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It's the Empathy Crisis, Stupid
I'm sure everyone reading this already knows that our "debt crisis" is a mirage, a canard manipulated by the radical right wing who are theologically devoted to allowing society's rich to become even more so. Our supposed spending problem is nothing more than a "We won't tax the rich no matter what" problem. The media has played along; Pres. Obama and many of the Democrats are also playing along. And the political barometer has taken yet another sharp lurch to the right. But while we don't really have a debt crisis, we do have an empathy crisis and it's the empathy ceiling that has come crashing down on us and desperately needs to be raised.
Recall that in campaigning for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush actually advertised himself as a different breed of conservative, a "compassionate conservative". I'm under no illusion that this was anything other than Karl Rove branding "W" solely for the purpose of electability. (I went to high school with Karl Rove. There's never been a stray, compassionate bone in the man's entire marshmellow, conniving body). But the fact that compassion was touted as a desirable trait in a politician in 2000 illustrates how far we have degenerated into a truly brutal society, a modern day Mordor. The only difference I can see is the Orcs in Lord of the Rings had better costumes than the Tea Partiers.
Our empathy deficit had its origins in the "tough guy" recipe concocted after 9/11 in the White House kitchen by Bush, Cheney and Rove and has since been served up with a vengeance by rest of the Republican Party and society in general. It has blossomed into a full blown malignant disease of epidemic proportions.
America hasn't given a second thought, or even a first thought to the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis who were needless victims of George and Dick proving their manhood to the world. Abu Ghraib didn't even register as an issue with voters in 2004. In fact that election turned on Rove's swift boat strategy of convincing enough people that John Kerry's heroic war record, i.e. his masculinity, was fabricated. America no longer even pretends to be a country that doesn't torture. The nation that used to lead the prosecution of international war criminals allows its own torturers to justify their actions on national TV without the slightest hint of shame or reprisal. American exceptionalism--we get to torture people we don't like because we're special. And let's not suggest that God, Jesus, or the Bible doesn't approve, or that our beloved and divinely inspired Constitution prohibits this brutality.
The hideous sport of ultimate fighting has captured the mainstream and its own TV channel, becoming our version of Roman gladiators. Pornography has evolved from a display of sex and eroticism to one of disgusting, degrading violence against women who are depicted with less humanity than a corpse. Video games played for hours by teenage boys show women torn in half, drawn and quartered with blood spurting from the remaining body parts. Conservatives are now encouraged by their leaders to "lock and load" when they don't get their way, and no matter how much carnage, any curtailing of our precious guns remains sacrilege.
Sen. Orrin Hatch from my state, a devout Mormon and follower of Christ, couldn't vote for either of Pres. Obama's nominees for the Supreme Court because he couldn't abide justices delivering "empathy" from the country's highest bench. My other Senator, Tea Party general Mike Lee, a supposed Constitutional scholar, recently stated that the Constitution doesn't support child labor laws. With a few more Mike Lees in the Senate we may be able to return to the good old days of Charles Dickens. The torches and pitch forks being amassed against illegal immigrants is nothing if not a war on empathy.
Climate disruption is already causing loss of livelihoods, disease, famine and death for millions throughout the world. Even much of the US is currently suffering from the very climate extremes predicated by virtually all the world's main stream scientists. Yet half of this country, and the entire Republican Party, swallow the denier Kool-Aid held to their lips by Rush Limbaugh and the blonde dumbos at Fox News even while they pass out from the heat. But it is easy to deny a climate crisis if one has also been purged of empathy.
The all out Republican/corporate assault on the “job killing” EPA, Clean Air and Clean Water Acts has nothing to do with jobs. At its core is a lack of empathy. The health and well being of your family will be sacrificed for corporate profit, hastening the return to a truly medieval gap between rich and poor. The modern version of “Let them eat cake” in 2011 is “Let them breathe pollution.”
The real flag of the Tea Party is not "Don't tread on me", but rather "It is my God given right to tread on you." A chilling lack of compassion for the poor, the sick, the homeless, and the unemployed, now dominate the Republican Party's legislative agenda, and the Democrats and Pres. Obama, seem to be increasingly comfortable holding their coats while they throw them all under the bus.
