Diversity, Empathy, and Guardian Angels
Diversity is necessary for evolutionary advancement. This, at least in the scientific community, is well understood. That makes it difficult to logically have little tolerance for individual differences. Most deviations from the average are not evolutionary beneficial, give no advantage for survival, and go no where as a continued trait. While we are all unique, we are mostly unique in ways which bode no chance for species advancement. We know, of course, that humans are capable of manipulating genetic traits in order to perpetuate particular desired traits. Look at all the different breeds of dogs; this was achieved by human manipulation of genetic breeding. This speeds up the process of evolution in dogs, and in reality, actually controls the direction of such evolution.
Natural evolution takes much longer, and this process, by all indications, is self directed, not micromanaged as with dog breeding. Religious absolutists would not agree, and insist nothing happens within the evolutionary process which is not directed by God. The difference between human genetic manipulation, so far, is that we can ‘create’ different appearing dogs, mostly for esthetic and personality reasons, whereas the natural process creeps along at a glacial pace, but generates new species more suitable to the environment of the time.
Ever since a young child I was puzzled by the variation of living things and what I should feel or act toward all this variation. In my early years I viewed things in life as good vs evil, God vs the Devil. There is no logical or evidential reasons for seeing things in this vein. Eventually, I came to accept that God is the force or essence which created the laws which govern the evolutionary process.We know enough about this evolutionary process to appreciate the brilliance of the laws which govern it.
What has always puzzled me a lot is how empathetic some people are towards diversity and how indifferent, or unsympathetic many people are to others of a different ilk. This musing centers around those with considerable innate genetic potential for success but surrounded by environmental hurdles. When young, my first close ‘peer’ companions were pets of various sorts. I reckon pets, at an early age, helped generate my empathy toward the ‘less fortunate’. Before the age of 10 I had a pet dog, pet rabbits, pet goat, pet sheep, pet chickens, pet cats, a pet horse, pet hamster, pet fish, and a pet pigeon. Pets need protection, shelter, food, and we learn while young to feel a protective empathy towards them. For pets to survive and achieve some contentment in their lives they need considerable time, money, and attention by humans.
For many, the less fortunate humans are often detested as leeches, worthless trash, bums, heathens, incorrigibles, victims of their own stupidity, evilness or laziness, deserving of no mercy or empathy at all. They are only the way they are because they are not worthy of any better existence. Their problem, in varied degrees of blame, is their race, their religion, their culture, their genes, their nationality, and so on—or of course ‘the Devil”. They are what they are, they can change if they want, but they won’t, and their unassisted, gated off fate is justice deserved. They are the authors of their own cruel fate.
My own first ten years were most noteworthy, I suppose, by my total bewilderment about so much of life. Staying aloof from many difficult arenas in life became my defense. My escape was the many pets. I got a lot of joy from protecting, nourishing, and making sure my animal pets were ok and happy. I learned my intervention in several ways could make life better for them. Every time I lost a pet via death or separation I felt horrible. I could not feel happy if these pets were not happy and well. Their memories became the strongest memories of my young years.
By the time we start attending school we learn slowly that some other students need help or assistance in various ways. How we react to their diversity varies a lot. How much we feel any need to help the less fortunate varies a lot. But why this difference? The reasons probably vary a lot, but having pets at such a young age may well establish a degree of empathy with the least fortunate and defenseless. Not only that, but we learn we can make a difference and making that difference becomes a strong portion of what makes us happy ourselves. Parenting is probably of similar ilk in that parents learn their own sense of happiness and contentment is dependent a lot on just how well their own kids are prospering in life. The situation here, however, often has less generalization. That is, concern for the welfare of our own ‘created’ offspring, does not always extend much to the offspring of others. Pets, whatever else they many be, our not our own ‘created’ offspring and so it is easier to see others animals all in the same light. With children, other than our own, it is easier to see them as someone else’s responsibility and of little need for our own concern. Modern society especially tends to isolate children from any community responsibility. In fact we specifically create political situations where the affluent finance their own schools, health care insurance, job opportunities, salary levels, and so on. We call this family values. If we like dogs, we tend to like all dogs and mistreatment of dogs of any sort makes us angry. We may love our own offspring to death in varying degrees, and that is too often where it stops. We gate the offspring of others, especially the less fortunate off, away from us, and these less fortunate become out of sight, out of mind.
