Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.
I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes.
Empathy is simply a codeword for an inclination toward liberal activism.
At one level, Krugman makes an important point, which is simply to remind us of what Lakoff taught us in Moral Politics: the liberal worldview is based on empathy and compassion, while the conservative worldview is based on an adversarial orientation that holds empathy in contempt as a form of weakness and indulgence. Which is a fairly fundamental reason why there is no fundamental equivalence between "extremists on both sides."
But that's just one level.
As it turns out, of course, the National Review is spectacularly wrong. The evidence by now is overwhelming that Obama's empathy is heavily skewed towards the haves and have-mores who oppose him and away from the have-nots and have-lesses who support him.
Right wing's breathtaking bait and switch on Tucson
In the week since the Tucson, Ariz., massacre, pleas for "civility" have turned into accusations of incivility, and the whole, useful discussion of "civility" versus "vitriol" has turned into the usual argument over competitive victimhood. The vast right-wing conspiracy has played President Barack Obama like a violin.
And they've done a pretty good job of messing with the heads of the liberal media as well. As a result, anyone who even raises the issue of who might be responsible, or more responsible, for the "atmosphere of vitriol" in which we conduct our politics is guilty of contributing to it. In just a few days, it has become the height of political incorrectness to suggest there might be any connection between the voices on right-wing talk radio and the voices in Jared Lee Loughner's head.
Moral: Empathy is for suckers, and Obama is the biggest of them all.
Bomb planted along MLK parade route in Spokane today (doubledown)
An incendiary device found along the route of a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Wash., was "likely capable of inflicting multiple casualties," the FBI said today.
A city employee found a backpack Monday morning, just before the parade was to start, in a parking lot that was both on the parade route and across the street from a performing arts center that hosted a pre-parade rally.
As this latest incident serves to remind us, the right simply can't help itself anymore. They can say whatever they want to when the spotlights are on, but the legacy of who they are will continue to have its way in the shadows. Like the scorpion in the story in The Crying Game, they can't help it: it's just their nature. There are already so, so many incidents that they've gotten a pass for in the past, and now that the fruits of violence have been raised to such a fever pitch and high level of visibility, they may have smooth-talked their way out of this one, as Kinsley argues, but they're all the more exposed for the next incident, and the next one, and next one after that.
Currently, I am writing for an educational organization. In penning my pain for what occurs in our schools today, it occurred to me the same impersonal approach, awareness, or lack thereof, is evident in offices, neighborhoods, and in our broader community. People pretend to or believe they " know" their fellow workers, their family members, and their friends. Yet, more often than not, I observe that this is not necessarily true. I, we, she, or he only comprehends what is visible on the surface.
Few choose to ask of, address, or answer the deeper concerns that life delivers daily; I offer this narrative and request your reflections. We all have our own tale to tell. I invite you to share yours. Please trust that I care; your secrets are safe with me. I suspect that others will honor you as I choose to do. I believe we all relate to sorrow.
Today the distress I wish to discuss is heartbreak, heartache, and heart felt feelings. In my own life, I am witnessing that many close to me are battling life-threatening illnesses. Their terminal diagnoses affect me deeply. They weigh heavy on those closer to the " patient" than I. I cannot begin to imagine the pain long-suffering persons feel. Yet, through the quiet trials and tribulations of a teen, who supposedly studied under my tutelage, I learned. What we hide hurts us most.
A 20-minute video is pretty time-demanding, which is why I'm posting it late in the day. Also why you may want to first read what I've written below about why I'm posting it, what sort of discussion I'd like to stimulate (not to exclude any others, of course!). This is very good intro to the subject of mirror neurons, and I think it can help us understand why liberals and conservatives can so completely misunderstand one another. Lakoff argues that it's a result of having different family models that we metaphorically map onto various different aspects of the social, cultural & political world. He presents strong evidence for that view. But I think that mirror neurons also may help to explain part of how that works out in practice. Lakoff talks about mirror neurons as the basis for empathy--and they are that. But they're also the basis for basic kinesthic understanding of what others are up to, and given cultural differences, this can lay the groundwork for mis-understanding as well.
Gustaf Gredebäck is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, Uppsala University where he manages the Uppsala Babylab. His research span several topics including occulomotor development, social cognition, and object representations in infancy. Central to his research is the active infant, that perceive, interpret, and interact with his/her physical and social environment in a goal directed and future oriented manner.
