Tag Archives: empathy

IMPORTANT DISCUSSION QUESTIONS ABOUT EMPATHY

Miscellaneous Reflections, , ,

The word empathy is by its very nature a descriptor that sounds docile and tepid. A quiet and unassuming characteristic shown by people some might consider weak do-gooders operating on the fringes. People who kneel down to treat the afflicted. Devout Christians lifting their hands in supplication to the Almighty. Writers of delicate prose and poetry. People who tear up as they remember serving others.

Never fearless leaders who diligently and forthrightly overcome obstacles to accomplish clearly articulated goals. Triumphally. Courageously.

Empathy rarely inspires thousands of followers who, filled with great purpose and fortitude, achieve a mountain top experience. Never like the demeanor of heroes, conquerors, narcissistic entrepreneurs, and media personalities that revel in their fame and influence over others. No matter how misbegotten and egocentric.

As a movement, empathy frequently percolates up through the ranks until it cannot be ignored by even the most powerful.

Through the diligent and ongoing efforts of Saint Paul and others, the Christian phenomenon was accepted by Roman Emperor Constantine I as being so pervasive and influential it could not be ignored or defeated. A religious belief that features, at its core, empathetic interactions with others, was eating away the power of elite Roman leaders.

So, under the principle of “if you can’t beat them, join them,” Constantine issued a decree that Christians could not be persecuted. Then, using the success of Roman cultural absorption principles employed for centuries of territorial expansion, Constantine formalized the relationship through the Council of Nicaea. Which initiated the theological foundations of the church as we know it today. Modified throughout the centuries by influential leaders and various reformers.

The problem, as I see it, is that the Council of Nicaea not only formalized the Christian faith with specific interpretations of scripture, but created creeds and hierarchies that intertwined Roman governmental systems. Maybe that action was necessary for Christianity to survive all the centuries since. But the basics of Christ’s teachings were seriously compromised along the way. Empathy was systematically replaced with rules, governmental systems, indisputable policies, theological dictums, and prescribed ways of pious living.

Jesus never compromised away the value and need for empathy. He never envisioned a system that mirrored the values of the once pagan Roman Empire. Power, dominance, masculine imperatives that overshadowed feminine nurturing and love.

I often wonder what Jesus was thinking while in heaven, looking down at his theoretical followers as they created an institutional monster that eventually bestrode the Western World. Issuing fearsome directives and accumulating enormous wealth and power, such that the institution created in Christ’s name was itself corrupt to the core.

Empathy endures because it must. It endures today even when some Christian churches, emulating the structures and authority of the ancient church, try to push it down. It endures today even when political systems, using the rationale of the ancient church, attempt to spin more ways to convince us to be subservient. To accede to their notion of a dignified social order in which the power elite oversee our lives with actions emanating from their concept of wisdom. Their concept of correctness.

Today’s political and social environment is filled with media-amplified admonitions that call for our acquiescence, that bombastic and simplistic answers to complex issues are better than sensitivity. Better than solutions based on empathetic openness to others. Those behind such fervent invectives require us to respond intelligently, having considered the ways and means for doing more than the mere building of bulwarks.

Below is a list of discussion questions we might consider. To help us refine our arguments in favor of a more sensitive and empathetic world. An inclusive world. The following questions are not exhaustive. Others can be posed as our reflections expand and insights grow.

But for now, what can be done with these?

  • Can one be trained to be empathetic? Or are some people naturally empathetic and others can never be?
  • Is the sense of empathy characteristic of all those who call themselves TRUE Christians? If not, why not?
  • Can a Christian community like a church become more empathetic? If so, how?
  • Does understanding the effect a handicap has on a person make others empathetic and therefore more supportive?
  • Are there handicaps that cause afflicted persons to be more sensitive and empathetic than others? Can you think of a situation in which a person overtly or covertly living with a handicap positively influenced others?
  • Can handicaps cause people to achieve more in life than might have been the case without the handicap? If so, why does that happen?
  • Are ordinary changes in life, like aging, a handicap?
  • Are addictive behaviors classified as handicaps? Are they worthy of our sensitivity and empathetic feelings and actions?
  • Can handicaps be ranked in terms of severity or significance, and therefore deserving of varying forms of empathy?
  • Should handicapped people be ranked according to variances such as how the handicap developed, or the extent to which the problem was treated?
  • What actions, if any, should Christian churches take to actively recognize and work with congregants and community members with handicaps? If actions are necessary, what should they be? Who in the church should provide them?
  • Do some Americans disdain or fear feelings of empathy because in their minds they can diminish national values associated with ambition, competition, financial accomplishment, or the idea of Manifest Destiny based on intrepidness and free enterprise?