Certainly it is no surprise that children raised in environments with poor schools, poor health care, poor nutrition, little personal safety (bars on windows and doors, no outside place to play etc), poor peer mates, and so on become the kind of teenagers no one would want much to be around. These kids often learn quickly that to be safe is to have others be fearful of them. They dress and act in ways which sends the clear message—don’t mess with them. As far as those more affluent in life, these less fortunate often, and intensely, feel this way toward the more affluent: “You don’t like me, so I don’t like you either”. It then becomes difficult to interact with these malcontents with any degree of empathy. The chip on their shoulder has a strong, from birth, bitter attachment.
I was hardly born in any kind of poverty. I lived in a nice neighborhood, had good parents, went to good schools, had excellent teachers, good health care, could roam a wide area and never be unsafe, had good peer friends in my teenage years, had the athletic ability to run well, and had decent academic ability. So to speak, I had it ‘made in the shade’. Except I was shy, had no real social skills, was plain looking for want of a better term, and lived within a very private non social mindset. Pets, nature, and a few close friends were my entire world. The truth is, any modest success in life I achieved since childhood was dependent on the kindness of others with no relationship to me whatsoever. If anyone would ever be absurd to state, “I achieved my success the old fashioned way, I earned it”, this would be me. Someone else always extended a hand to place me in a position to develop some potential talent. While there is no ‘best’ way to raise a child, my dad certainly selected the best way to raise me. Over the strenuous objection of my mother my dad would drive me over to spend the day in Crotonville with a school friend. Crotonville was the seediest side of town imaginable, all the rough kids, the uncouth ones, lived there. My dad would tell me on the way over that “these kids sometimes do bad things, but they are not bad kids. You just be sure not to do bad things yourself and just try to learn why they feel the way they do. If you can’t do this then I can’t bring you over here anymore to play with your friend Charlie.” When older and in high school my father had me work on a grounds crew over the summer. Again the regular grounds crew was a rough crowd of minimum wage workers. I was frightened to death at first, but grew to like all of their unique characters. Of course my mother was dead set against this whole thing ( a fear I would become like them). Later on when I had many students in class from rough neighborhoods I could relate to them with ease, it was the grounds crew revisited.
I got a sizable scholarship to attend an expensive small private college only because a track coach hounded me to come out for track, which I finally did, and ran well enough that he got me the scholarship. It was the biggest scholarship anyone got in my class and someone else, not me, engineered it (my track coach).
My dad made it clear to my brother and I that after high school we were on our own. I watched my brother attempt to borrow money or get my father to co-sign loans to no avail. Whether my dad would come to the rescue if I really needed help is a guess but I think he would have.
No one could project me as someone in my earlier years who grabbed the ball and ran with it.
In high school gym class the gym teacher would scream throw the ball to James, but no one could because I ran around looking away from anyone with the ball. I didn’t want the ball. I hated gym class but as usual someone’s kindness saved the day. An English teacher would write me a note so I could come to her room during her period off and we would talk about all sorts of things. It was like a free course in reasoning.
In college I was still pretty much socially inert, mostly a loner except for a handful of scholastic and track teammates. I wasn’t as good a runner as my high school coach predicted I would become, yet for some reason, my scholarship stayed intact the entire time there. Somebody, at some level, protected me financially. I was a decent student academically, but no genius for sure. When the Chairperson of Biology picked me to be the Senior biology course assistant it shocked me as much as it did everyone else. I was getting a lot of unearned ‘promotions’ into the limelight by people whose empathy for ‘misfits’ was part of their life.
