We Could All Use a Little Bit More Empathy

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.” - Noam Chomsky

Chomsky tackles the very difficult problem that we face when we strongly disagree with someone. I would gather that if you have lived any sort of life, you have encountered people that would fit this profile. The belief that keeps me going despite running into the obstacle of those we might consider nut-jobs, crazy, stupid, delusional or any of the many variety of things that make us “despise them,” is empathy. Specifically empathy, where it involves understanding the emotional states of other people and that ability to imagine oneself in another’s situation. That can be a very difficult process that takes some imaginative and sophisticated effort to accomplish.

I am not writing about sympathy and pity, as empathy is distinctly different. True empathy will create pro-social behavior as we accommodate our thinking about the differences of how we think in regards to people and their ideologies. This will lead, I believe, to a positive state where we will help and aid one another, regardless of how strongly we can disagree about matters. We can start to focus on long-term welfare and social issues as well as improving attitudes toward those stigmatized groups that dwell all around us.

We need more cooperation, not competitiveness. More empathy. When we are empathic toward others we should be putting a considerable distance between the beliefs and viewpoints that we hold, and the experiences that shape others basic sense of self. Have more understanding. This attitude will create a condition of unconditional positive regard for one another and will create for most people a greater sense of mission. Helping others and not focusing on just helping ourselves for any of the variety of fear or selfishness we possess.

All this is difficult to measure. But I have tried to be more empathic in my thinking and I believe that it has helped me to be more connected to people at a higher level, and is a sort of recovery process to the narrow mindedness that I have suffered with in my past.

Empathy is a form of expansion of consciousness. That is what I like to think.

Drivin' Down the Road Having a Vision Quest

"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead." -Ernest Hemingway

I found myself silently contemplating Hemingway as I motored through Seney Michigan and crossed the Fox River a few weeks past. The story goes that the Fox was the actual location for the setting of Hemingway's classic short story, "Big Two-Hearted River." The story discusses a disillusioned and wounded soldier who embarks on a somewhat vision quest of a camping and fishing trip in the northern Michigan woods. I would recommend at this point you write down a note to self to take the time to read this story if for no other reason than to try to understand what it would mean to seek peace and a sense of balance after having your soul traumatized by war. After all, there is a lot of our family and neighbors returning to us having experienced first hand these experiences.

A quiet and peaceful break was part of my reason for being in this part of Michigan, and since silent contemplation seems to be one of my true talents, something that is not easily judged, I am often lead down paths of wonder. In fact, this is how this post came about, wondering about my world on a mini "vision quest while driving down the road" in remote Schoolcraft County. I was specifically remembering the above quote and was formulating how you can "ask the dead" so very many of the questions that we face or the adversarial encounters we experience, and mine from them their collective knowledge. Or, as our parents used to tell us, to learn from our mistakes. We can also learn from the collective wisdom and observations of historical, literary, family, mythical, and anyone else who either wrote down, spoke, carved or painted on a cave wall, or similarly have shared their thoughts (and often their mistakes).

As George Harrison said, "We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it." In my experience, the past is filled with everything I failed to be as well as all I have succeeded at. I realized in my mini vision quest that in order for me to move forward I needed to let all that "stuff" die--both the good and the bad--so that I can be free to live now and keep inventing this gift of life that I have been granted. Every time I visit my past it cuts me somehow. It seems overly endowed with very sharp edges. And I have been fortunate to not have experienced the trauma of war. What sharp edges must cut at those who have.

As John Buchan so well stated: "We can pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves." Basically, throw away the present and future by dwelling on the past.

What the Founding Fathers Said

“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”― George Washington and John Adams.

Both of the above founding fathers, in the Treaty of Tripoli signed in 1787, shared this belief about where this country, the young United States of America, stood in reflecting what it stood for on the world stage. What does that quote mean to us today when we face so many issues that change long-held beliefs and the right of all citizens to be protected by the concept of social justice for all in our country? 