Mirror neurons are increasingly understood for their importance in helping us to understand others kinesthetically from the most basic levels of reflecting emotional states and anticipating physical movement (very helpful for getting food into a baby's mouth as opposed to all over the floor) on up to who knows where. At the end of his presentation, Gredebäck concludes, "The mirror neuron system, I'm suggesting, help[s] us understand, anticipate the goals of other people's actions, allowing us to understand others as ourselves."
And this is where my speculation enters the picture. One of the things that Gredebäck describes is how seemingly very similar movements by a ballet dancer and a practitioner of capoeira register very different for those familiar or not familiar with them.
It doesn't seem like a much of a leap from there to surmise, for example, that gestures of friendship for those coming from a more friendly cultural background might well be seen as gestures of submission and weakness by someone coming from a more confrontational, aggressive culture. If we understand others as ourselves, but their movements don't have the same significance, then we'll mis-understand them and misinterpret what they're up to. And if such misinterpretations can be close to (but not actually) hardwired at the level of interpreting gestures and body language generally, then that's a powerful foundation for systematically misunderstanding everything that people do, say or think across various different cultural divides. In short, ironically, the same basic system that provides our capacity for empathy may also provide the basis for systematically getting our empathic messages wrong, so that we are systematically mis-reading people just as we are certain, at a pre-conscious level, that we are reading them right.
Of course, if this is what's happening--and at this point, it's just speculation on my part--then it does help point the way to how we might start to correct some of that basic level misunderstanding.
Every now and then I am reading comments to some newspaper site and some conservative will be freaking out about the "one world government" that we leftists are trying to bring about (usually in a climate change article), and I say "well, we're not, but damn we really should be."
We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. ~ Barack Obama (President of the United States. Peace Prize Acceptance Speech. December 10, 2009)
For years, Americans saw live, and in person, or on television screens, Presidential aspirant Barack Obama. Several mused; the man is calm in a crisis. "No drama Obama" was the phrase most often associated with the candidate. Those closely and personally connected to the potential President corroborated what was for most only an observation. The election did not change Barack Obama. His calm demeanor remained intact. Yet, many perceived a difference, not in his response to a predicament, but in the President's rhetoric. Empathy evolved into escalation. This was perhaps most evident on two occasions, when Mister Obama delivered his Address on the War in Afghanistan, and then again when the Commander-In Chief offered his Remarks in acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. After these events, the pensive pondered; what was there all along, Cerebral Discord, the Two Faces of Barack Obama.
DISCLAIMER: This is obviously a kos cross post and I am not talking about anyone here and I have the utmost respect for all the OpenLeft FPers and most posters. I gave a nod to Chris Bowers and Paul Rosenberg whom are both excellent resources of information as well as the NN video I got from here to start out.
I haven't posted any diaries here yet, but I worked hard on this one so rather than think of it a attention whoring I would prefer to think of it as finding as big of an audience I can since this diary didn't get a lot of hits, though a few people that I admire there gave it a nod.
So the President went looking for a judge with empathy. And the judge he found denied him three times before the rooster crowed.
He should have gone looking for a minstrel instead.
What It's Like
Everlast
We've all seen the man at the liquor store beggin' for your change
The hair on his face is dirty, dreadlocked and full of mange
He ask the man for what he could spare with shame in his eyes
Get a job you fuckin' slob's all he replied
God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes
'Cause then you really might know what it's like to sing the blues
Then you really might know what it's like
Then you really might know what it's like
Then you really might know what it's like
Then you really might know what it's like
Mary got pregnant from a kid named Tom who said he was in love
He said don't worry about a thing baby doll I'm the man you've been dreamin' of
But three months later he said he won't date her or return her call
And she sweared god damn if I find that man I'm cuttin' off his balls
And then she heads for the clinic and she gets some static walkin' through the doors
They call her a killer, and they call her a sinner, and they call her a whore
God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in her shoes
'Cause then you really might know what it's like to have to choose
Then you really might know what it's like
Then you really might know what it's like
Then you really might know what it's like
Then you really might know what it's like
I've seen a rich man beg
I've seen a good man sin
I've seen a tough man cry
I've seen a loser win
And a sad man grin
I heard an honest man lie
I've seen the good side of bad
And the down side of up
And everything between
I licked the silver spoon
Drank from the golden cup
Smoked the finest green
I stroked the baddest dimes at least a couple of times
Before I broke their heart
You know where it ends
Yo, it usually depends on where you start
I knew this kid named Max
He used to get fat stacks out on the corner with drugs
He liked to hang out late at night
Liked to get shit faced
And keep pace with thugs
Until late one night there was a big gun fight
Max lost his head
He pulled out his chrome .45
Talked some shit
And wound up dead
Now his wife and his kids are caught in the midst of all of his pain
You know it crumbles that way
At least that's what they say when you play the game
God forbid you ever had to wake up to hear the news
'Cause then you really might know what it's like to have to lose
Then you really might know what it's like
Then you really might know what it's like
Then you really might know what it's like
To have to lose...