The most nightmarish video I have ever seen was taken outside a townhall meeting two years ago where a disabled person in a wheel chair was trying to explain to a small crowd why health care reform might mean to him, the difference between life and death. The crowd circled around him menacingly, taunting him, humiliating him in a scene right out of Lord of the Flies. It was not an isolated incident. I was not only ashamed to be of the same species, I was ashamed to be in the same phylum as these Tea Party animals.
Charles Darwin had a theory about human nature that seldom gets any attention. He said we are a sympathetic species, we take care of others, and we are inherently cooperative. I can see why, after looking in the mirror, Tea Partiers don't believe in evolution. On this, I finally agree with them.
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130 Comments so far
Show AllThe u.s. society is diseased.
Death is a cleansing agent (Leaves of Grass).
There are good Nature respecting people on this planet.
I truly hope they survive this epidemic.
The culture exported by the United States IS a disease called Capitalism--which is fatal to societies. We are seeing some countries already succumbing to chronic Capitalism, and others debilitated. Empathy is the bane of Capitalists, who see all human virtues as weaknesses to be exploited.
I like this article. But the problem is not evolution. Yes, human beings are without a doubt a species that is capable of nurturing, empathy, and deep compassion and caring.
In evolutionary terms, this is due to the fact that we have always raised our children from being helpless infants into being adults. Their helplessness requires caring and compassion and empathy. We are empathic beings as a species.
But we are also the descendents of hunters. We are predators. We have then a capacity to turn empathy off in the context of earning a living by killing, so that we may eat.
So cooperation and domination constitute key capability within the realm of human functioning, and the cultural evolution that guides the our world.
The question is not whether evolution exists, or whether we believe in it, but rather how cultural evolution is going to unfold. Either domination prevails and we destroy our world through ecocide, or cooperation prevails and we create a sustainable world for future generations of human beings and future generations of the members of the community of life.
We are living in the era when this will be determined.
It is the challenge of human consciousness, spirituality if you will, to overcome the genetic urges of self survival and accept a station among all of Life's creatures, including/especially other people.
Darwin postulated that the stiffest competition for any living organism comes from its own specie (same wants and needs). Overcoming the competitive urges is a long row to hoe for sure, but I won't give up believing that it can be done.
I totally agree with your comment..."the stiffest competition for any living organism comes from its own specie" particularly when the "stiffest competition" appears to be bearing upon the lower 60% of the population who have to share the meager crumbs left behind and even their family members (male and female) are only willing to serve the "tough love" kool aid.
Good points, KellyGerling. May I chew on one of your statements?
1) “In evolutionary terms, [our empathetic nature] is due to the fact that we have always raised our children from being helpless infants into being adults. Their helplessness requires caring and compassion and empathy. We are empathic beings as a species.”
Because I teach dystopias and have been reading some radical attacks on our schooling practices, I’m constantly coming to an uncomfortable realization: we no longer really raise our children as we once did, and can perhaps add the effects of this to the mix of why our nation seems so empathy-deficient.
John Taylor Gatto says we hand our children to strangers with the promise that they can better prepare our children than we can ourselves, but this is an impossible promise to keep—for the simple reason that they can’t possibly understand the individual nature of your child and what she needs to progress, and what she’d like to progress in. In fact, declares Gatto and others, we feed them a bunch of facts that seem to have nothing to do with each other or the children’s lives, constantly rate them on their ability and propensity to remember them on cue, and concentrate on getting them to sit up and shut down and apply themselves. If they don’t, this is duly noted in the record and they may well get diagnosed and drugged, and from thereon in are going to be rated as problems and defective. I know people hate me for saying this, but that’s the common experience. Even if the student gets a special smile or pat on the head once in a while or lots of stars and smiley-face stickers, how much empathy is involved in the process? Actually, the name for it is Pavlovian training, or operant conditioning.
In the days before women stayed home with their kids if they could afford it, children are usually raised at home. Now, characteristically, babies go to daycare after a skimpy maternity leave if there’s no grandmother who wants to care for her. So the amount of time a child has with its highly empathetic family has been shortened considerably these last four decades, and as someone interested in cultural conditioning and cultural evolution, find this potentially significant.
If you remember your Brave New World, it goes into great detail concerning how the children are raised. The fetuses are developed in plastic bubbles, and the idea of actually bearing a child or calling yourself a parent is held in horror. Then the children have no “parents” but the state, which has genetically cooked them up to fit various generic cogs in the societal wheel and then schools them in operant conditioning and pleasure-seeking. (This has many parallels to Plato’s scheme: take them from their mothers, tell them they were born of the earth, and then tell each after a while whether they’re the gold, silver, bronze or lead members of the Republic.)