Around 1787 History Lesson: The United States was battling the unsettling and dangerous threat of the Barbary Pirates. These pirates, or privateers as they were also known, came from the Barbary States of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and other small states, but were under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. Their predation of American shipping interests extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along the West African seaboard, into South American waters, and to Iceland in the North Atlantic. The treaty was designed to address ending piracy on American shipping on the high seas, and this treaty passed unanimously in the Senate (only the third such unanimous vote of the first 339 recorded votes in the early Senate, and I am only guessing that those senators read the whole treaty before voting on it). In fact, official records show that the entire treaty was read aloud on the Senate floor, and copies were printed for each and every Senator. 

What do you think the founders meant by this? I don't think they were just pulling a fast one. They came to the colonies to escape religious persecution, and created a republic. Yes a republic, which is a form of government in which power resides in elected individuals representing the citizen body and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. This republic was created so that it protected religion while also acknowledging that the government would remain secular, protecting each and every belief equally (each and every citizen) and not endorse any one religion over another. This also includes the freedom of choice of whether or not to choose a religion at all.  

In fact, it was President Thomas Jefferson who later wrote (to a Baptist church group in 1802), "The First Amendment has erected as a wall of separation between Church and State." 

And to handle this concept fairly, not everyone agreed with this perspective. James McHenry, the Secretary of War, protested the language of the treaty. "[He said] at the time, [The Senate] ought never to have ratified the treaty alluded to, with the declaration that 'the government of the United States, is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.'What else is it founded on? This act always appeared to me like trampling upon the cross. I do not recollect that Barlow (Joel Barlow was the United States consul-general to the Barbary States who handled the translation of the treaty from Arabic to English) was even reprimanded for this outrage upon the government and religion."

I for one feel safe knowing the historical perspectives and having the opportunity to question motives in their entirety whenever our government gets into the process of deciding what we should believe. But we are blessed by the gift of having the choice of what to believe, and that the constitution gives us an opportunity to entirely respect the beliefs of others. Entirely! This does not mean to condone behavior that is hurtful and mean and destructive to the lives of any United States citizen. We are all created equal and need equal treatment in our country. Apply the golden rule. Anyone can apply that rule, it is not exclusive to any group. You don't even need a religion.

Please revisit and read what the founders of this great nation wrote, don't take my word  or what the spin-doctors spin. Before believing anything you hear or read, try critically looking at it, and then decide. We all deserve to give ourselves that gift.

The Journey Versus Easy Access

“A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.” -Edward Abbey

In Desert Solitaire, a narrative by Edward Abbey, he writes that he sees the wilderness and the parks as places that should remain as untouched an unaltered as possible, regardless of the difficulty accessing it would be for some of the population. His meditations on how he sees modern man and his need to move quickly through time, getting places quickly in their cars, is solid philosophy. At least as solid as the fluid essence of philosophy can be.

It is difficult to see him as right in his answers to the problems that he outlines. Problems such as paving the wilderness to reach key points of interest and landmarks, often at the expense of destroying much wilderness in this process. I believe he is well intentioned, his hearts certainly in the right place. Here is where I would recommend that you should read this book. With an open mind. Slowly, with consideration at a walking pace and not our normal barreling forward with a reckless abandon pace.

I remember when I was a young kid my own parents took me to the Lake of the Clouds, nestled among the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I distinctly remember a spectacular and challenging hike and climb to reach the overview to view the vista of the lake. Many years later, I took my own children to this spot, but instead of the long hike and climb, we drove right to the top on a paved road, took a few constructed steps to the overview, and there we were. I felt distinctly like someone, a traveler perhaps, whose land no longer matched the map held in his hand, in my memory. The site was still spectacular but my children missed the journey, a journey that was just as much a part of the experience as the beauty of the overlook. We did see a sow black bear and her cubs cross a paved road and navigate over the steel guardrails that were installed to keep the motorists from plunging into Lake Superior. The bear sighting is memorable but the habitat we viewed it in was somewhat questionable. (We saw bears in the UP on my vacation trip as a child as well, in both natural surroundings as well as at the local U.P. dumps the bears would frequent in search of an evening snack.)