At graduate school I felt a bit over my head. I may have been way over my head. But I passed courses, got a Master’s degree, saved a really great dog from being sacrificed for research, and then went on to teach high school biology and coach cross country/track for a couple of years until I got fired for insubordination by the Principal. These two years were my transformative years, much like Terrell Owens created his T.O. persona when he arrived at San Francisco after being picked 86th in the third round of the NFL draft. I really don’t know why I suddenly erupted into a force to be reckoned with, rather than someone who needed to be dragged into the spotlight. Track and Cross-country, at least for the running events, is mostly recruitment and motivation. You create an environment toward which kids gravitate, you create mountains out of mole hills, you outsmart and out manipulate everyone in your way, and rather quickly you have enough manpower on a team to beat most teams in a sport that is not known for popularity or public attention. Kids love commotion and being part of something successful. It worked fine and the team began quickly to be a contender in a sport where the school had never earned much success. The flaw was simply my own personality. I was a loose cannon who listened to no one about matters which I knew more than others. I could outsmart and out manipulate, but also make someone like a Prinicipal angry enough to fire me. As the Superintendant told me: “I have only one choice, you or the Principal.” Several notes from parents stuck with me, all in one way or another saying, “Please don’t change, you have really been a wonderful influence on our son/daughter. They perform better in school and seem so much more hopeful about their lives.”
After the high school stint I went back, got a Ph.D. in Physiology and taught at the University level the rest of my career. I guess, looking back, my empathy had switched now from pets to struggling students who needed lots of help from varied poor environmental situations in life. In coaching it is easy enough to get affluent students with everything going for them to befriend and help those less fortunate. The classroom is more difficult. In lab, the first two weeks, students picked their own partner. After that students were assigned partners. That was always initially upsetting to students and sometimes the irritation never went away. I would deliberately pair the academically weak with the academically poor, the good-looking with the ugly, the fashionably dressed with the those in tattered attire, the verbally active with the verbally quiet, the gay with the straight, the athletic with the un-athletic, and so on. When the class would complain I would tell them, “Look, your grades are not the only thing you need perfect here, but your ability to understand and get along with those whose lives are different from your own. In the real world you rarely get to pick with whom you work.” I always took pleasure when two opposites actually became good friends. Empathy, it was clear, was good for the giver and the receiver. Empathy is the cement which enables society to prosper—in peace and quality of living for all citizens.
What I quickly learned was that empathy could only be effectuated in any meaningful way if one had a title, a protected position, and the power to help. The varied kind of hurdles the least fortunate in life actually face are way too numerous to list here. To help them we often have to overcome any combination of rules, cultural and ethnic barriers, prejudice, and a decade of inferior environmental situations, including poor schools and health care. In University settings Department Chairs, Deans, Vice-Presidents, Directors, coaches——almost anyone with a title, are judged by the amount of commotion in their area. No commotion, great job—a lot of commotion, poor job and good bye. That was the bottom line. Without tenure, teachers like myself would be gone almost instantly. On my third job, having been there only 2 years the Chairperson called me in and told me “The University budget is frozen, there can be no faculty promotions or tenure unless it is an up or out situation. If I give you credit for previous teaching experiences I can put you in an up or out situation for both promotion and tenure.” Well, that certainly seemed risky, but she smiled, and said “Reid, you are good for our students, I don’t understand half the things you do, but you achieve meritorious results. However, some of your stunts anger people in power and we need to get you through before you have too many enemies.” It worked, and I was free to do the right things and let ‘fair is fair’ be the criteria for dealing with students.
Society is full of a lot of good people, some of whom want to personally and collectively help the less fortunate, and other good people who feel the best way is to ‘let the less fortunate help themselves like the ‘rest of us had to do’.”
It is probably a mistake to say that some people have empathy and others do not. Rather, I reckon it is closer to the truth to say that people differ greatly with the targets of their empathy. I went down a different path, for whatever reason, than most. Early on, to the extent I could, I just cut out the tradition of friends exchanging gifts. I, for the most part, did not give friends and relatives gifts nor would I accept gifts from them. I really don’t think I lost any friends over it. I just made enemies the old fashioned way—I lost their friendship with my personality. This seems fair enough. Pretend friendships are the worst kind of relationships, an exercise in tip-toeing through the land mines. No one can be all things to all people, but we can follow the Golden Rule in our relationships with others. For people not in need of gifts, exchanging gifts is misplaced money spent. Gifts whether in time, money, or assistance should be given to those in need, and mostly to those with the greatest needs. My parents could have showered me with more expensive toys and stuff than my friends, but they never did. I could have been the first to own a car but I was probably the last and I had to pay for that entirely by myself. This didn’t make me a happy camper but taught me patience, the value of money, and self reliance.
