I have been thinking a lot about the concept of empathy lately.  Although it sounds like a very admirable quality, I also think that I could and might sometimes delude myself into thinking I can actually put myself in the shoes of another person.   I am not convinced that I can ever do that. I can certainly often identify with certain aspect of a person’s condition or situation but I cannot bring the same history to that condition or situation which the other person brings to it.   I can, as Merriam-Webster suggests in the following definition attempt to be sensitive to the fact that the other person may be having a feeling, which I have also experienced.  Their definition:

Full Definition of EMPATHY  Merriam-Webster dictionary

1

:  the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it

2

:  the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also :  the capacity for this

Dr. Jeremy Sherman suggests in an article entitled “Empathic Intelligence:  To put yourself in their shoes, unlace yours. (Ambigamy).   He also quotes and F. Scott Fitzgerald and then adds his own poignant comment:

“F. Scott Fitzgerald said “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

To which I’d add that the test of a first-rate capacity for empathy is the ability to hold two opposed positions in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to think for yourself.”

Dr. Sherman in an article on Jon Stewart in Psychology Today (psychologytoday.com) states:

“But if you’re a one-trick phony you can ignore all, that thanks to the availability of synonyms for your favorite virtues that make them sound bad. Serenity is defeatism, denialism, spinelessness. Courage is stubbornness, aggressiveness, being overbearing. Love is good but being a suck-up is bad. Freedom is good, but recklessness is bad. Same denotation; opposite connotation.”

This reminds me that for me there is no way to leave myself and actually put myself in the shoes of another. I will bring my life experiences, expectations, biases and  emotional history to the meeting with another.  Thus I might mistake courage for stubbornness or stubbornness for tenacity.  Depending on my experiences and emotional history I might set boundaries on my willingness to join the other person where they are at or where I think that they are.

Three people recently reminded me of my illusion of empathy.  One is a young man in his forties – the same age as my son – who, because of a fall several years ago – has been unable to get himself out of bed or have control over the lower half of his body. He also has some impairment in the use of the upper part of his body.  It is important to note that he is an African American who has lived with racism all his life. His personal history includes a history of alcoholism and a history of being a professional musician.

Another of the people who I have been attempting to identify with is a man who is being tried for the murder of his wife.  Both he and his wife were recovering alcoholics/addicts who had relapsed.

Third, is a man who I think may also be in recovery, is in his forties, has recently gone back to college, and is working at a janitorial job? He cannot afford an apartment on his own and, thus, has to share an apartment. For some reason he was recently asked to move out of the apartment he was sharing with two other men.  He also does not have a driver’s license. Again, I do not know the circumstances of his losing his drivers license. 

In each of these situations I have wanted to be supportive and, yet, challenging in a respectful way. I expect that from people who care about me.  Yet, I also know that I can sometimes experiencing people as patronizing, condescending and thinking they understand when they do not have a clue.  I can also experience them as discounting of my feelings or assuming that I just have to accept my lot in life.  None of those reactions feel empathetic to me no matter how well intentioned that they wanted to me.

Certainly I can and have put myself in learning situations such as workshops where I am blindfolded for the day.  That may be helpful in a limited way, but I still know that the end of the day I can take off the blindfold. I have also been in workshops where I was put in a brace, which prevented me from moving my lower body. Again, that is helpful in getting a sense of what it means to be differently abled, but it is only for a day.

If I want to approach empathy I am going to have to be a good listener without getting sucked into the depth of depression or hopelessness which the other person may be experiencing.  It will not be helpful if we have two hopeless, depressed or angry people.  This is never easy.  My friend who is paralyzed and who has been feeling and believing that he is a helpless victim I want to challenge to think beyond these feelings.  Yet, I have to think about what it might be like to be so dependent. I know that being dependent has been a fear of mine.   It is much easier for me to give help than it is to accept it.  In order to put myself in the shoes of the man who is paralyzed I have to be willing to face my fear of being dependent. I have to honestly ask myself if I could move beyond my anger and disappointment. I might and probably would talk about how emotionally and physically painful it would be to challenge myself to think of myself as differently abled instead of disabled.   It is one thing to say to this man, “You are differently abled.  You are not disabled.  For God’s sake, it has been several years and you are focused on what you cannot do instead of what you can do.”  It is quite another to truly allow myself to get in touch with my own feeling of helplessness or emotional pain. 

The same issues present themselves with the man in jail charged with murder or the man without a car and driver’s license and little money who might soon be homeless.

Empathy for me means that I have to face parts of myself, which might very well be uncomfortable, frightening, or even painful.    The most difficult challenge for me to be a friend, a therapist, or a father is to do what I am recommending that the other do.  Although our particular situations may be very different, the fact remains that we all have emotional and spiritual challenges.  If I stay in the “helper/father” role I am doing something for another and not doing something with them. 