Isn't part of life, and its experiences of the journey through time and across defined space, worth some effort? Some sweat equity, some blisters and bruises, a case of poison ivy or insect bites would only add to the experience. Can the modern feeling I experience, that of having somehow broken connections with nature and its multitude of perils, joys, hardships, wonder, challenges, initiative, and efforts, be reestablished?

 

Technology to Get to the Primitive

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity”― John Muir

I always feel particular close to nature when my wife and I hike the Pictured Rocks Lake shore, an annual endeavor of ours each summer. Even though this wilderness area has vast stretches of primitive trails, it still takes technology to get close to the trail heads we hike. Technology such as roads and the cars that travel them. However, even smaller technology plays a closer role on the primitive parts of the trail during hiking. Water bottles take the place of an animal skin to carry our water. Yet an animal skin water container was to primitive man advanced water-carrying technology, necessary to survival between water sources.

Being alone is less important to me on the trail for me to experience the wilderness, than is having silence. My wife and I are of similar nature and appreciate silent moments filled with wilderness sounds. We have stood and listened to what surrounds us: birds, bubbling brooks, waves, storms, and whispering trees. We find joy in silent, observant, and appreciation of what surrounds us on a trail snaking through the wilderness. How my body feels on the trail—fatigue, invigorated, refreshed. However, even the hiking shoes that are technology over our ancestor’s bare-footedness leave the occasional blister or hot spot on my feet.

Perhaps if I never had shoes I would not miss them on the trail. That is how the human mind seems to work at times, seeks solutions to what it sees as a problem. How to make it easier to hike a trail? Invent footwear.

Letting the "Real Work" Begin

"It may be when we no longer know what we have to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we know which way to go, we have begun our real journey." -- Wendell Berry

It takes existential skills to thrive in the present. People with existential learning styles tend to be highly introspective and find themselves deeply attuned and have a profound connectiveness to their inner selves. Connected internally in just this way, I have begun to have a firm understanding of my personal beliefs, preferences, and convictions.

For most of my life, I followed a safe path, but when I look back I was surrounded by uncertainty, avoided the unfamiliar, traded the unknown for what I knew. I did this to somehow safeguard what I felt was a reasonable attempt to failure-proof my life. I look back and I see what I was doing at the time and that it never occurred to me to go ahead and discard stability and try to understand the impossible, the unrealistic, or the unattainable.

I believe I have reached a point where I need to be doing the "real work" as Berry so well illustrates with the previous quote. I have begun to learn to thrive with the ambiguity I encounter as a part of my everyday life. "Learn to" being the operative part of the previous sentence, for it is an ongoing exercise to reach a comfortable existence with the beast that is ambiguity.

Creativity as Uncertainty

"Keeping your mind open in the face of uncertainty is the single most powerful secret of unleashing your creative potential." ─ Michael Gelb

Keeping your mind open when you are uncertain sounds simple enough, but for me, it seems to be the opposite of what is my brains default setting. Most of the time there seems to be a set idea or viewpoint that my brain tries to paint the answer to the problem with, regardless if it is a problem that requires a broad brush, a fine brush, or a big sloppy roller for that matter. 

People are often expected to be able to quickly respond to situations, and there is where the concept of an open mind seems most difficult. A trained, disciplined mind─say a mind like a soldier would possess─needs to react instantly at times, ignoring the uncertainty that would surround it. The "open mind" needs time to take in more than a simple, quick viewpoint. Hyman G. Rickover, a U.S. Navy Adm. who was a rare military man of conscience said the following: "Sit down before a fact with an open mind. Be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and whatever abyss Nature leads or you learn nothing. Don't push out figures when facts are going in the opposite direction."

Seems like wise advice in these hurried times, especially if we want to reach the creativity that we are offered with our lives.