Effectively helping the less fortunate as an individual is a difficult task. Helping out in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving Day is a nice gesture but does nothing for anyone in the long run. It is mostly a convenient cop-out, which is more than most probably even do. When people prate on about less government is the best government, they often mean that with less government there is less chance the less fortunate will get any help using the hard ‘earned’ money of others. Helping the less fortunate, to these people, is defined as a handout—taking money from the deserving and giving it to the undeserving. Like it or not it is the government which is best positioned to level the playing field for all citizens. Only government can make sure all children have good schools and good teachers, that all citizens have good health care, that minimum wages are livable wages, that all workers have decent pensions, that social security rises with the cost of living, that minimum wages rise with the cost of living, that taxes rise with the cost of living, that all workers have decent vacation time, and so on. Adequate health care would include community treatment centers for any kind of addictions. Drug abuse is a health problem and should be treated as such, not as a crime wrapped around a War on Drugs. Our urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes were dependent on the growth of hopelessness via the War against Drugs to drive out businesses and the affluent.
When any government fails to do these things, bad things happen to society of all sorts. Then positive feedback sets in and the more bad things that happen, the less people want government to assist the less fortunate——this causes the situation to get worse and the danger of the whole society imploding increases. Kennedy summed it up best: “If we cannot help the many who are poor, we cannot save the few who are rich.” That is the essence of ethics. The evolutionary process, this ’survival of the fittest’, is a rough process for most individual members of any species. Only humans have the potential for a well developed sense of ethics. This means we can alleviate many of hardships the less fortunate face, and enable the greatest number of humans to achieve the most contentment with their lives. That is the universal goal of ethics, not some self serving faith based secular religious notion that ethics is all about particular individuals getting to a speculative Heaven.
The neatest thing about empathy is that it creates as much contentment for the giver as the receiver. It is a win-win situation. To the extent government fails to effectively create level playing fields for all citizens, then individual citizens are left to carry the ball, and the barriers are formidable. Most of the ‘help’ I received from others throughout my life was in the form of opportunity, protection, and encouragement. Still, no matter how much benefit I achieved, my good luck was not that of a person in the category of least fortunate. That would really be a stretch.
If much of this musing is personal history, it is thus simply because understanding empathy involves why people become empathetic to others and why there is so much variation. While government is the main vehicle by which the playing fields in life can be leveled to enable the maximum number of citizens to gain the most contentment in their lives, people build people, and this is the individual component of the goal to maximize contentment for the greatest number of people.
While Lincoln said right is might, right is often up against custom, prejudice, selfishness, ignorance, culture, indifference, religious persecution, political persecution, and power trips. In many, if not most cases, when justice is achieved for individuals in need of justice, the justice for that person is obtained simply because it becomes an ‘or else’ situation. That is to say the person or persons get justice ‘or else’ those blocking the justice pay a price.
To illustrate the above I will use three examples from my own history. These are simple examples on purpose. Many other valid examples would be far more complex. For a start, if we are to achieve justice for someone over a particular matter, we better have a title, personal security, and manipulative skills. Absent this we probably will lose. Example #1: A student is told they cannot graduate because they never took a semester of General Biology which is a pre-requisite for all other Biology courses. Until they do this they cannot graduate. There is, for all practical purposes, nothing in the General Biology course which was not covered in far more depth in subsequent biology courses a major would take. The student is told by those in power at the top, “A rule is a rule—no exceptions, and it would be unfair to other students for the rule to be waived.” This is such a nice, neat, and on the surface fair enough rule. If we are tenured we can defend the student. After all, a tenured faculty member cannot get fired for defending a student in a hearing. Before the hearing begins, a committee member(mostly administrators) will comment that this will be a short hearing since the language of the rule is rather clear: ‘why are we even meeting?”. The student meanwhile, is probably heavily in debt and needs to get on with his/her career. So right from the start we drop the other shoe. “All rules must be applied here, not just the one which pertains to this student. No student is permitted to enroll in a course unless his/her advisor signs the enrollment form. If the advisor signs the form then the advisor, in effect, waived the requirement.” While this may be reasonable, reason is not going to win this case. Now let’s look at the cards I had at the time. I had a title, I had tenure, I have manipulative skills, but where is the ‘or else’? Early on I suggested to the department that we establish a Departmental Student Advisory Committee whose sole function was to advise the department on matters that concerned them. It seemed harmless enough, the students had no voting power. What the powers that-be goofed on was that their advisor of this student committee was chosen by vote of the student committee members. There was, in reality, little chance I would not be the one chosen. I then saw to it that a member of the committee signed on to work on the Student Newspaper. Ok, there is the ‘or else’ since the student filing the grievance has the clear potential to cause commotion. Remember, commotion is the one situation which puts administrators out of their title and job.
