Earlier this month, I couldn’t help but notice the number of trucks that passed by transporting riding lawnmowers. There were dozens of them, each one with two or three mowers, all heading out to spend a half hour or, in the case of larger yards, much longer, in the sweltering heat. Call me selfish, but one of my passing thoughts was, “I’m glad I don’t have to work in this heat.” Another thought was to wonder why those of us fortunate enough not to have to do manual labor don’t have more empathy for those who do.
The American economy inadequately rewards those who do hard physical, often debilitating work. Those of us who “labored” in offices for years in some ways, don’t know what work is. I recall an incident many years ago where my son was with me at work. He watched me talking on the phone and banging away at a computer keyboard and asked, “Daddy, is this what you do all day? Why don’t you have to work?”
I have no apologies for my career as a white-collar worker, but my son had a point. Today, retired from full-time work, I am young compared to many other people my age who “worked for a living.” I think those people deserve our empathy. Unfortunately, all too often they don’t get it. And that absence of empathy is reflected in today’s political divide and an economy where the rich are getting richer at the expense of people who do much of the work that makes our standard of living possible.
American politics would smell better if some of the class-based acrimonies were replaced with empathy. If that happened, a high priority might be placed on addressing income inequality. Efforts to call things like affirmative action “reverse racism” might be viewed differently. If you recognize income inequality and classism, which might be described as denigration of those who don’t have as much money or education as you do, you want to address income inequality as fast as possible. You quit seeing it as “sour grapes” on the part of those struggling to make ends meet and start seeing income inequality as a moral issue.
Empathy is not the product of reading economic treatises, at least for most of us. Instead, it only appears in a genuine form as a result of beliefs. If you believe all humans are created equal, you should be empathetic to others, including people who don’t look like you, immigrants (legal and illegal), people with disabilities, and people who are just different than you are in terms of gender, sex, and self-identification.
Churches, schools, politicians, and other moral leaders should try to wake up “the empathy gene” in all of us. Our consciousness of the importance of empathy must be raised. And dare I say, all of us should be taught to expect empathy from others.
While empathy is a moral imperative, it also is a prerequisite for a democratic society. Without empathy, politics can become a grab bag, with all of us trying to use the political system to maximize our own benefits at the expense of others. It is the national deficit in empathy that, in my view, might have brought us to where we are today in politics: A world of identity politics (race vs. race, class vs. class, etc.) and incredible callousness to others (For example, Texas Governor Abbott putting barriers in the Rio Grande River that can result in illegal immigrants drowning.)
As I look at the troubling future of the 2024 Congressional and Presidential elections, I want to support candidates who display a modicum of empathy. That rules out greed-obsessed Trump and those who imitate him. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that all Democrats are good, and Republicans are bad. Legislators and leaders in both parties have work to do.
Has anyone developed an “empathy index” that might be used to help us determine whether we are empathetic? I haven’t seen one, but I have seen websites intended to help us understand what empathy is. Some attributes of empathy which we can all adopt include being a good listener, thinking about what others feel, understanding other points of view, and showing compassion. That’s a good start.
J.E. Dean is a retired attorney and public affairs consultant writing on politics, government, and other subjects.
Reed Fawell 3 says
“Empathy is not the product of reading economic treatises, at least for most of us. Instead, it only appears in a genuine form as a result of beliefs.”
It’s the rise of the Judeo-Christian tradition, ritual, and belief that gave rise to empathy in Western Civilization. The western secular state has no tradition of empathy, because it’s killed God, save what’s left of it from its Judeo-Christian tradition. Hence for example, William Wilberforce as earlier noted. Otherwise empathy makes no sense, as history makes plain.
Reed Fawell 3 says
Two very fine books on the irreplaceable impact of Judeo – Christian belief on the world are:
The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich
Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland, Mark Meadows, et al.
Cameron Mactavish says
Excellent piece that serves a a good reminder for all of us. Thank you!
John Dean says
Thank you for your kind words.
