A dear friend asked me, “What are the seeds of peace?” My answer was prompt, “Empathy and compassion.”
What IS empathy? It’s 1) the ability to put oneself in the shoes of others, to see the world as they see it; 2) to feel events–particularly painful events—as others feel them; and 3) to manage one’s own emotional responses to pain and grief in others so that instead of being overwhelmed, one can to be helpful.
In a world beset by competition and conflict, empathy can help alleviate tendencies to be violent and inhumane towards others, particularly others labeled as dangerous and less than human.
What feeds the roots of empathy? One answer is: literature, specifically literature demonstrating the ways that pain, fear, love, joy, and a remarkable range of human reactions unite all of humanity, regardless of the divisive little categories like age, sex, religion, and ethnicity that we shove people into.
One such book is All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, based on Rmarque’s experiences as a German soldier in World War I. I first read the novel my sophomore year in high school. At that naïve age, I found myself stunned to recognize that the characters who were wringing my heart were Germans, German boys and men of the type who attacked our boys and men in two world wars. Germans, yet so human, so vulnerable, so inherently good.
Read or reread the book. How could anyone not empathize with Remarque’s character Paul Bäumer, a boy who is himself engulfed in empathy–and compassion– after witnessing the death of a French soldier whom he has stabbed:
“‘But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony–Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?'” All Quiet on the Western Front, Chapter 9, p. 223.
In today’s terrifying world, where unprincipled power mongers manipulate fears to enrich themselves, and cajole their frightened followers into hatred and aggression, it is a challenge to counterbalance their moral disengagement with moral engagement; however, this is a challenge that should be accepted by everyone who cares about life on this planet.
Countering racist and dehumanizing rhetoric with reasoned arguments is one response to forms of moral disengagement that threaten the lives and well-being of inhabitants of this earth ). Another approach is to humanize , and re-humanize, the scapegoats that fear mongers invoke to drive often desperate people into action against other often desperate people.
BeyondIntractability.org has identified a number of strategies for increasing the ability of people to humanize their presumptive “enemies.” These strategies include:
Teaching about stereotypes
Promoting empathy
Encouraging dialogue
Focusing on commonalities
Facilitating cooperative projects
Providing education on the negative effects of propaganda
Establishing media that provide alternatives to the media that justify and promote violence, and ultimately
Helping conflicting parties build trust, work for constructive resolution of differences, apologize, and seek reconciliation.
In threerecentposts , Charles Eisenstein has done a magnificent job of sharing stories that contribute to humanizing players on both sides of the Standing Rock pipeline protest. Develop some stories of your own to share with human beings who may seem inhumane to you, or who support politicians whose views you may consider inhumane.
Being an activist is a great goal. Resist attacks on peoples and environments, resist injustice, but also be alert to any tendencies you may have or the people you admire may have to dehumanize people who have ways of thinking that seem dangerous. It is difficult for groups to come together to address the very real threats to our future when people on both “sides” consider the people on the other side to be subhuman monsters. Listen to Eisenstein. Empathisize. Humanize.
For an inspiring example of activism designed to humanize, read the article at Huffington Post . Empathy and perspective taking are essential to humanizing; kindness probably is too.
The way we see and treat someone is a powerful invitation for them to be as we see them. See someone as deplorable, and even their peace overtures will look like cynical ploys. Distrust generates untrustworthiness. On the other hand, when we are able to see beyond conventional roles and categories, we become able to invite others into previously unmanifest potentials. This cannot be done in ignorance of the subjective reality of another’s situation; to the contrary, it depends on an empathic understanding of their situation. It starts with the question that defines compassion: What is it like to be you?
That question is anathema to the militant and the warmonger, because it rehumanizes those that they would dehumanize. Broach it, and they will call you soft, naïve, a fool or a traitor.
What it is like to be a police at Standing Rock? Or what it is like to be an ETP executive? Can you bring yourself into the knowledge that they are our brothers here on earth, doing their best under the circumstances they have been given? I imagine myself in the ETP executive suite. The stress level is high. The board of directors are freaking out. The banks are threatening to pull their funding. We’ve spent tens of millions leasing capital equipment. Maybe we have bond payments due. Business is tough enough as it is, and now these protestors come in who don’t realize that pipelines are safer than rail tankers. They use gasoline too, the hypocrites! And they’re making us into the bad guys! And look how hate-filled they are! Yup, it’s obvious who the good guys are.
I am not endorsing this viewpoint. I am merely trying to understand it. One product of that understanding that is uncomfortable for the ego of the militant is that it would take courage for the ETP executives to halt the project — to do so would require sacrificing their self-interest as they understand it. Similarly, it might take courage for a policeman to defy orders or disbelieve propaganda or break ranks. In a way, we are all in the same boat; we are all facing situations that invite us to choose love over fear, to listen to the heart when it feels unsafe to do so. We need to help each other obey that call. In that, we are allies. We can be allies in calling each other to our highest potential.