It is always good to remember that even far more important issues have often to be settled by the ‘or else’ principle. Slavery didn’t end because it was a reasoned out principle to do so. In fact, as Lincoln pointed out: both sides read the same Bible, yet one side said slavery was a God approved system and the other side said slavery was a Biblical sin. Women didn’t get the right to vote because it was deemed wrong by the majority of men, but because women finally made it clear enough that they would rebel in various ways otherwise. Slavery only ended after 25% of young white males in the south died in a war or were severely wounded.
Example #2: A student signs up for a course which meets MWF, but the student’s part time job supervisor will not change his/her schedule so he/she can attend the Friday class. The rule at the time stated that an instructor may drop a student after 3 unexcused absences. So the student gets dropped from the course even though he/she is passing the course. The student in question is one of those least fortunate students. That is, he/she went to poor schools, lives in a dangerous neighborhood, has dire family situations, is penniless, has to heavily take out loans, must work far too many hrs to take a full course load, cannot afford to go to school forever, and while managing to pass his/her courses, the grades hardly reflect their potential compared to a student absent all these extenuating circumstances. His girlfriend attends the Friday class for him and records the lecture. The student argument at the hearing is that a good rule should not be enforced when enforcing the rule defeats the purpose of the rule. Why in hell would any fair person want to deny such a student success in the course? The committee stands their ground with the usual—a rule is a rule is a rule, period. The hearing, on purpose, is extended another day. I call the employer and the employer reluctantly grants the student permission to attend the Friday class and forces another employee to cover the time. I then notify the committee the next day that the employer will let the student come to Friday class. The committee is happy. Then students on the advisory committee, plus students from the class in question, plus someone on the Student Paper raises, on cue, the question of exactly why no administrator ever made such a phone call, and why another employee should be forced to alter their schedule when there need be no problem to begin with? After all the student in question is passing the course through his/her own extra efforts to do so. Only because the committee realizes this is not over at all, and there is likely to be commotion over their attitude, does the committee vote to let the student continue in the course with his girlfriend recording the Friday class and the exams, to the extent feasible, fall on M or W.
Example #3: At an urban State University where I taught several years, many of the students took evening classes as they worked during the day. As the years passed, one of the main measures taken to reduce the cost of University education has been to increase the number of part-time instructors. Most of them were hired to teach the evening courses. They were paid, per credit hr taught, probably about a tenth of what a full time Professor was paid. Maybe it was a fifth, I don’t recall exactly now. Yet the evening students paid the same tuition rate as the day students and got the part-time instructors a lot. It was just another example of how the least fortunate students with the worst academic background got the weakest faculty instructors, with some exceptions. Departments set their own course schedules and that was usually one of the assignments of the Departmental Assistant Chairperson. With one exception this was always me. I suppose this was sort of some kind of always the bridesmaid but never the bride. In reality this was an obvious match. The faculty elect a Chairperson who would then need be approved by the administration. The administration is never going to approve a ‘loose cannon’ like myself to be Chair and the faculty would never elect a ‘loose cannon’ like myself either. The Chairperson, once approved by the administration can choose their own Assistant Chair. A ‘loose cannon’ is useful to the Chairperson. And thus our department became the only department which required full time faculty to teach some evening courses. It was the right thing to do but didn’t make me very popular. Ours was the only department which refused to let any Professor teach all their courses on a Tues/Thurs schedule so they would only be required to be around on campus two days a week. Not many Professors did this sort of thing, but the few that did could no longer do it. Again, faculty didn’t give in to this sort of justice willingly, but the choice was another ‘or else’. And the or else was that an army of students would raise hell if the changes were rejected. There simply was no justified defense.