Are there parallels to be made in our culture? Did we feminists, who fought so hard for equality and opportunity, give our children over too much to strangers from infancy as a deal for getting the hell out of the house and getting some respect, and how has this affected our great race as we move forward? I’ve considered myself a feminist since hearing the word, but it’s a question to be asked and mulled over as we watch our own dystopia evolve.
Elizabeth...I agree. For decades I have said that the feminist movement did some good things and a lot a bad things. The price was paid by low income women and children. We created a generation of latch key children. The winners were corporations who got 2 workers for the price of one. Prior to the f movement, one worker could support a family.
As founder of Justice for Children, I have been in many courtrooms where the Judge said to the woman hoping to get child support, "Well you wanted equality, so now go out and support your kids". (Of course that was not equality, but go and tell it to the Judge.)
Children deserve to be cared for by someone who is doing it because she/he loves them...not someone who is doing it for money.
True on all counts. What those judges said! It's what the whole society said: fine, you want your independence, well you'd better worry about where to put your kids while you rush off to your dreams. Not our problem!
It worked out all right for the female corporate lawyers and doctors who could hire nannies to bond with their kids, not so great for the low-income folks.
Given we all need jobs, how did places like France do it so much better?
As a white male, I think feminism was and is a good idea. I do not think it led directly to two worker families. I think that change was a result of sacrificing our democracy for the creation of the national security state to save us from our many "bogus" enemies. In effect, we had to give up our one worker families to pay for our illusional security which coincidently resulted in concentration of wealth in a small minority of society.
The Feminist movement if I may characterise it as such, was/is an attempt to deal the the oppression and domination of women in our culture by men? Or perhaps more accurately the domination and oppression of women in our culture?
The movement is the right way to go, to empower women to grow and develop their own talents which is necessary for their happiness which is the desired end result of the movement.
To save the children, to love them and create an environment wherein they can grow and develop in a healthy way, requires the equivalent of the total energy of at least one loving, happy individual, free and available to meet their needs. Ideally, there are two or more loving partners to share in raising the children, and by share, I mean in all aspects that make for happy, fulfilled adult parents.
If there is only one "parent," let society as a whole support that parent in raising happy healthy children.
To achieve the goals of Feminism, a happy healthy life for all , dump the national security state.
Lower wages relative to the cost of living led to the two worker households. The rentier class's relative wealth started ahead and the increase of disparity grows exponentially.
Women have always worked, it's just that they didn't use to be paid. They were bottom dwellers; under Indians, under Africans, under Asians, even under the Irish.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost;
women ranked lower than dead guys.
"The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost;
women ranked lower than dead guys."
_______________
Ha. Funny you should mention this.
I seriously pissed off my intellectual but devout Roman Catholic brother over this years and years ago-- before I even knew about Gnostic traditions.
It just struck me one day that RC teaching or tradition exalted the "Holy Family": Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Never mind all of the dodgy bits about the Virgin Birth and Joseph being considered a "chaste spouse" who didn't have sex with Mary-- at least there were two roughly co-equal heterosexual parents and a baby god.
But when it came to the model, or vision, of godhood, the Church abandoned the daddy-mommy-baby structure and instead opted for a wholly masculine Father-Son-"Spirit" configuration-- consistently iconographically rendered as Old Man, Young Man, Bird. Bird! WTF?
It just hit me that there was something bogus about the way women, aka "the Feminine", were neatly eliminated from top-tier divinity.
My brother, a budding theologian, sanctimoniously explained away the seeming sexism with the usual faith-based rationalizations, i.e. that of course ultimately the persons of the Trinity "transcend" gender.
Now that I think of it, I missed a great chance to scandalize him altogether by exclaiming, "What? Are you suggesting that all three of 'them' are transsexuals?" It was so long ago that the term wasn't so common. Damn.
Anyway, he seemed to think that it made it better to claim that the mysterious "Holy Spirit" isn't (necessarily) masculine. I argued that on the contrary, this confusing, asexual divine "placeholder" made it even clearer that the Church hierarchy-- all-male, coincidentally-- intended to exclude bona-fide femininity from the top of the divine totem pole by any convoluted metaphysical means necessary.