Wilson Dean says
I worked as both a janitor and a construction worker during my college years and I came away with two strong impressions as I headed into my white collar career. One was that people in these professions work very hard with little reward (so working in the white collar world for me became a high priority). The second was that I felt a deep and enormous amount of respect for people in those and similar positions demanding manual labor.
We don’t need a belief in someone else’s god to show empathy towards each other. All we need is a good heart to show good will toward all of our fellow human beings
John Dean says
Thank you for your insightful comment. Much appreciated.
Reed Fawell 3 says
Actually, history proves will do need such a belief, and if not we fall apart. Study the history of the world and that is what happens over and over, misery, grief, and chaos, its the human experience. We are not Gods. Our pride in ourselves alone always brings up low. As is happening now, a falling apart. That said, their is within us an “instinct” for empathy, but it always overwhelmed by other base instincts without a higher power that inspires us, always. Study history.
Mickey Terrone says
Wilson Dean, nevermind someone else’s god or our own Christian lord and savior Jesus Christ or our Old Testament Bible. One need only to look back 160 or so years (and for a century since Appomattox) to how our deeply Christian American slaveholders utilized the institutionalized cruelty and brutality of slavery in the physical, emotional and sexual abuse of millions of black people for immense financial profit. They did so in the name of Christianity and quoting from the Bible as religious proof of their honor and integrity.
The scriptural words on the New Testament provide us with a more than adequate basis of kindness and empathy to guide our daily lives. In church we profess our guilt for sinning against our neighbors; and then walk out of church and right back into the bigotry, greed, racism and jealousies that plague our society.
How our country protects the interests of the wealthiest few and abandons the vast majority to relative poverty and disrespect for their lives and labors is truly sinful, but legal under the law.
Reed Fawell 3 says
Mr. Terrone says:
“… One need only to look back 160 or so years (and for a century since Appomattox) to how our deeply Christian American slaveholders utilized the institutionalized cruelty and brutality of slavery in the physical, emotional and sexual abuse of millions of black people for immense financial profit. They did so in the name of Christianity and quoting from the Bible as religious proof of their honor and integrity.”
And they all, each and every one, were Democrats.
This is not history. It’s a cheap shot.
Mickey Terrone says
Mr. Fawell, if the shoe fits…….wear it. Its no cheap shot if the statement is accurate, and it is accurate that slaveholders used the Bible and Christianity as cover for their greedy brutality against millions of black people so they could amass huge financial gains. Not only did slaveholders not show empathy for slaves, but they refused to offer them any human dignity, including separating husbands and wives and parents from children, while preventing them from becoming literate enough ever to read the Bible.
I do appreciate your abased effort to use the Judeo-Christian tradition to sanctify some “higher power that inspires us” with empathy for slaves, either prior to the end of the Civil War, or for the 100 years of abuses afterward or for most wage/hour employees in America today. If you have to remind a $25 million per year senior executive about his Judeo-Christian ethic responsibilities to his $15-20/hour employees, he might just burst out with laughter.
As Mr. Dean rightly pointed out (on a micro level), empathy for hardworking is people usually lost in the false pride of white collar people. At the corporate level, every possible effort is made to minimize the value, compensation and benefits of less educated “support” people or line workers. Millions of Americans can’t afford health insurance or require second and third jobs to scrape above the poverty line, much less get beyond living paycheck to paycheck or save enough to secure a mortgage – even as their companies profit by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Top executives check their empathy and Christianity at the door when its time for labor negotiations. Our country’s history of labor vs. management has been ugly, from the cotton fields to the sweat shops of the industrial revolution to the anti-unionism of today and it is the case for many white wage laborers as well. Protecting the basic security of average American workers’ ability to prevent financial black holes due to illness via a modicum of health insurance and a respectable minimum wage should be the political will of our state and national leaders along with a cadre of enlightened corporate leaders to lead the way in empathetic wages and benefits while maintaining strong corporate profit level.