If my memory serves me correctly it was Mark Twain who suggested that the truly educated man was one who could spend all day with a hobo or homeless person and be comfortable learning something and then later that day be at a state dinner at the While House, be comfortable and learn something.  (I tried to verify this but goggle failed me.) The short version is to say that being educated means that one is comfortable knowing one has much to learn from everyone, being willing to learn. and yet confident about being oneself.

Is this empathy?  I hope so. It is the only way I know to approach it.

Written August 22, 2015

It was another Sunday and another invitation to learn (from a guest on the NPR show, On Being. Today the topic was  “Opening up the Race Narrative”.  The guest speaker was John A. Powell.  Mr. Powell “was born on May 27, 1947[4] in Detroit, Michigan. Previously powell was the Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University.[5] He also taught civil rights law, property law and jurisprudence and held the Earl R. Larson Chair of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law at the University of Minnesota Law School.

He is founder and former Executive Director of the Institute on Race & Poverty (IRP), which is located at the University of Minnesota Law School.[6] He has taught at Columbia University School of Law, Harvard Law School, University of Miami School of Law, American University and the University of San Francisco School of Law.” (Wikipedia)

Mercy!  That tells us something about this mean and his “professional” achievement. It does not tell us  he that he is identified as an African Amarican (identifying label has changed over the years) and as the son of  amazing parents.  Both of his parents seemed to have taken the message of that man Jesus about love very seriously.  His father was, in addition to working another job, a minster in a Christian church. Although Mr. Powell can and does use very erudite academic language, two if the words which he seems to use most frequently are ‘love” and ‘we”.  In my mind this says a lot about  who he is as a person.  This reminded of my history ties to various change movements and institutions including my own role as a minister of a Christian church. Often these change movements or organizations were perceived as dangerous by those who opposed the changes.

In the sixties and the early seventies, many in the civil right movement, the non-violence /anti-war movement, the women’s movement and the gay rights movement were eager to convince themselves and the general populace that the changes that they were proposing were not dangerous. That seemed to me to be a lie.  I came to this movement with a background in the study of systems (engineering, psychology, theology, physics and psychology).  I maintained that “Yes, we were and are dangerous. The changes we were proposing threatened the very structure of our culture.  We were advocating that  we explore how we identify ourselves, how we live or avoid living in community, how we use laws and how we use and are used by the basic institutions of this country.  We were proposing changes, which were going to change all of these. I knew this was going to feel frightening to many.  I thought that we needed  to quit lying about this fact. We needed to remember how frightening change can be for all of us.  These were  profound changes we  were proposing.”

Indeed these many years later some of the basic beliefs of the fundamental institutions of this country are being challenged.  Painfully for many we are in the second term of our first African American President.  An action of the Supreme Court has legalized same sex marriage.  The Episcopal Church in the United States outgoing presiding Bishop is a woman and the incoming presiding Bishop is a black man.  In 2003 that same church body appointed the first openly gay person as a Bishop, Gene Robinson.  Although we have yet to elect a Female President we have had more than one woman as a serious contender for that job.  There have been powerful back women such as Shirley Chisholm as the first female African American Congress Woman. 

At the very same time we are today still arguing about the role of the Confederate Flag as a public statement of who we are. Just this past weekend a woman was arrested for taking down the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse.  This morning, while looking out the window of the gym from the vantage point of a treadmill, I saw a pickup truth which proudly displayed two large flags from flagpoles attached to the back of his pickup truck – a Confederate Flag and a U.S. Flag.  The next to me who assured me that she did not agree with the display of the Confederate Flag. I suggested that we need to love and pray for/with that young man.  My best guess is that young man was responding to the renewed effort to stop the official display of the Confederate Flag from such place as the statehouse in South Carolina.  My further guess is that this young man feels that the flag is a part of his identify.

As always the challenge is to see the action of the young man as a mirror for that part of me who holds on to various parts of my identify, some of which is racist.   Early on in my involvement in the various social justice movements it was suggested that all of us involved in the struggle needed to examine our own racism, sexism, ageism and homophobia and other internalized biases. This is what some such as Mr. Powell calls implicit bias.  Implicit bias is:

1  Also known as implicit social cognition, implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. 
N

Understanding Implicit Bias
kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/.../understanding-implicit-bias/

Part of the core of our identity is all the biases we have learned since birth.   Anytime I have served with others on committees such as the racial justice committee at the YWCA of Wheeling the first challenge was to write about and then present to the full committee my own history of learning to be racist. All of us on the committee had to do this several times because it was assumed that all of us who had grown up in this country– black, brown, white, yellow – had learned racism since we were young.  As we continued to grow our “memory” would change. Even prior to this I had been told that I had a plethora of biases including sexism, ageism and homophobia.   This was not said with anger or rancor. It was just assumed that one could not live in this culture without learning these biases. We might not have had some of the obvious, overt behaviors but others were there. Today I still have to dig for another level of honesty regarding these implicit biases.  