Another friend described his encounters with pepper-spraying police at Standing Rock. He noticed that in each instance, it was only one or two police who were doing most of the violence. The others were standing around looking uncomfortable, probably wishing they were somewhere else.
What would activist tactics look like if they were based on the conviction, “Most of the police don’t really want to be doing this”? What would it look like to express in word and deed an underlying certainty that each of them is here on earth to carry out a sacred mission of service to life? How would it feel to them to be told, “I am sorry you are being put in this position. I am sorry you are under such pressure to contravene your heart. But it is not too late. We forgive you and welcome you to join us in service to life.”
As I write this, the first of two thousand U.S. military veterans are entering the camps at Standing Rock. They have vowed to stand with and protect the Water Protectors with their own bodies. They are not bringing weapons. Many of them are leaving jobs and families in order to help protect the water. If they too can keep peaceful hearts, they will magnify the invitation to the government, the company, and particularly the police to make the courageous choice themselves.
Victory at Standing Rock will have far-reaching consequences. It may seem inconsequential in the macro view if the pipeline is merely rerouted or replaced with rail tankers (which are even worse than pipelines). On a deeper level though, a victory will establish a precedent: if it can happen at Standing Rock, why not globally? If a pipeline can be stopped against great odds in one place, similar violations can be stopped in every place. It will shift our view of what is possible. That’s one reason why I agree with the Sioux elders’ preference to keep the movement focused on the water and not let it be hijacked by climate change activists. Climate change is the result of a million insults to a million places on earth. Honoring the place of Standing Rock establishes a principle of honor to all places.
Writ large, the situation at Standing Rock is the situation of our whole planet: everywhere, dominating forces seek to exploit what remains of the treasures of earth and sea. They cannot be defeated by force. We must instead invite a change of heart by being in a place of heartfulness ourselves – of courage, empathy, and compassion. If the Water Protectors at Standing Rock can stay strong in that invitation, they will demonstrate an unstoppable power and win a miraculous victory, inspiring the rest of us to follow their example.
What if I am wrong? Not every nonviolent action succeeds in its explicit aims; not every invitation, no matter how powerful, is accepted. Yet even if the pipeline goes through, if the Water Protectors stay off the warpath another kind of victory will be won – the creation of a psychic template for the future. With each choice we face, we are being asked what kind of world we want to live in. The more courage required to make that choice, the more powerful the prayer, because Whoever listens to prayers knows we really mean it. Therefore, when we choose love in the face of enormous temptation to hate, we are issuing a powerful prayer for a world of love. When we refuse to dehumanize in the face of atrocity, we issue a prayer for universal dignity. When thousands of people sacrifice their safety and comfort to protect the water, a powerful prayer issues from their gathering. Some day, in some form, it will be answered.
This is the final post in a four-part series. You can read the original essay here and learn more about Charles at charleseisenstein.
Engaging Peace began its blogging career by introducing the ideas of psychologist Albert Bandura about moral disengagement and moral engagement . Moral disengagement involves unconscious mental processes that enable otherwise good, caring people to act in inhumane ways—often as a result of deliberate manipulations undertaken by leaders pursuing their own self-serving agendas. Moral engagement processes, by contrast, enable other good, caring people to summon the strength, courage, and moral fortitude to resist the abundant pressures in our societies to behave cruelly and inhumanely.
In the wake of the misery, the anger, the blaming, the fear, and the despair that characterized this election year—along with the elation of some people at the outcome–I am embarking on a quest to review, in a series of brief posts, the mechanisms of moral engagement that might help this country heal its wounds and move in the direction of peace and social justice.
As explained in an earlier post , “Moral engagement requires moral agency–active engagement in resisting pressures and justifications for behaving inhumanely, and proactive efforts to engage in and promote humane behavior. Key contributors to moral agency include humanizing the other, and empathizing with the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of the other.”
Principled moral arguments are dramatically different from the pseudo-moral, spuriously “moral” justifications that some people advocate to convince others that, for example, deadly warfare is the best way to make the world safe for democracy or that assassinating a few potential terrorists is ethically superior to maybe, possibly, perchance risking the lives of thousands of innocent victims (and laws, human rights, and Constitutions be damned!).
Principled moral arguments rest on principles like the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), Kant’s categorical imperative (“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”), the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and the messages in favor of love and brotherhood in various Holy Books.
My advice to everyone distressed by the nature and results of this election is to continue to work for a truer and more complete democracy, characterized by the pursuit of peace and social justice, in a morally engaged way. This means understanding, among other things, the difference between principled moral reasoning and the pseudo-moral arguments that attempt to justify harm-doing.