So I propose a toast:
We’re raising our glass, ’til we’re fixed from the inside. I witnessed an argument this morning.
The difficulty is that arguments are often about complex issues. And the difficulty there is that complexity is not the same as complicated. Something that is complicated can be solved with enough effort and resources. Something that is complex is unresolvable ... its dynamic, evolving, like trying to capture a shape-shifter. Just when you think you have an handle on it, along comes an additional factor that changes it all again. Poverty is complex, the legacy of apartheid is complex, gender equality is complex. That's not to say that there aren't central elements that are clear, there are - thats how we can identify the issue. But we so often fool ourselves into thinking its only complicated. There are two dangers in any debate. First, individual statements are always incomplete and so imply absolutes if not taken in context. Likewise, statements are often interpreted as absolutes by listeners because of missing caveats. Second is the temptation to place blame, because in doing so it will share accountability with others. Now, shared culpability is often appropriate, shared accountability is often essential, but this presumes that all involved have come to this point of recognition. Too often we presume this and become frustrated when our rationale is not accepted. For example, I regularly drive past a shack town of poverty that is, in large part (but not solely so), a legacy of apartheid. Almost every shack has a satellite dish for watching TV, and the inevitable reaction from those with relative wealth is "How can they spend money on that?" My answer is, "Wouldn't you too?" Imagine living in squalor, unemployment, cooking on paraffin stoves, a single light bulb, surrounded by a community of violence. I would also take any entertainment escape I could - it would be a lifeline to sanity. Of course this does not justify financial irresponsibility, but it can explain actions by imagining what it must be like to stand in the shoes of another - stand as them, not as me. There are two pathways forward from that point: some will use complexity to avoid responsibility, and some will dictate their solutions to others. The one attitude is selfish and perpetuates the problem, the other is arrogance and can often exacerbate the problem. The key is the word "imagine". Can you imagine being in the other persons shoes? I don't mean merely think it - for to imagine is to trade places, to emotionally stand in someone else's figurative shoes (maybe they don't own any real ones) so you can understand the why behind what they say and do. It is not to condone or condemn, but to understand. This is the difference between sympathy and empathy. Our imagination is never powerful enough to complete the picture; but it is good enough to empathize. Can I fully see poverty from the shoes of someone in poverty? No. Can I imagine what it must be like in at least some respects? Yes! If I am willing to try. Yet we so often shy away from the danger of empathizing, the danger that understanding a situation will make it part of who we are and so compel us to share accountability and call on us to give time, money, and skills (who here says "I'm too busy for that"?). Empathy is dangerous, yet it is the path to altruism. Who in the world would deny that altruism is a good thing. Yet how many will willingly choose to walk the path that travels through empathy to altruism. Empathy is the source of altruism, altruism is the antidote to individualism, and individualism is rampant. Actors and actresses are perhaps the most highly skilled at trading shoes, but they do so in order to accomplish a job. For some there are spill-over effects and they engage with good causes (e.g. Emma Watson, Shailene Woodley, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio), yet even then their empathy can be shallow and is often directed on "hot-button" global issues that don't require personal sacrifice. And then there are others who clearly lack any empathic skill - Trump, Putin, Zuma, Duterte - and it shows in their actions. Christians profess to be aligned with the path from empathy to altruism, but sadly few do. This says nothing about God, but says everything about people. Here is the difference between atheistic altruism and Christian altruism. The former is rooted in the emotional and intellectual strength of the individual to sustain their altruism. And that capacity is finite. However, for the Christian (at least those that live their relationship rather than simply proclaim it), the root lies in the line "blessed are the poor in spirit". In that statement Jesus says two things. First, being "blessed" means felicity: a "state of being happy". And second, that "poor in spirit" does not mean that you have no empathy, but that you recognize your personal inadequacy and how dependent you are on your relationship with God in order to sustain empathy. So what can one make of all this? Firstly, that empathy is not antithetic to being happy. Instead it means that when I understand what it means to be poor in spirit, there is still a joy to be found that lies untouchable above any consequences of empathy. For God is, if nothing else, perfectly empathic - first and foremost is his empathy for me, and that should make my happiness untouchable. Second is that I now share his empathy for others, and that should evaporate my apathy. A Christian should be able to joyfully cry in sadness. Then again, those who choose empathy should remember that is it not only the obvious situations like poverty that need our empathy. There is also intellectual poverty, emotional poverty, and experiential poverty. Those who can empathize need to empathize with such impoverished people too. For often that can change the world when those with resources become empowered to empathize. We know that human relationships can sustain us through troubles, and enable us to accomplish so much more than we can as a single individual. A God-relationship (should) take that to infinity! So in today's argument, who was right, who was wrong? Both in some ways - as we all are, because we are all moving along a path to either perfect unholiness, or perfect holiness - the choice is ours. Until then, our ability to stand in the shoes of another is finite, so we should empathize with those who are less capable of empathizing while we act for those whose shoes we can at least partially feel, and all the time consider where our strength for empathy comes from.
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Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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