We ended up agreeing to disagree, of course. That's what we usually do when I get the better of an argument.
The change in respect is reflected in art. Early early cultures made effigy sculptures of the female form with exaggerated breasts and hips, the organs of birth and Life.
In this 21st century schizoid land,
Madonna is lame, Hilton over the hill,
mothers unmarried and on food coupons,
vaginae a dime a dozen at market
in a world full of Weiners.
Sex starts when, at 11? 12? earlier if they're pro's?
You'll enjoy the convoluted "logic" that goes into explaining how Mary was a virgin before marriage, during marriage, during pregnancy, during childbirth and ever after. She somehow managed to maintain her virginity her entire life. And then flew up into Heaven, the eternal virgin. Even he one thing that is plainly feminine has been sanitized. Gotta love a religion that dismisses half the human world.
Yes, that whole Trinity thing and the Virgin Birth and all is just plain weird, but it's odd how strong a hold it has on so many people. Jung commented somewhere that in the Middle Ages Mary Mother of God was characteristically depicted as having dirt on her feet in heaven. After all that virtuous living, she was still a dirty girl? Or she brought some earthiness into the mix? Maybe the angels were sick of so much airiness. I dunno.
Obedient Servant,
Great story! Thanks.
the way my life went, I have been single-dadding since my son was 3...
my single greatest regret of this earthly experience is that I must, every morning, leave him for most of the hours we might have shared, and go earn my wages...
that I will die with no change in this pattern, my greatest fear...
every day, I feel I am abandoning him, and have no other choice...at least we are both aware of our world, and why things are...
o, that a vacation might not be the only time one can look at one's family in the morning, and remain with them throughout the day, simply rejoicing in simple life...
an hour or two an evening or two a week just doesn't get it done...
I feel for you. I was a latch-key kid. But at least your son knows you love him and that's more than a lot of kids have these days--even kids in more affluent families with corporately desensitized, un-empathetic parents.
ElizabethH - Astutely stated. As a recently retired educator w/grandma status, I absolutely agree. We have bred a generation of children who can really only connect with technology. The MIC should have no trouble recruiting drone-bomber operators.
Eliz: As you know, I think you're intelligent, however, I often pick up a right wing subtext in many of your posts. For one thing, being an educator who suggests home schooling is rather odd, if not a betrayal of the premise of public education itself. And while I agree with MANY of the points you made to drive home the idea that public ed has recently become little more than an equivalent factory for the fragile young human mind, the progressive approach would be to change public ed, rather than send kids home for home schooling.
So here, too, I find a strange subtext to this comment you posted:
" Did we feminists, who fought so hard for equality and opportunity, give our children over too much to strangers ..."
Maybe you don't see it, but it's not far from Ann Coulter's indictment of all the careless feminists who left their kids with the nanny. Why would you reinforce that meme?
I am 100% feminist, and I stayed home. That meant we lived in a very modest apartment... that meant there were not two salaries, and mine was based on tutoring students and publishing free lance articles. Not every feminist farmed her child out.
It would seem to me that a feminist would have considered that maybe it was the ECONOMY to blame for pushing women out of the home. It's so much easier to instead blame women for leaving the kiddies to all those cold strangers. (Do you not see how this comment works to BLAME feminists?)
And why is it that I have NEVER seen you give me an IOTA of support when I reinforce what is plainly evidenced by this author (and others) in terms of the marriage between violence against women and war itself?
Sometimes I can't tell if you, Jill, and Katrine are so highly intellectual that you've been processed FAR more than you realize by what essentially remains a patriarchal system of academia, or if you specifically wish to undermine feminist ideas?
Perhaps the dystopia exists because the feminine side of sentience has largely been disavowed, discredited, demonized, degraded, and distanced... by turns for centuries. And today's Christian theocrats would like to keep it that way, if not turn the clock punitively back, yet more!
Furthermore, anyone who argues that what WE collectively experience is the fruit of human nature, manages to miss the fact that for centuries, ALL decisions were made by men, that is, masculine elites. And even if a few women NOW filter into the upper ranks, they do NOT change the system that is in place. Instead, they adapt to it just the way Obama, as example of a minority group, reinforces the system that lent him personal power. They are tokens... and by being part of the system, it reflects the lie that the system now embraces everyone.