When Obama declared "empathy" a necessary quality for a Supreme Court justice, the main organs of print and TV media responded in their typically bifurcated way. Liberals praised Obama for understanding the need for a justice who could relate to "everyday people" while conservatives predictably lambasted the president for soft-mided, emotional wishy-washiness. One thing that journalists of all stripes seem to agree on, however, is that Obama's position represents an innovation, yet another example of how this president, for better or worse, thinks "outside the box."
As with every complex and meaningful issue in US social and political life, the MSM has understood the battle over Obama's selection of a new justice in the context of interpersonal rather than social conflict. That Obama's own statements about the meaning of empathy have echoed this tendency to personalize large issues contributes to this confusion.
A look at the history of US jurisprudence suggests that, rather than a sentimental innovation, Obama draws on a well worn body of legal tradition in calling for a justice with empathy. In The Common Law, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. argues that "the life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed." I argue that we need to understand Obama's call for empathy in the context of what Holmes calls "experience."
So a Supreme Court justice that hardly anyone noticed has announced his retirement and all of a sudden the lips of The Experts are all a-flutter with the word "Empathy".
President Obama reports he wants his nominee to have it; and Republicans are convinced that the word is a secret code for something that eventually ends in the death of free speech, massive roundups of guns by the Secret United Nations World Police, and the Internment Of All The White People In Reeducation Camps Run By Americorps And ACORN And Gay People Who Want To Marry And Are Funded By George Soros.
It is suggested that Evil Activist Judges will trample the Constitution as they create Law out of whole cloth; and that only those who interpret the Constitution just as it was written can bring the proper attitude to the Court.
It sounds like somebody needs to come along and provide a couple of cogent thoughts about this whole empathy thing...and lucky for you, Gentle Reader, we have before us today specific examples of how the quality of empathy can express itself in Court Doctrine.
Never for a moment in my life have I been "in love." I do not believe in the notion. Fireworks have not filled my heart. Flames of a fiery passion do not burn within me. Indeed, my soul has not been ablaze. Thoughts of a hot-blooded devotion seem illogical to me. Such sentiments always have. Fondness too fertile is but torture for me. I admire many, and adore none. For me, the affection I feel for another is born out of sincere and profound appreciation. To like another means more to me than to love or be loved. Excitement, an emotional reaction to another, rises up within me when I experience an empathetic exchange with someone who has glorious gray matter.
Today, it happened. I felt an a twinge that startled me. I stood still as he entered the room. I expected nothing out of the ordinary, or at least nothing other than what has become his recently adopted, more avoidant, routine. Although long ago, I had become accustomed to his face, his voice, and his demeanor, for I have known the man for more than a few years. In the last few weeks, while essentially he is who he always was, some of his stances have changed. Possibly, Barry has felt a need to compromise his positions, but I wonder; what of his principles.
This series has argued that egalitarian, democratic practices are made possible in part by the human biological capacity for empathy and that democracy emerged tens of thousands of years ago, long before the ancient Greeks and long before notions of austere, unemotional reason took hold of the Western imagination. As a longtime Democratic consultant, activist, and writer, I am searching for a coherent historical and moral grounding for resistance to the anti-democratic, right wing assault on voting rights, civil justice, public education, and the separation of powers. This series is part of that search.
Because you and I are blessed with the ability to recognize one another as human beings possessed of similar hopes, fears, strengths and vulnerabilities, we make a promise to protect one another from harm and to give to one another the opportunity for free, happy and fulfilling lives. We take responsibility for ourselves and for each other. Millenia ago, long before the Ten Commandments or the ethical codes of the East, we came together, shaken, hopeful and uncertain, and made a promise that we would insist upon our dignity and equality in the face other, less beneficial qualities we knew were also present within the hearts of some: an unscrupulous lust for power and authority over others.
This is The Promise, and it emerged in overt political practices from 10,000 to 40,000 years ago among Late Paleolithic people. Anthropologist Christopher Boehm said the effort created the human moral community. D.H. Lawrence called The Promise "a recognition of souls, all down the open road." Philosopher Jan Patocka called it the "solidarity of the shaken."