I am ready to hear your responses with pen in hand. Let us see where the discussion takes us.

©2023 Stu Ervay – All Rights Reserved

THE MYSTERY OF EMPATHY

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Empathy is a combination of two Greek words, “em” and “pathos,” which together mean “in feeling.” Empathy is a person’s ability to recognize and share the emotions of another person, fictional character, or sentient being. It involves, first, seeing someone else’s situation from his or her perspective and, second, sharing emotions, including distress.

Some animals seem to feel empathy. Dogs often demonstrate it. Studies of a few other nonhuman mammals also reveal expressions of concern to the point of acting on it in uncomplicated ways.

But with people everything is complicated.

Human beings are mammals with big brains that can complicate life in extraordinary ways. Instinctual responses to outside stimuli are slow to develop, which makes our first few years of life slow and even challenging. While most mammalian creatures learn to walk, eat, and perform basic behaviors rapidly, human mammals need months to perform even basic functions like walking. Years to learn essential survival skills.

Fortunately, mature humans who have brought such helpless beings into the world are instinctively capable of meeting the challenge of nurturing their offspring. Most are also capable of caring for them responsibly over time. With empathy. Especially if their culture is supportive.

Cultural affiliation was once a relatively simple aspect of being human. To be members of a family that is also part of a larger tribe of other humans. The tribe depended on the inclinations and talents of people within the group to establish processes for appropriate social interactions. To break down the contributions each person should make to ensure the tribe’s survival.

That’s when the big brain came in handy. It allowed the consideration of options. Not depending on one kind of response to outside stimuli. Ideas could be considered and even debated, so tribes needed processes for doing that productively. Not all tribes did it the same. Many liked the idea of selecting a chief or ruler who, after deliberations concluded, would choose the belief systems or actions to be taken.

The human brain was more inquisitive than those in other mammals. Other mammals limited their wondering to issues such as where food and water could be acquired. They also thought about climate management and moving to warmer regions. Instinct guided them toward behaviors that would perpetuate the species. Seeking safety through herding. The human brain wondered about those subjects too.

But also why we were born, what we were expected to do with our lives, and where we go when life ends.

Questions that piqued the human’s big brain. Some ingenious members of the tribe worked on finding or creating credible answers. The results were forms of government and religion, linked to ways of educating the young.

All this history can sound like simple caveman history in the 21st Century. Maybe it is. But years ago I worked on a car with my father when he started talking about technology. How human ingenuity in the technological field far outstripped our ways to manage ways for interacting with each other.

And with the God who made us.

My father was born in 1904, near the beginning of the explosion of technological development. While excited about that human achievement, he shared the lament of the Wright Brothers, inventors of the first successful airplane. They believed their machines would benefit humankind and even avert war. Instead, they were instrumental in killing millions of people during the 20th Century.

My father talked about how conflicted he was about human gains in technology. Mostly because we were not putting guardrails on its use. Creating guardrails meant the ability to actually feel what might happen if such guardrails did not exist. The possibility of airplanes becoming killing machines. The automobile and electronic media enlarging society to a size and mobility that cultural values are diminished. Allowing population centers to expand at such a rate they no longer have a unifying effect on human cultures. Where levels of acquaintanceship and shared feelings do not matter. 

And those issues did not include problems we now face with social media and generative artificial intelligence. Social media was once thought to be a good medium for building and perpetuating human understanding. But it has instead become a massive money-making enterprise that addicts the young and vulnerable. Empathy has been overshadowed by manipulation. Often resulting in depression, loneliness, and even suicide.

