I attended Harvard Divinity School to study world religions in my twenties. I learned that every religion – spanning the world and going back for thousands of years – holds up compassion as a virtue. Judaism teaches the concept of tikkun olam – that we must repair the world through service to others. Christians have the Golden Rule, which says, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” Compassion toward other people and beings is a core value in the Koran. Ahimsa (nonviolence) toward others is a basic principle of Hinduism. Buddhism teaches us about lovingkindness, and working toward freedom from suffering for all.
We are each hard-wired to feel for others. Empathy (which I think of as understanding someone else’s suffering) is as natural as breathing. We are hard-wired to be compassionate (acting on that understanding to help alleviate that suffering). A toddler offers another child a sticky piece of candy. People run into burning buildings or dig through rubble after an earthquake to find their neighbors. It is in our DNA.
This is why I was just floored the other day when I heard a story on NPR explaining that for some the far right Christians empathy is not a virtue, but a dangerous sign of weakness. There are two recent books out about this now that are getting attention — The Sin of Empathy by Joe Rigney, and Toxic Empathy by Allie Beth Stuckey. They aren’t just some wacky outliers. Elon Musk is quoted in the NPR story saying, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
This is how they brainwash us. This is how they try to convince us to look the other way when, on TV, we see that this new government is snatching students off of college campuses, deporting people without due process, slashing the funding for programs that alleviate starvation and preventable diseases, and firing tens of thousands of government workers. They don’t want us to believe our eyes. They don’t want us to feel with our hearts.
David French’s recent New York Times Op-Ed piece, “Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy,” explains that the far-right Christians are using this strategy to justify the defunding of even Christian organizations that help the poor.
And to make this all worse, part of this concept is that women are particularly “susceptible” to empathy. Joe Rigley said, “The empathetic sex is ill-suited precisely because of the ways that that empathy could be manipulated” to care for those he deems unworthy. The natural conclusion here is that women are not smart enough to know when they are being manipulated and must be controlled by men.
These are scary times. We don’t know what will happen. But no matter what, don’t let them enter your brain. Don’t let them convince you that it is wrong to be compassionate. Don’t let them gaslight you and tell you not to feel what you feel or see what you see. Trust your instincts and reach out to others. Remember that we are all interconnected.
Ubuntu – I am because you are.