On Selective Empathy
Author and activist bell hooks wrote, “Many of us are motivated to move against domination solely when we feel our self-interest directly threatened. Often, then, the longing is not for a collective transformation of society, an end to politics of dominations, but rather simply for an end to what we feel is hurting us. This is why we desperately need an ethic of love to intervene in our self-centered longing for change. Fundamentally, if we are only committed to an improvement in that politic of domination that we feel leads directly to our individual exploitation or oppression, we not only remain attached to the status quo but act in complicity with it, nurturing and maintaining those very systems of domination.”
hooks refers to the “ethic of love,” or the act of caring for others and having our beliefs rise from that caring, which we may call sociopolitical empathy. Activism in the absence of this empathy, or “love ethic,” as she calls it, is simply selfishness and the wish for our own inconveniences to be dispelled. This selfishness is precisely what the establishment wishes humans to have. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations believes in individuality and the collection of capital for oneself; coupled with Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species, which creates the notion of “survival of the fittest” and only the strong surviving, we receive a hyper-individualistic worldview that has become increasingly toxic in recent centuries. We work only for ourselves, we advocate only for ourselves, we have and raise children for ourselves, we watch movies for ourselves, we eat candy for ourselves. The thought of others have been almost entirely dispelled. It is sad to see these notions being so deeply engrained in our society, because humans are not naturally or inherently selfish above all other traits. This selfishness has only been engrained through countless years of consumerism and the idea of natural selection.
In reality, cooperation is a foundational pillar of human survival. A study of experiments done in regards to the nature of human selfishness in Yuchai Benkler’s The Penguin and the Leviathan found that only about thirty percent of experiment participants in general ever choose the entirely selfish option, and there has been no study in which the majority of people behaved selfishly. The myth of “natural selfishness” only exists because we have been told it exists, and we are encouraged to maintain it. As such, we empathize only with the people society wants us to empathize with: our family, our friends, and the people that are part of our own groups and “cliques”. Every stranger is dangerous and not to be trusted — they should not deserve our empathy. Anyone deemed as other does not deserve kindness or empathy at all, because they might be dangerous to our survival.
Mutual exclusivity between survival and empathy is almost entirely mythical. Choosing to empathize with groups of people that do not include us does not mean we give up our own activism or our own rights — there is no limit to activism. One is not obligated to choose if they want to advocate for one group or another. While it is true that some people might know about certain types of oppression more than others, it by no means translates to the fact that we must all choose one type of activism and only focus on that. Selective empathy is not obligatory, but yet we are made to think that it is.
We all fall victim to this selective empathy, and we all must work to rid ourselves of it, because this type of selectivity is what is responsible for centuries of oppression of all kinds — ableism, classism, racism, misogyny, countless others. As hooks emphasized, applying a love ethic to only a select few is exactly what perpetuates systems of oppression. If an environmental activist met with a racial justice activist and each screamed at each other about which type of activism is more important, real progression is stalled. The first step in achieving true sociopolitical empathy is becoming aware of what causes it. You are not naturally selfish or greedy. You are not naturally apathetic, and it is not your fault that you have been taught that.
After becoming aware, the next question is how to stop partaking in it. There are many ways one can start focusing outside of their own thoughts, but some of the best ways include to listen to representatives of other groups with a growth mindset: no one’s ideas or thoughts are perfect. Even the most brilliant thinkers have some beliefs to mend, especially when those beliefs have been corrupted by the culture of individualism children are raised in. Recognize that there are many different types of oppression in the world, and many different ways to attempt to fix it. Recognize that people are suffering, even if you are, too. If a person is a side of a Venn Diagram, and every stranger is the other side, one should take steps to reach the intersection: to listen to all groups, hear each’s perspectives, and make ideas based off of the most information available.
The final step is to repeat step two.
Listening to others is perhaps the most crucial aspect of sociopolitical empathy. Without the knowledge of others, we crumble into our own madness, our own absurdity. With the knowledge of others, we may all learn how to improve upon ourselves and upon the society we live in. With the knowledge of others, we may finally progress a world that, despite the tsunami of technological advancements in the past century, seems to have reached a standstill. With the knowledge of others, we may empathize.