Mr. Power talked about Nelson Mandela in his memoir Long Walk to Freedom talking about the following example of implicit bias.   This is the one to which he was referring,

In his memoir, Long Walk To Freedom, Nelson Mandela recounts an incident that occurred early in the anti-apartheid movement on one of his trips to garner support from other African leaders. The incident caused him to experience what he called “a strange sensation” as he was boarding an Ethiopian Airways flight to Addis. He noted that the pilot was black, and because he had never seen a black pilot before, in the instant he saw this pilot, he writes that he had to suppress the panic that arose within him. “How could a black man fly an airplane?” he asked himself.

Mr. Powell further reminds us that being human is about being in relationships.  Perhaps the most powerful implicit biased we have to identify and unlearn in this culture is that of individuality – “the notion that we can control everything when we cannot control ourselves”  Over and over again Mr. Powell uses the pronoun we.  This is very powerful.  From my informal study of speakers and authors for many years, it is unusual for a male speaker or author to use the term we very often.   It is much more common for women to use the term.  I suspect that I would find in a more careful study what we white males are less likely than males who official identify as non-white to use the pronoun “we”. I believe that the “we” is social and moral imperative if we want to make changes.

The other word Mr. Powell uses so frequently is that four-letter word love.   All great thinkers have suggested that if we want to have a relationship with others and mother earth we must first have an honest, loving relationship with ourselves.   This is going to be uncomfortable because as Mr. Power says, “if you suffer it does not imply love, but if you love it does imply suffering.”  He would go on to remind us that without love we do not have joy.  I would go so far as to suggest that the most profound suffering has to do with a sense of aloneness  - being disconnected from ourselves, each other, and mother earth.  When I am not lovingly honest with myself I am not lovingly present with myself and thus really alone. When I cannot be lovingly present I cannot be present with others, my higher power or mother earth.  Without love I am alone – there is no we.

I think we all long to be a part of.  To be a part of may mean facing that uncomfortable feeling of not having the anchors of racism or other learned “truths” to hide behind. That may feel dangerous, but together we can do this.  If the only way one knows how to be a part of is to be a part of a group of racists or terrorists or some other right wing groups that is what one will do. When one uses anger to respond to the person whose need to be a part of has led him/her to connect with a racist or terrorist group, it will only reinforce his/her anger and sense of separateness.  When I am not in touch with my implicit biases I am likely to respond with anger to those I perceive as biased.  When I am in touch with my own implicit biases I can respond with love to those who mirror my own history. At that moment I becomes a we.

I was thinking about shame or shaming as a response to those who continue to use race or other characteristics to discredit and/or physically harm those who they perceive to be different.   This morning I read an article in Today’s Tampa Tribune by Dr. Roy Kaplan, former head of the Tampa Bay Chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews and an adjunct professor at the University of South Florida entitled “A Post-Racist United States:  Sadly we’re still not there”. In this article, Dr. Kaplan was responding to both the recent hate response President Obama got on his Twitter account and the growth of hate groups in the United States since the election of President Obama.  He went on to point out that according to figures compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center the United States has nearly 800 and Florida nearly 50 such identifiable groups.

Dr. Kaplan is recommending that the members of these hate groups “be exposed and held accountable for their incivility, rudeness and crudeness.  Publish their names, addresses and places of work so we can peel away the veil of anonymity they hide behind.” (Tampa Tribune, May 28, 1015, p 9). 

It seems to me that what Dr. Kaplan is proposing is to shame them and to expose them to possible hateful response in payment for their hateful behavior.  

First of all I want to thank Dr. Kaplan for his many years of leadership in exploring ways to create a more just and mutually accepting community and for taking the time to insure that we are aware of the extent to which some (too many), in this country, continue to use hate or some form of oppression as a way to boost their own self sense of self worth.   Obviously, those who claim that racism is not longer an issue in our culture needs to know that current research does not support this claim. 

Obviously, if individuals such as Dr. Kaplan do not force us to face the reality of ongoing racism we will not do what we need to be doing in our educational systems and in other parts of our society to end this terrible excuse for oppression.

I am not, however, convinced that Dr. Kaplan’s solution is going to be helpful or effective.

My initial response was that Dr. Kaplan is recommending that we publicly shame the members of hate groups as well as others who are promoting hatred.   As if my habit I checked the definition of shame and found in Wikipedia:

Shame is a negative, painful, social emotion that can be seen as resulting "...from comparison of the self's action with the self's standards..."[1] but which may equally stem from comparison of the self's state of being with the ideal social context's standard. Thus, shame may stem from volitional action or simply self-regard; no action by the shamed being is required: simply existing is enough. Both the comparison and standards are enabled by socialization. Though usually considered an emotion, shame may also variously be considered an affect, cognition, state, or condition.