If the Judeo-Christian influence was involved, I suppose we’d be hearing from our church hierarchies to this effect.
Reed Fawell 3 says
You are on quite a rant.
The Judeo-Christian tradition, ritual, and belief soaked to the bone both the union and the Confederate sides of the Civil. Abe Lincoln on the Union side was a much Christian prophet,while joining no faith, as Christian President, as were the great majority of the Abolitionists, and soldiers on both sides. Without the Judeo-Christian tradition, ritual, and belief, America would never have fought such a horrible killing and maiming war reeking both on up two million Americans all told. The sure proof of this is that no nation other than America has been engaged in such a noble and horrible undertaking, at such immense cost and pain to free an enslaved people. All of it started based on an ethic begun in Exodus, from whom the enslaved took their strength, solace and gathered their courage. Read Frederick Douglas. Read Martin Luther King. Read History. So you don’t keep making a fool of yourself.
Hence recall from Lincoln alone:
“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party – and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.”
Meditation on the Divine Will, circa September 2, 1862
“According to our ancient faith, the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed.”
Speech at Peoria, October 16, 1854
“I have said nothing but I am willing to live by, and, in the pleasure of Almighty God, die by.”
“Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”
Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
“That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or any denomination of Christians in particular.”
Handbill Replying to Charges of Infidelity, July 31, 1846
“To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.”
Farewell Address, February 11, 1861
“Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.”
First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong.”
Meditation on the Divine Will, September 1862
“Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in His own good time, will give us the rightful result.”
Letter to John C. Conkling, August 26, 1863
“Nevertheless, amid the greatest difficulties of my Administration, when I could not see any other resort, I would place my whole reliance on God, knowing that all would go well, and that He would decide for the right.”
Remarks to the Baltimore Presbyterian Synod, October 24, 1863
“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”
Conversation with Noah Brooks
“…I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.”
Conversation with Francis B. Carpenter
“If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.”
Letter to Albert Hodges, April 4, 1864
“In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book.”
Reply to Loyal Colored People of Baltimore upon Presentation of a Bible, September 7, 1864
“Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the almighty and them.”
Letter to Thurlow Weed, March 15, 1865
Grief and Mourning
In the untimely loss of your noble son, our affliction here, is scarcely less than your own. So much of promised usefulness to one’s country, and of bright hopes for one’s self and friends,
Letter to Fanny McCullough, December 23, 1862
“I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”
Letter to Lydia Bixby, November 21, 1864
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
History is not for the simpleminded. Never was. We and our history are far too complex, mysterious, and full or irony, stupidity, and paradox. That includes all of us. Even you.
For the latest edition see:
https://talbotspy.org/one-day-in-september-of-1861-by-paul-callahan/
Deirdre LaMotte says
Thank you. It seems as if this person’s full time
job is posting in the Spy. It is the reason I do not
post anymore; the person is oddly obsessive and tiresome.
I agree with you. Keep it up. There is much hot air out there and we need your voice. Just remember
there is one Party that has given up governing.
Politics is theater for them and their aim is to stoke fear.
Exhibit one is Murdock. A slime family taking lies
to an new level. Next is the GOP. Nothing there
but a picked over carcass. RIP.
And do note that governing is difficult. It is not
grievance rallies and stoking fear. It is work.
Biden gets it and is doing the work. That is
governing.
Mickey Terrone says
Mr. Fawell, somehow I’m ertain you have no idea what I meant in my previous 2 posts. I appreciate your moving defense of Lincoln’s christianity despite the fact that he was not a churchgoing man. He walked the walk of christianity. Yet while you credit the Confederates with being “soaked to the bone” with the Judeo-Christian tradition, ritual, and belief, you failed to give any examples of it as you did with Lincoln (and the Union side).
I believe you have thus acquiesced to my previoius commentary regarding the studied cruelty and false christianity of supporting the institution of slavery and in fact, ensuring in the Confederate Constitution the permanence of that horrendously unchristian pox on humanity. But thanks for expressing your incapacity to offer a balanced response.