The Promise is exactly opposite of what many claim Thomas Hobbes meant in his discussion of promising. Hobbes, they say, holds that our promises to one another are empty and unenforceable unless a sovereign authority, unbound by promises of any kind, can enforce them. Whatever we may think of Hobbes' view of human nature (and many, like James R. Martel in his new book, Subverting Leviathan, think the neo-conservatives have gotten Hobbes all wrong), The Promise - and the earliest democratic aspirations and practices it inspired - was anti-authoritarian from the very beginning. We promised each other freedom, equality and fraternity in our mutual hostility to abusive or absolute authority.
This series has argued that egalitarian, democratic practices are made possible in part by the human biological capacity for empathy and that democracy emerged tens of thousands of years ago, long before the ancient Greeks and long before notions of austere, unemotional reason took hold of the Western imagination. As a longtime Democratic consultant, activist, and writer, I am searching for a coherent historical and moral grounding for resistance to the anti-democratic, right wing assault on voting rights, civil justice, public education, and the separation of powers. This series is part of that search.
Because you and I are blessed with the ability to recognize one another as human beings possessed of similar hopes, fears, strengths and vulnerabilities, we make a promise to protect one another from harm and to give to one another the opportunity for free, happy and fulfilling lives. We take responsibility for ourselves and for each other. Millenia ago, long before the Ten Commandments or the ethical codes of the East, we came together, shaken, hopeful and uncertain, and made a promise that we would insist upon our dignity and equality in the face other, less beneficial qualities we knew were also present within the hearts of some: an unscrupulous lust for power and authority over others.
This is The Promise, and it emerged in overt political practices from 10,000 to 40,000 years ago among Late Paleolithic people. Anthropologist Christopher Boehm said the effort created the human moral community. D.H. Lawrence called The Promise "a recognition of souls, all down the open road." Philosopher Jan Patocka called it the "solidarity of the shaken."
The Promise is exactly opposite of what many claim Thomas Hobbes meant in his discussion of promising. Hobbes, they say, holds that our promises to one another are empty and unenforceable unless a sovereign authority, unbound by promises of any kind, can enforce them. Whatever we may think of Hobbes' view of human nature (and many, like James R. Martel in his new book, Subverting Leviathan, think the neo-conservatives have gotten Hobbes all wrong), The Promise - and the earliest democratic aspirations and practices it inspired - was anti-authoritarian from the very beginning. We promised each other freedom, equality and fraternity in our mutual hostility to abusive or absolute authority.
Can we repair our political practices and achieve something like the popular democracy that has remained always just around the corner? Popular democracy - a democracy in which the wisdom of a self-governing people is translated into policy - was opposed from the beginning of our nation's history by the likes of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was a shrewd authoritarian who had the insight that capitalist elites, protected by federal charter and largesse, could rule safely as invisible monarchs. This, of course, unraveled the naïve hopes of Adam Smith, who attempted to include compassion and human sympathy within his rationalist model, and who thought a free, unfettered market economy would promote human sympathy, equality and understanding.
Today, the elite democracy view is embodied in top-down political practices that diminish the franchise and excuse voter suppression, advantage the wealthy through legal fiat that makes wealth and speech equivalent, reduce citizenship to passive consumerism, and maintain a class of political consultants and pundit elites who believe themselves a cut or two above the people they pretend to represent.
What's loosely referred to as the "netroots revolution" is part of a revitalized progressive, popular democracy movement aimed at the reform of these practices. Its egalitarian emphasis is on engagement and action by the many. Citizens are entering the political sphere in numbers that threaten the hegemony of an elite class that has long dominated the Republican and Democratic parties. A good example of the movement's spirit was seen in the overwhelming grassroots reaction against the patronizing and condescending performances of moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos during the ABC Obama/Clinton debate. Sen. Hillary Clinton revealed the elite's us-and-them feelings of superiority when she told a private gathering of contributors that activists were getting in the way of their old-politics plans: "I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions ..." Clinton said.
This is all well-known to the readers of this site and other movement activists. Still, we need to continue thinking through the theoretical basis of the movement, including the articulation of fundamental progressive moral views. So much needs to be urgently accomplished, so much attention is needed on pressing issues and tactical demands, that the editors and readers of OpenLeft should take pride that they have always made room for such explorations.
Here I want to approach one of the keys to the progressive moral view and to the possibilities of popular democracy, and that is the role of human empathy in our political practices. In Part I of this series, The Promise of Popular Democracy: Origins, I looked at democracy's true ancient roots in human empathy and anti-authoritarian practices. I deconstructed the privileging of austere reason over emotion in the Myth of Democratic Origins, and pointed toward a more authentic picture of the political human being.