The roots of the word shame are thought to derive from an older word meaning "to cover"; as such, covering oneself, literally or figuratively, is a natural expression of shame.

This definition fits with my understanding of the concept of shame or the act of shaming one.  Obviously, the hope of Dr. Kaplan is that by publicly exposing those who are promoting hatred they will compare “the self’s action with the self’s standards”.

With few exceptions I am not convinced that, among those who are members of or supportive of hate groups, that there is that disparity. I think the action often matches the standards or values of the individuals.  Thus, it is not possible to shame those who believe that their behavior is the right or moral course of action. 

I think what Dr. Kaplan is proposing is similar to the approach in the United States to other behavior or alleged behavior, which is contrary to the values of the majority.   We have, for example,  been publishing names and addresses of convicted sex offenders for some time with seemingly little decrease in the sexual abuse of minors or others.  First of all let me remind the reader that many on the sexual offenders lists are not and have not been sexual predators.   We have lumped together those who have unwittingly had sex with an underage prostitute, those who expose themselves, those who unintentionally had child porn on their computer and those who her accused of sexual crimes by angry spouses in the midst of an angry divorce but who did not have a good defense attorney.  Secondly, my personal experience in working with/for those on the sexual offenders list is that, as a result of their names and address being publicized, they were cursed, physically threatened and, at times, physically attacked, and verbally abused.  This did not help them heal, change their behavior or motivate them to treat their abuser with loving-kindness.  Often they then responded with self-loathing and/or anger.  Sometimes they just internalized the abuse they exploded and/or engaged in some self-destructive behavior.

As I have repeatedly suggested, punishment does not work.  If we humans are treated badly we tend not to be motivated to “rise above’ and respond with loving kindness.  Yet, that is exactly what we need to do.  Dr. Kaplan uses another term. That term is accountability.   I am choosing, for the purpose of these comments, to ignore the fact that Dr. Kaplan seems to use the term accountability in a way, which seems synonymous with shaming.  That is not my understanding of the word accountability.   My understanding is that that accountability is done with empathy and love and not more hatred.  

It seems to me that the goal of shaming is to make the person feel bad enough that they want to change.  This works only if the individual themselves feel bad about their behavior and want to change it.  Even then if they use shame to scold or to punish themselves they are not likely to change their behavior.  They will, in that case, find themselves repeatedly engaging in the same behavior.  If they want to change their behavior they have to change their thinking and give themselves other behavioral options.  If I, for example, have a sexist or racist thought, I want first of all to notice it and to notice that it is inconsistent with my current values.  I will then replace that thought with one, which is more consistent with my current values.

If I want to help create an atmosphere, which is more likely to promote change, then I have to (1) make other ways of thinking attractive in some way and (2) make sure that the person knows that they can safely “confess” to themselves and me without any fear of being rebuked or punished.

I am well aware that if I am talking to a person who is a member of a hate group, I am not going to change them by running up to them, giving them a big hug and a kiss and telling them that I love them.   That would be very naive at best and stupid at worse.    I am going to do what I can to tune into the pain, which underlies the need to hate; the pain, which says that one needs some way of proving one’s worth.  If that way of proving one’s worth is by convincing oneself that one is superior to another, then I am not going to change them by telling them that they are a piece of crap.  I am going to say to them in every way that I can that they are worthy of love and respect; that we do not need to put others down to feel good about ourselves.  I may, at times, be able to talk about how all of us feel unworthy at some level and look to something outside of ourselves to feel better about ourselves. 

In the world today there is increasing concern about the proliferation of hate groups and individuals who are terrorists.   All of the studies I have read lead me to believe that one is more likely to adopt the beliefs of a hate group or a terrorist organization if one is already feeling lost, disconnected and without a sense of purpose.  Those organizations or individuals who have had some success in attracting these individuals to explore another way of thinking have done so by offering them another very concrete option for feeling as if their life has meaning/a purpose which translates into the person beginning to belief that they have purpose or a sense of worth based on doing something they could consider positive.  

Terrorists, racists, and extremist are not different than you or I.  We all want to have a sense of purpose, to believe that we can make a difference and to be loved and respected, if not in this life, in the next. 

It is my belief that until we come to terms with this essential “truth” we are not going-to-going to create a more just and loving society. As long as we are convinced that one could never be like “that person” or “that person” has nothing in common with us, we will not see long-term positive change. 

Simple changes such as  “We humans have a tendency to feel good about ourselves by convincing ourselves we are more than or better than.” as opposed to “You people have a tendency to.”   It is never a you.  It is always a we!

I can obviously understand why none of us want to look at the part of us who can be a racist, a radical terrorist, a right-wing fundamentalist, or a drug addict, but until we can accept this essential truth we will think in terms of ‘the other” and will react to “them” rather than embracing the mirror image.