My department was also the only department that replaced almost all civil service employees with students. What kind of University can claim their graduates are capable hires and yet claim they can’t, while in college, perform tasks being done by civil service employees? The money saved, since there was a maximum hourly salary any student could be paid, saved enough money so the department faculty could have student course assistants where needed. Students were used then to set up labs, run the animal care facility, the store room, the greenhouse, and so on.
I went through all this simply to show that there are ways an individual can personally can find to help the least fortunate. It requires either time or money or popularity sacrifice. The rewards are simply the gratitude those helped express so genuinely for the help. Yet, in the last analysis, empathy for the least fortunate cannot be a long term solution. None of the above lasted past my own employment at the institution. Things revert back to ‘the norm’ when someone else is in charge. Any justice is temporary. Until the government creates level playing fields for all young people there is no lasting fairness, no lasting justice at all. Of course life will never be fair because diversity is needed for evolutionary advancement. Skills vary, academic skills will vary, personalities will vary, health matters will vary, family environment matters, cultures vary, luck varies, etc. With level playing fields there is no need at all for affirmative action, while any remaining existing need for affirmative action should never be based on race. A student of any race can end up in a poor school, inadequate health care, a poor family situation, and so on.
I was also the PreMedical and Health Careers Advisor in the Department of Biology. Imagine the task of getting a talented student into Medical School if that student with innate academic ability has any combination of the following (most had many of them): the poorest of schools with the poorest of teachers, with a really difficult family and financial situation, has to work many hours per week at a physically exhausting job while going to college, and yet is expected to generate a really high GPS to get into Medical School. The ability to handle Medical School may be there but the paper record will never demonstrate that. The only real solution is for our society to end allowing these situations to exist. That is called collective empathy when a community sees to it that all children get a level playing field when it comes to education and health. People like to say “We are all God’s children” but the words rarely match the actions. The actions are invariably replaced by the self serving ‘family values’ mentality. The truth is that if we can get our own kids the best schooling and medical care this ensures them a tremendous advantage in life only if many other kids are deprived of such basic needs. It is a rare parent who wants increased competition for their kids. That is human nature.
It is a waste of time to impose a lot of judgmental notions about this empathy with others stuff. Humans have an advanced innate ethical trait compared to other species. That doesn’t mean this trait is the same in all humans anymore than any other trait genetically endowed is the same in different people. A person is not better than someone else because they are skilled athletically. A person is not better than anyone else because they are better looking. A person is not better than anyone else because they are academically gifted. And so on. The variation is good in the sense this is what drives evolution in an upward spiral. There is no competition between good and evil going on, no Devil vs God contest there at all.
Empathy, as a human trait, has progressed with evolutionary Time. Societies, as a whole (with some exceptions) are kinder than thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, human aggressiveness has not abated, and while empathy is more likely to win out in the long run, human aggressiveness, greed, and self serving religious beliefs could lead to another massive corrective upheaval in the evolutionary process. These evolutionary corrections can last thousands or millions of years. Like it or not, we are not part of the long run, but here only for a microsecond in evolutionary Time. I reckon it is harmless enough to believe otherwise, but there certainly is no evidence to substantiate any such otherwise.
Many students, Chairpersons, and other faculty were puzzled at my involvement with student problems which were not associated with the classes I taught. It really wasn’t some sort of noble attempt to be ‘good’ or be ‘holier than thou’ sort of performance. Realistically, it was more some sort of compulsive behavior. By nature, all my life, I have been an aloof loner. For me to be otherwise has never been a good fit. To the extent I was placed in the middle of anything, others usually placed me there. To the extent I ever remained in the middle of things, others with power kept me there. To the extent I was ever removed from the thick of anything, others with power, removed me. On days I had day classes I often left campus rarely before 7 or 8PM. The days I had evening classes it might often be midnight before I left. These hours were determined by my office hours. As many as needed could sign up for the last office hour and simply wait their turn. They mostly studied while waiting or discussed with each other matters on their mind. I was single, for reasons which is another story, but had I been otherwise, there hardly could have been these kind of office hours. People have always judged me to be anti-social. In some sense this is correct. On the other hand these students were my social life, my family life. My ‘family’ just kept changing every few years. Unlike real parents, my failures or successes just were short lived. And for the record, I never feel less alone than when alone. In urban cities, where people lived crowded together by the millions—to me, they are simply all alone together.