Many in this forum are quite glib at analyzing the character flaws of any number of writers or political candidates. Yet when it comes to looking at the foundation blueprints of Western society, and the ideologies that inevitably led to hierarchy and dominant groups... there is a WILLFUL blindness to the effects of patriarchy, starting with the long-lasting religious precepts that termed women second class citizens. (In some religions they were presumed to be devoid of a soul!)
That so few are willing to connect the dots between today's porn, and the make-war state, which itself is the expression of the uber: masculine roots of patriarchal culture is chilling to me. And I speak as a person of deep compassion and a fair amount of scholarship to back up my positions. I find the lack of EMPATHY for women (as seen in topics about the women living in tent camps in Haiti, or the gang rapes in Congo, or the sexual abuse found in the US military) incredibly scary.
Siouxrose, I'm reading this at the end of the day, and fear you misunderstand much of what I've tried to say. Perhaps it's reciprical. Let's try at a later date.
We've strayed far from our evolutionary roots. Almost all hunter gatherer societies, that developed after the taming of fire, were matricharical by necessity. The men hunted while the women maintained the village, were responsible for child rearing and maintained the culture and the societies stories and legends. So we are now at conflict with our roots.
You seem to be trying to insult me with your suggestions that my views have a “right-wing subtext” and aren’t far from Ann Coulter’s—man that was nasty of you, by the way, really bad form. How about I compare you to Nancy Reagan because you both adhere to astrology? I don’t go in for cheap shots, though; they stop thought and reduce debate to mudslinging.
To address the Ann Coulter comment, what I said isn’t at all what you say she said. I didn’t say I blame well-heeled women for passing their children off to nannies. I said “It worked out all right for the female corporate lawyers and doctors who could hire nannies to bond with their kids,” meaning that they had the luxury to bring people into their homes who actually formed a deep relationship and understanding of their children. It’s not the same idea. It’s not a simple idea—like that’s necessarily a good thing or bad thing—but it’s certainly preferable to putting your kids in a daycare with constantly cycling staff who are expected to care for your kid with a 1/15 worker/child ratio.
I didn’t say all feminists farmed their children out. I didn’t do so. When I chose to stay home for my child’s first five years even though I’d been offered a vice-presidency from the company I’d been working for if I’d change my mind— even though my husband was a mere low-level welfare bureaucrat—most people thought I was crazy. The main problem with feminism as it was portrayed in the media was that it was all about gaining power in the working world, all about the cash and prestige, and I always thought that wrongheaded. Of course women should get equal pay, equal education, equal opportunity, and equal political power, but I’m not a materialist, and in the popular imagination, too much of feminism turned out to be all about having the money and the corner office. So as far undermining feminist ideas, I’d have to ask you which ones.
You seem to see things much more starkly delineated than I do. Power issues concerning the male and female are tricky. In what appear to be highly patriarchal societies, it often turns out that on the level of family, and ultimately society, women have a lot more power than it seems, so I don’t blame the “masculine” for violence or poverty or any of our ills. As somebody said, power is never where it appears to be. The Russian adage on sexual power relations is “the man is the head; the woman is the neck.” Similarly, my right-wing, Phyllis Schlaffly-applauding aunt told me when I was a 14-year-old vocal feminist that the way to approach men is to play them—make them think they’re in charge, but subtly, sexually, emotionally move them to where you want them. Women have been doing this all along, and that’s the right-wing, anti-feminism version of feminine power. As an on-the-cusp Sagittarian, I lack that capacity. Plus it offends me.
Universal public schooling is a deeply progressive issue, to be sure, and questioning its underlying goodness, no matter how badly it’s operating, is sure to piss progressives off. As Bruce E. Levine, a liberation psychologist who works mostly with adolescents, says, progressives don’t want to talk about the problems with schools. When I suggest home schooling, particularly co-op home schooling, I’m hardly being right-wing. Just because the right is more vocal in espousing it doesn’t mean it’s a right-wing thing to do. You can homeschool and teach history through Zinn, or didn’t you know that? I’m suggesting homeschooling because I think we are in some serious deep shit as a society, rushing mindlessly and barbarously off the cliff, and we’d better get some young minds moving—now, fast—because as far as I can tell, most public schooling is more about befuddling the mind than anything else. We don’t have time to fuck around. You can work to build union power all you want, but with it or without it, the robber barons have charge of the curriculum. They always have, and we’re seeing this now with Bill Gates and ALEC.
