Where Has All The Empathy Gone?

Forgive me, I was wrong Relationship Rescue: What to Do When ...

Where Has All The Empathy Gone?

Just about everywhere you look on the Internet – and to some degree on the TV – someone is pissed off about something.

Ugly arguments are erupting everywhere and not just about the topics that you’d expect, such as politics or religion. Often they start off innocently enough. For example, someone might voice an opinion about the Oxford comma or the singular use of the pronoun “they.” Before you know it, friendships have been ruined and someone is asking if 11 am is too early for wine.

And none of these arguments would happen if people were talking face to face.

That’s because, when we talk face to face, we take listen, at least some of the time.

But that’s not what happens on the Internet. On the Internet, when someone tells you that your opinion is a bunch of hog wash, you don’t step back and listen to what the other person has to say. No, you make the same point, but this time in ALL CAPS. And if that doesn’t work, you plunk a sarcastic meme into the thread. Mic drop. Boom

That’ll teach em, right?

Except it doesn’t usually. What usually happens is that people spew meme magma in each other’s directions – until one or both unfriend or block and then there’s this: silence.

Where is all of this arguing getting us? Is anyone actually getting through to anyone about anything? Has a meme ever changed anyone’s mind? I honestly do not know the answers. All I know is this: Nothing.

Seriously, I know nothing.

I tell myself this whenever I find myself pulled into an angry comment field. I remind myself that I do not understand all viewpoints and experiences. In order to understand other people – and especially people who are not just like me – I must listen. In order to listen, I must have an open mind. In order to have an open mind, I must remember what I do not know. You don’t learn algebra because you are convinced that you already know algebra. You learn it because you are convinced that you don’t, right? So by reminding myself that I don’t know much, if anything, about other people, I coax my mind into opening and then I’m able to actually learn something about humanity.

But it’s not easy. The knee jerk is to just believe that everyone has lost their marbles, you know?

That’s why I’ve dedicated this year to open-mindedness. For me, it’s a year of discovery – and a chance for me to truly listen to people who are not just like me. Mostly, I’ve been trying to remind myself to ask, “How so?” when someone tells me about an experience that doesn’t mesh with my own. I’ve been pushing myself to do this in conversations in real life – as well as on the Internet. And I’ve been especially doing it by reading, because reading is the ultimate form of listening.

For example, Saving Alex is the story of a gay teen whose Mormon parents drop her off to live with strangers who physically and verbally abuse her in an attempt to “cure” her of being gay. (Spoiler alert: the abuse doesn’t change the girl’s sexual orientation, but it does make her suicidal.) I picked up the book not because I wanted to better understand the gay experience, but because I wanted to understand the parents. See, I’m as liberal and pro-LGBT as a person can get. If the author, Alex Cooper and I were chatting on the Internet, we’d be heart bombing each other left and right. It’s Cooper’s parents that I’d be tempted to go all caps on, so they were the people I wanted to better understand. Even though the book is written from the Alex Cooper’s perspective, the author eloquently explains the Mormon emphasis on family in a way that allows a non-Mormon to understand. It’s a view I’d never allowed myself to hear before because, if I’m being honest, I probably hadn’t allowed myself to listen.

Another example: Love that Boy. In this memoir, Ron Fournier tells the story of getting to know his young son, who has Asperger’s syndrome. It’s mostly a book about parental expectations, but it also beautifully introduces readers to the autism spectrum. Fournier describes his son in such a loving way that the reader can’t help but fall in love with the boy, quirks and all. And when I finished the book, I found that I could better understand people with autism who are in my life. It’s my hope that the book has made me a better friend.

A final example: An Invisible Thread, which tells the story of a career woman who takes an 11 year old pan handler to McDonald’s and proceeds to form a life long friendship. If you’ve ever struggled to understand the cycle of poverty – and why it’s so dang hard to break – this is the book for you. Two of the more telling details for me: Maurice only ate at school. That was all the food he ever got. On weekends, he went hungry, because there was no food in his apartment. The other detail: he was often late for school and got in trouble for being late. The reason: there were no clocks or watches in his apartment, so he never knew what time it was. How can you show up on time if you don’t know the time?

We can only solve problems that we understand. We can only understand if we listen. We can only listen if we have the humility to admit what we don’t know, which, if we’re being honest, is just about everything.

Learn more about Alisa's book, the story of how she went from wishing her husband dead to falling back in love.

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