It was easy, for many years, to believe I was making a difference for a lot of the ‘least fortunate’. But the word lot is deceptive. While many were helped over particular hurdles, many of these students faced endless hurdles. Without a level playing field from birth, few achieved whatever limited potentials they had. They get worn out and settle for careers and goals short of their potential. A Terrell Owens is rare. He simply was so focused on a solitary goal to be somebody that he ran over, around, or through every hurdle on his own. He got to his full potential (as an athlete) but even here, he paid a heavy cost in other aspects of his life. As usual with most topics, empathy is not always what it seems.
Once I learned how to protect myself without others paying a cost for protecting me, my role in life just sort of fell into place— just like, for so many others, a different role in life played out for them. This much I am sure of——collective empathy generates far more meaningful success than individual empathy. In my office were numerous little signs, among which were “People build people”. I am no longer surprised when ‘happiness polls’ taken around the world repeatedly show countries like Sweden, Denmark, etc,—which are social democracies—on top of these polls and the U.S. trailing way back into like 20-something place. In these social democracies no one has to worry about good schools, good pensions, good health care, getting a college education if you can pass the entrance test, a livable wage, several weeks of vacation per year, and so on. Yes, they pay high taxes, close to 50%, but relative to the basics of life, which so many Americans have to worry about endlessly, these people have no such worries. This makes a lot of logical sense. I call it collective empathy. When the same rights, and the same basic necessities of life are available to all, then a society can flourish, all the wealth will not gravitate to the few at the expense of the less fortunate, and while diversity will flourish the casualties come with minimal suffering. That is evolutionary progress.
It is nigh impossible to come to any firm conclusions with a topic like this. I have long expressed the opinion that human overpopulation, lack of a global minimum wage, and the accumulation of too much wealth in the hands of a few are going to implode human civilization on a global scale. Stephen Hawkins recently suggested that our development of artificial intelligence will doom mankind. A second danger he identified was human aggression. He has a point worth mulling over there, and perhaps the combination will be lethal. His third danger he considered aliens from other planets. That seems something beyond our own ability to judge.
Can empathy become a compulsive behavior/addiction? Compulsive behaviors/addictions rarely, if ever, lead to contentment. By their very nature contentment is unachievable. Perfect contentment is probably unattainable, human nature is not conducive to this. On the other hand, it is hard to accept that life is nothing more than pick your own poison. The best goal would seem to be this: we need line ourselves and our unique talents/weaknesses, as best we can, up with the evolutionary process.This would be something like go with the flow. The evolutionary process leads to improvements, with only temporary setbacks (in evolutionary Time). Human aggression needs to be toned down so we need strive not to be overly aggressive. Over population is bad so we need do our part in not becoming part of the problem. Diversity is a basic tool of the evolutionary process so we need maximize our degree of tolerance and empathy. Understanding is a human good and so each day we need strive to understand something new. Happiness is a good thing and we need maximize happiness for ourselves and others. The Golden Rule is a universally accepted human ethical principle, so we ought to use that for ethical guidance. Achieving realistic personal goals within the constricts of the Golden Rule is an excellent endeavor. Accepting that we got into this life by chance, and our genetic mix plus environment into which we were born was by chance, we are in a very peculiar poker hand, one in which we play the cards the best we can with all the help we can get, and make every effort to help others as they have helped us. Gratitude for what luck came our way, and the chance to be a part of the evolutionary process, is another wonderful mind set to make life more contented. In short, and I often end musings of this nature with my favorite quote:
“There is a way of life, a way of thinking, of behaving towards other men and your fellow creatures, towards all living things, towards the whole earth and the sky and the sun that is based on love, on compassion, on respect, on cherishing everything there is around you because it is wonderful, unique, it’s natural and good and it evolved that way by itself, it’s got to be cherished and if we think like that, and live that kind of life, we can all have our freedom, we can all have our happiness, we can all feel the sun and smell the grass and smell the flowers and look upon each other with appreciation.” (Unknown)
