable part of our past.
These matters are further complicated by prejudices surrounding gender, race and social status. Again, the cause is a lack of empathy. Treating woman as inferior to men hasn’t served humanity very well. Consider the story of Adam and Eve, the supposed two first people on earth, where Eve takes advice from a snake. I don’t think there is any conceivable way a woman is that stupid, but that’s just me.
On its own, that story, is filled with plot problems. We all know they had two children and those children married. “Ya got’a have faith,” screams the lunatic from the bleachers – maybe so, but in the mean time the world is burning down. It would make much more sense if you considered Adam and Eve from a metaphorical perspective…Eve was Adam’s soul. Thusly, he was tempted. Aha! Now the story makes sense. Like I said, woman just aren’t that stupid.
And as for racism – Consider how much simpler life would be if you knew a person was good or bad based on their skin color? Seeing this written down, if you possess any empathy at all, has horrified you, but that doesn’t stop some people from behaving as if they believe this to be true.
So what gives…? I don’t profess to know what the answers are, but to me it’s clear that our previous systems, which once gave us purpose, identity and structure, aren’t working. Is Darth Cheeto somehow draining our empathy swamps, as well as the Earth’s dwindling water sources to feed the green lawns of his golf courses?
We don’t have a universally agreed upon document that states clearly what it means to be human. The U.S. constitution got close, but it’s been railroaded. This means we’re getting mixed messages. Murder is fine so long as the numbers are great enough. Kill one person…bad. Kill thousands and suddenly you’ve got yourself a country to run. It’s worth noting that we’re not just content with just murdering each other, but also as many plant and animal species as we can too.
And for those of you that are climate change deniers then consider it like this. If there is such a thing as God then an atheist is going to be wrong for a very long time. Denying climate change is sorta the same, so it might be wise to err on the side of caution, because like an atheist you can’t afford to be wrong. There’s simply too much at stake.
As I said earlier, I don’t know what the answers are.
On the Other Side of the Graveyard…
As I write words and thoughts for Charli, I wish for more empathy among the human race, but I also wish that more people could view each other as equals. When I let my inhibitions go, I imagine what it would be like if all human beings saw one another as created noble instead of through invented divisions. Imagine if nobility was the place where we began and all social rules, laws and paradigms were based on that. Now THAT might be a wonderful place to live! There may no longer be differences in religions, skin color, sex or status. Perhaps that should be our first foot forward towards a better way of living together on this planet?
