In a time of heightened empathy, why is the world around us so unempathetic?
In a time of heightened empathy, why is the world around us so unempathetic?
Although it feels as if the present day has thrust us into an inexorable time of rumination and inward reflection, arguably it's been a long time coming. Individuals and institutions are being called-out what feels like every minute. Our social landscape is rapidly and repeatedly evolving before our eyes; some of us aren’t wearing sensible enough footwear and won’t be able to trundle through the thickets that are shooting up around us. For those who are willing to take responsibility and learn, however, perhaps there is a new way of living on the horizon for us. Our modern history represents a somewhat banal land of notoriously rough weather and choppy seas. As the sun sets on our self-willed ignorance towards the daily atrocities and oppressions that take place throughout the world, hopefully this land will be cultivated into a new one with better weather and increasingly educated people.
The human capacity for empathy and care is so great, it is what sets us apart from other mammals. The negative repercussions of capitalism and consumerism have stunted the growth of these capacities, distancing us from each other, supplanting our natural yearnings for human closeness and collaboration with shiny new phones or the latest fashions. Obviously, this isn’t new information, but the calling out of individuals operating in the top tiers of capitalist institutions as well as people at more local level or even your old racist insert-various-family-members-here, can help dismantle this. We have to normalize this.
Although this may feel like a political rally; it isn’t, it is a human one. That being said, we are living through a time where our bodies are feeling increasingly like political instruments, which means my words are laced with a lovely, rather brash contradiction. Mmmm delicious.
The accelerated and widespread support for Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, resulting in global flurries of protests in solidarity, symbolized a distinct change in social conscience. The ideal of collective social justice roused through the vehicle of grassroots activism. These protests represent a physical, spatial and symbolic stand against the patriarchal, white supremacist and heteronormative values which so pervade society and the psyche of most humans. The same values which have had a hand in creating the present day, one where people livestream their deaths on Facebook* and Jeffrey Epstein was well, able to exist doing what he did, for so long. For Marx nerds, this whole epoch of time serves as a working personification of socialist revolution; factions which form the laboring majority making a concerted effort to rise up against the ruling minority. But why did we wait for blood to be spilled on camera (or rather, smartphone) in order to formulate and make our objection audible and unified? Irrefutable evidence in video form had to literally infiltrate social media feeds in order to stimulate change. It seems we have to make ignorance impossible and make the decision of doing nothing murderous, before any headway is made.
What makes these times feel most dystopia is, if we are to think about this in basic terms; from when man was first capable of complicated thought our humanity has been seen as a point of contention. Numerous basic civil and human rights had to be fought for by so many and even in current times such issues have been more commonly taken on by charities and pressure groups and somewhat ignored by those who wield considerable power. Physical and emotional safety operate in the bottom, essential tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but it should be a conclusion we arrive at without the aid of a psychological theory or a pyramid diagram.
So how is it that our quality of survival is so polarizing? How is it that we can have people barely carving out a life in abject poverty coexisting with members of the 1% living in complete exorbitance?
As I meander along on my own privileged journey to ~wokeness~**, I am consistently surprised and repulsed by my own ignorance and the seemingly contradictory tools I use to fight it. There is something deeply prophetic in the way we can sit in the comfort of our living room, in our fluffy new slippers and watch sleek documentaries cataloging various atrocities going on in the world around us. These stylized truth pills operate an important avenue for the conversation around difficult topics but they also show the ineptness of society to educate itself, unless it comes with an intriguing plot or a slick trailer. Wokeness operates, for some, as adequate Sunday night viewing with the vague hope of imparting some knowledge of how less fortunate others are surviving in the world.
The truth is we don’t have to escape into a documentary about people barely surviving across the globe to be met with pain and suffering; the struggle for survival is right on our doorstep. In the UK, Sunday 5th July marked the 72nd anniversary of the NHS and people from all over the UK stood outside and clapped, including our Prime Minister/human-sized-rat Boris Johnson. Johnson was quoted saying “In these past few months, indeed the past 72 years, you [the NHS] have represented the very best of this country. Our gratitude to you will be eternal.” As he went on to refuse pay rises for nurses (whose average salary has fallen by 8% since 2010) and made plans to stop free parking for NHS workers after the pandemic. SO, workers will once again have to pay for parking at their place of work, some of these car parks charge as much as £3.50 p/h ($4.41). Working in hospitals, where 12 hour shifts are regular means individuals could be spending as much as £42 ($52.73) to work, that’s not adding the petrol money in order to get there.
And yet, we clap. Another example to add to our burgeoning collection of times the UK has chosen to ignore those struggling and instead indulged in self-congraturity acts of performative solidarity.
So what is the exact point of this protracted rant? This is just another recollection of ignorance at the sight of human suffering and injustice perpetrated by those in the seat of power.
But right now we have reached the zenith of change, the global atmosphere is palpable and the ricochets of awareness and activism are being felt. Through seeking and understanding the importance of human ties, we can extract ourselves (even slightly) from a world ruled by commodity value and political gain. By appreciating our equal worth as humans, the richness of difference in the human experience and letting our political, social and personal movements reflect this.
Things will get better, once we start doing better.
* link 2 article: here
** Yes, a problematic word, but with lack of better one I shall use it as a paraphrasal of ‘being aware of social problems; racial, gender, sexual preference and class based inequalities.