Generative artificial intelligence is no longer science fiction in the guise of humanoid robots serving cocktails and performing daily functions people dislike. It has entered our lives as facsimiles of ourselves. It can look, act, perform, and interact like we do. And can even pretend to be empathetic if its survival depends on it.

Like HAL in the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Resurrecting the Importance of Christian Empathy in this New Era

Jesus did not just sympathize with people.

Jesus was empathy personified. Deep down. To take on our grief and suffering within his own persona. So much so he did something about them through healing. Succinctly giving guidance via eye-opening parables and divinely inspired illustrations. So much so he took our human frailties and sins to the cross with him. He converted empathy into a saving grace. A state of being that absolves us of our sins and inability to show our fellow humans the kind of empathy that really overcomes their hurt. Their suffering.

While we are unable to be empathetic the way Jesus was, we can still offer ourselves to others in ways that resonate with the afflicted. To help them feel drawn into our sphere of emotion and communal sustenance, extending authentic friendship through a cheerful camaraderie. Nothing superficial. Nothing fake.

Empathy is a reaching out and a drawing in. It exudes the mutuality of our human existence with no strings attached. It places the afflicted on an equal playing field of human existence, revealing our own hidden afflictions and peccadilloes. Being a community of equals willing to expose our own weaknesses and share our own strengths.

The challenge we followers of Christ have is much greater than fending off the impact of ongoing technological development, social media, or even artificial intelligence. While those challenges are significant, our own behavior as complicated humans reflects something worse.

Many Americans now believe empathy is a sign of weakness. That our nation’s survival depends on strength. On taking firm moral positions based on surmised American values, thereby holding the line against perceived misbehaviors. No exceptions.

Nuances are just ways to take our eyes off the ball. Abortion is bad. Guns are good. Quality education is technology based and measurable indoctrination. Creativity is good only if its value can be measured statistically. Religion is valuable to the extent it promotes compliance with strict rules of order.

And empathy? A sentiment to be replaced with expectations and compliance. For the good of the nation. For the good of those who are proven worthy and productive members of society.

Those on the fringes of that envisioned brave new world must get out of the way because they are irrelevant. They do not belong. People like scholars, artists, writers, tinkerers, theologians, and others who will likely be replaced by generative artificial intelligence. Also irrelevant are those who struggle with ill health, depression, handicaps, old age, addictions, and financial reversals. Their needs can be managed as necessary. But nothing more.

Empathy is a mystery. It is hard to acquire and definitely not measurable in any quantitative sense. But without it our humanoid existence, big brains and all, becomes sterile and meaningless. Devoid of genuine love. Devoid of genuine meaning and hope. Just another species that is part of the evolutionary continuum on earth.

And that is sad.

©2023 Stu Ervay – All Rights Reserved

SERVICE AND THE JOY OF MAKING A DIFFERENCE

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Barbara Ervay

1940-2021

According to David Brooks, New York Times columnist and author, there is a difference between living a happy life and one filled with joy.  Joy is said to come from serving others,

Douglas Abrams’ book about the relationship between the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu underscores that point.

And that serving oneself is never a source of true joy.

A kind of contentment or happiness comes from sharing in the love of our families and friends. We can be fulfilled in minor ways by pleasant diversions some call a “bucket list.” 

We can revel in the little but significant things our earth shares with us:  aromatic flowers, scenic vistas, exotic and delicious food, the plethora of animal life, and the geological and plant diversity found on our wonderful planet.

Day to day contentment, happiness, and fulfillment are fundamental goals in life. They constitute a foundation for being human and part of a magnificent universe.

But they are not what marketers want us to believe when enticing us to buy products or services they offer. Their kind of conjured up happiness glitters with superficial facades, which are temporary kinds of euphoria at best.

They do not bring us joy.

*******************

Decades ago I was intrigued by research findings that discovered good salaries in a workplace do not make us happy.

Researchers found that good salaries and benefits make us NOT unhappy. But they do not make us happy.