"Democracy: a recognition of souls, all down the open road, and a great soul seen in its greatness, as it travels on foot among the rest, down the common way of living."
D.H. Lawrence
Political theorist Robert Dahl once noted that twenty-five centuries of debate about democracy had not "produced agreement on some of the most fundamental questions about" it. It turns out that Dahl, like many theorists and historians, wildly underestimated the duration of the discussion. It's more like 5,000 years, or even 10,000 years. But he was right about the confusion. And if we don't understand what democracy is, or what the human values are that inform it, how can we achieve its promise?
When we examine the health of our political practices, differing concepts of democracy lead to different conclusions. Advocates of classical democracy, better termed popular democracy, focus on political equality and believe democracy to be a system in which the wisdom of individual citizens, expressed directly by initiative or through the election of representatives from among their neighbors, should determine outcomes. Elite democrats believe that human nature is essentially competitive and hierarchical, that issues are too complex for most people's level of knowledge, and that democracy requires only that some of the people participate in election contests, choosing leaders from among more knowledgeable and naturally gifted and powerful elites.
For the advocates of popular democracy, low voter turnout and systematic corruption of election processes are disasters. Concern for the common interest and individual autonomy and responsibility are balanced. Most importantly, popular democrats believe support for representative government depends upon bonds of sympathy and understanding among citizens and between the chosen representatives and those represented.
For elite democrats, as long as some reasonably well-informed citizens participate, tyranny is somewhat inhibited by a latent threat of voter rebellion. Turnout levels matter little (as long as it's the right people who vote); corruption of election practices is often shrugged off as the unhappy but inevitable result of competitive human nature. Self-interest prevails, and a little democracy goes a long way. Important decisions are left to a knowledgeable elite, but the people are given at least a token opportunity to have their say.
There is also a critical asymmetry in the public descriptions of these two kinds of democracy. Elite democrats can and often do disguise elite rule in the language of the popular democrats. Even Mussolini called his fascist state a democracy. True popular democrats, however, can hardly deploy the language of hierarchically oriented elites in the promotion of political egalitarianism. Plato famously recommended that rulers employ a "noble lie," to convince the ruled that their unequal status was due to pre-determined divine ordinance. Similarly, modern elites justify their overblown paeans to popular democracy as noble lies or necessary fictions.
The Noble Truth of Human Empathy
If popular democracy depends upon authentic bonds of sympathy and trust among citizens, these bonds cannot be faked. It could be said that popular democracy depends essentially upon the noble truth of human empathy.
In his essay on Walt Whitman quoted in the epigraph above, D.H. Lawrence says democracy is a "recognition of souls" embarked upon a common journey along a never-ending "open road." By defining democracy within the metaphor of Life as a Journey, Lawrence gives us democracy as a process of becoming. Democracy is not a thing whose essence can be captured or contained. Democracy must be enacted, the way, say, two lovers daily enact a marriage. It's up to democratic citizens, every moment of their lives, to enact democratic bonds with one another. Lawrence also speaks of the emergence of "a great soul seen in all its greatness," implying that empathy or the recognition of souls allows for the temporary ascendancy of skilled leaders among an egalitarian people. This is an important point. Critics of popular democracy often accuse egalitarians of simply being anti-authority. To the contrary, the practices of popular democracy arose in recognition of the need for leadership, with appropriate checks and balances in place to make sure these leaders continue to travel "on foot among the rest," and not ride ahead upon noble lies or political steeds of their own invention.
Both popular and elite conceptions call upon a dominant Myth of Democratic Origins, which locates the embryonic democratic impulse among the pre-Classical Greeks and credits its blossoming to the rise of a decidedly unemotional, Western concept of Reason. We can't underestimate the power of origin myths, because the widely shared folk theory of essences tells us that essences are contained in origins. But this myth of origins has skewed our understanding of democracy's past as well as its potential. Among other faults, it confuses human emotion with unreason, and so it discounts the importance of empathy to democracy.
It was a brilliant summer day in Atlanta, and the lumescent, blue sky lifted my already risen spirits as I was planning my wedding. A coworker and I were shopping for wedding dresses in an upscale suburb, both of us dressed in the standard uniform for such an event: sweats and sneakers. My coworker carried the look off with much more chic than I, with her tall frame, warm brown eyes and rich, espresso colored skin giving her the natural grace of a woman for whom sweats is a weekend indulgence.
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