Public schools in America began in the 1880s and were one of the prides of this nation until the mid 1960s. Americans used to be proud of them because they taught children of all economic classes regardless of their parents' ability to pay.
For that 80-plus year period, public schools were often remembered with fondness and nostalgia by their graduates and there was nowhere near the number of problems with those schools that started to develop in the late 1960s and have escalated ever since.
One of the two key problems that was never systemically resolved was racial desegregation of the public schools. Blacks are still so systemically downtrodden they might as well mostly form a permanent under-caste in this country and that conditioning begins early. The recent Atlanta city-wide public school cheating scandal clearly shows this. The schools most affected are in the poorest areas of Atlanta with the most economic and social problems and the least tax base. Middle-class predominantly white schools a few miles away have few if any such problems.
The teachers are ordered to teach to the standardized test to tow the "No Child Left Behind" Party Line regardless of the caste-related physical and mental health problems and early learning deficiencies of these young black children--things that are mostly beyond the teachers' control.
In Atlanta corrupt self-serving administrators and teachers under impossible pressures protected their own jobs and their poor schools and kids from punishing de-funding by altering test results on a MASSIVE scale. The black and white elites pushed for dozens (soon possibly hundreds) of administrator and teacher layoffs, but still refuse to look at the underlying issues of poverty, parental drug abuse, prison recidivism, high unemployment, multi-generational neglect or abuse. This refusal to look at the REAL problem is common to both Democrats and Republicans--who also refuse to look at rising income disparities, unemployment and poverty nationwide that is affecting more and more white neighborhoods.
Many if not most of America's whites who could afford to do so, started abandoning the public school system in increasing numbers as more and more minority kids entered that system because they are class elitist bigots.
The other key problem is just as tough for Americans to come to grips with and that is the entering of large numbers of women into the workforce whose mothers (and their mothers and grandmothers before them for six generations) were mostly stay at home moms who were there in the afternoon to feed the kids, ask them how their school day went and help them with their homework with the kind of personal attention that only a loving mother can give.
A workable solution for this would've been for corporate America to pay either the male breadwinner or the female breadwinner enough to hire a well-qualified baby sitter/cook to make sure someone was there when the kids got home from school--whether it was public or private school. But corporate America chose to pit men and women in the workforce against each other and keep wages (adjusted for inflation) nearly flat for the next 40 years. Moreover, in the late 1980s, they de-linked wages from soaring worker productivity due to computerization of the workplace.
Few working couples and exceedingly few working single parents can afford the time to stay at home to home school their kids. Most Americans can't afford to send their kids to private schools and vouchers will not provide enough money to enough families to change this.
The only real SOLUTION for society as a whole (you know, the old common good, promoting the general Welfare thing) is to pressure corporate America to employ more Americans of all races at better wages re-linked to productivity so that (A) racial income and, thus, education inequities can begin to be relieved, (B) there will be sufficient tax base to pay for increasing the quality of all public schools, (C) working couples or single parents can afford to hire good quality babysitters/cooks to receive, care for and tutor the children when they come home from school.
The only way for workers to pressure corporate America is by organizing political movements and more and bigger labor unions. At this point the labor unions need to be at the center of any successful populist progressive movement or Third Party.
Simply taking the path of least resistance and telling every mom who can to home school or privately school her kids is a cop-out against the vast majority of parents and kids in this country and a recipe for deeper national descent into squalor and civil unrest.
Rupert Murdoch recently announced he is entering school privatization in a big way. He sees it as a $500 Billion dollar market ripe with post-public space corporate opportunity. What profiteth it a woman to protect her child and lose the civilization her child will grow up to inhabit? That's the question all these public school scornful mothers should be asking themselves.
Siouxrose,
I had a lot of the same concerns. Great post.
My comment on Siouxrose's post is that public schools existed in America since the 1880s and are not a particularly new facet of American culture. The only difference before the 1960s and afterwards is that afterwards fewer moms were at home to give the kids their snacks, chat with them to see how their school day went, and help them with homework. I think there was a societal trade-off here and that it had adverse effects in some ways and good effects in others.