And they certainly do not bring joy to our lives.

In other words, happiness has nothing to do with being not unhappy.

Not unhappy is a neutral middle ground or emotional void. It allows us to comfortably exist in a vacuum devoid of real meaning, or anything that transcends the routine of living.

The routine of living, with occasional blips of gaiety can make us think we are happy.  Especially if those blips are associated with people we love and enjoy being with.

Sometimes we feel giddy when winning prizes or receiving an unexpected award or sum of money.

But that feeling of euphoria is temporary. Never long-lasting or a source of ongoing contentment.

Somehow, we Americans have lost that insight and continue to inflate capitalistic notions that happiness is caused by the acquisition of more. The emphasis on the gaining of more creates a social dormancy, an unenthusiastic acceptance of the status quo that causes society to remain docile and submissive.  

That statement is no attack on capitalism.  Capitalism stimulates incentive and nurtures a dynamic marketplace, something socialistic countries cannot duplicate.  Ambition is, after all, a feeling that stimulates and excites.

But unfortunately, capitalistic enterprise can result in either euphoria or crushing depression.  And euphoria, as wonderful as it seems, leads to the need to acquire even more. And depression based on loss can either motivate or destroy utterly.

There is now a debate among advocates of capitalism. Mostly between those who favor the traditional stockholder system and others who advocate what is called the shareholder model. While the arguments are complex, the idea behind the shareholder concept is that people other than well healed investors should also benefit from company successes.

Even if that modification were possible, I doubt Desmond Tutu or the Dalai Lama would believe a remolding of capitalism would be enough to propel our society toward greater happiness. Certainly not joy.

Joy requires people to feel needed and authentically productive. That their purpose in life is to fulfill the needs of others in meaningful and authentic ways.

No revised status quo economic system can accomplish that, no matter how much it is reshaped.

******************

Archbishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama conversed about the role of suffering as a precondition to finding joy. Both have known great suffering along with remarkable successes in guiding millions of people in finding happiness. Even joy.

My understanding of their conversation took me to the word “empathy.” Empathy is much more than sympathy.

Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone else with no innate sense of what they are really going through.

Empathy is an understanding of the anguish or distress of another person because we have experienced something similar ourselves. As fellow human beings with the same physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual needs.

They hurt. We hurt with them, deeply and authentically. We are who they are, but in a place that is now better.

Because we survived our hurt and learned from it.

Barbara, my wife of 57 years, could be amazingly empathetic. A kind of empathy that grew as an extension of her own suffering. At age 14 she was diagnosed with epilepsy and experienced all its manifestations and limitations on a normal childhood. She understood the social agony of being different than others, and isolated because of it.

What astounded me about her condition, later controlled quite well with medications, is that her empathy extended far beyond a deep understanding of others with that disorder.

Barbara, while in college, could feel the distress and confusion of those who were in a dark place with no apparent exit. Fellow students with terminal conditions that would shorten their lives. Friends with deep spiritual convictions that were shunned by others because of those beliefs. Men and women who discovered in themselves a preference for physical intimacy with members of their own gender.  

After college graduation and entrance into the teaching profession, Barbara revealed that sense of empathy with students. Those who were abused at home. Those from poor families with inadequate food, shelter, or protection from the elements. Students who sensed they were different in ways unacceptable to society in general.

During her teaching and in later years, she realized our society often treated girls and women unfairly. So from that realization she worked tirelessly to give members of her own sex the opportunities and recognition they deserved. In schools. In churches. Everywhere women needed support to advance their own efforts to contribute, and thereby gain joy from the giving. 

To say that Barbara gained joy from her deep sense of caring for others, and serving them the best way she knew, seems on the surface to be overreach. Absolute nonsense.

But joy is multidimensional and hard to pin down. The emotional pain associated with empathy is also a source of realizing God’s purpose for our lives. The joy that goes deep into the soul is connected to our relational needs, that we are all made of the same stuff and feel the same way. With variations that enrich our collective personality and create cultural happiness.

The joy of living.

©2022 Stu Ervay – All Rights Reserved