I was a latch-key kid of a poor single parent who worked long hours. I had to learn early how to do a lot of things for myself. It was depressing at times, especially when I accidentally locked myself out because I forgot to take my key to school. I remember feeling blue about being alone in the dark waiting for my mom to come home at the age of 9 and 10. Having a hard working single parent is tough if they can't afford a baby sitter and you only get to see that parent for an hour in the morning and two or three hours at night.
But it also helped me to learn to think for myself and develop my own yardsticks for measuring the world for which I have been very grateful in following years. I am able to see through a lot of social and political hogwash that seems to deceive most others in a way that I find sometimes inexplicable because to me they are such obvious come-ons and cons.
The ruling capitalists really exploited the hell out of the entire labor market when women moved into the workforce in large numbers. I think the Women's Lib movement did not focus enough on working-class women and their labor rights. It was too much a movement by and about upper-middle-class women aimed mostly at legalizing abortion and gaining access for comparatively affluent or well-connected women to the upper-middle-class professions. I recently saw Gloria Steinem in an interview on PBS Need To Know and nothing she said made me think anything had changed much along those lines.
I think younger generations of feminists are becoming more class conscious because the economy is so bad that they have to.
Kelly: Your post lumps all persons into a category of "WE," and that's ironic given the salient points raised in the article. Pretty glib to gloss it all over under the rubric of "human nature."
You said, for instance, " But we are also the descendents of hunters. We are predators..."
See above, for a fuller depiction.
So far, every female has missed (or purposeful obfuscated) the really poignant elements of this article; and you've set up a little chorus that essentially blames feminists. Is that just a coincidence? Have you "women" unconsciously assumed the message of misogyny that's so deeply woven into our culture?
What kind of "women" fail to object to the type of porn that's now "consumed" by the millions? What kind of "women" see nothing wrong with the types of videos that dismember females?
If it was YOUR daughter on the "gone missing" list, the next victim of a rapist or murderer maybe THEN you'd get it.
But alas no, make it about all those bad feminists who went off to work... surely it's all their fault.
Yeah. The empathy deficit is alive and well right here!
Goddess help you...
What about the men who perform in extreme and dysfunctional pornography. Aren't they also being abused?
btw, I haven't read any posts on CD supporting extreme porn so I don't know what or who you're ranting at now.
That author is afraid to mention it, or perhaps he is completely unaware, but many self-labeled "liberals" have done their part to eradicate society-wide feelings of empathy as they have promoted identity group politics. Identity group politics creates separation and makes it more difficult to focus on the common good and to develop a feeling of human solidarity. Particularly the gender wars have undermined the connections that have held all of us together, and many young boys of today feel little desire to protect, care for, or care about the girls and women in our society. The plutocrats are certainly aware of this and have taken full advantage in their divide and conquer strategies.
KIVALS: I really like you, but you were the first one to use the meme citing the likes of Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, & Margaret Thatcher to suggest that women could do the down and dirty "Mars rules kill thing," too. That was your defense that human nature, on a generic basis, explains violence, as IF it's an equivalent found in both genders. (And I am hardly arguing that women cannot be cruel, cannot abuse men's trust, or have not used insidious devices to get back at those who held power over them for centuries. All that is reminiscent of the Iraqi who sets up a roadside bomb to protect his turf from the invaders. People do what they feel they must when they're robbed of power, as well as self-determination.) The powerless are generally not held by the same standard of accountability as those who wield power and set up the systems that disempower others.
For an attorney, this IS your glaring blindspot. Now you're blaming identity politics, which is a disguised way to implicate feminists, in your recipe for what went wrong. Just a coincidence that you chose a Chinese wife? American women are just so abrasive aren't they, for demanding the right to their own economic, political, and reproductive destinies?! Why can't they just shut up and let all the men handle things (like the recent photo CD offered where ONLY men were gathered to decide Pakistan's or was it Afghanistan's future?)
So easy for a male to glibly dismiss what's a fundamental right to him, and has been, for centuries. Not so his counterpart!
You are confusing the cure with the effect. I've called you a mathematician before, as your mind works incredibly well with formulas... but when it comes to sexism, you are as blind a a bat! If anything, you pay the matter cordial lip service.
I dated an attorney and he told me I ought to hear how the male attorneys describe women attorneys. It was like the Jack Perkins expose... to pretend that women have not been damaged by centuries of second class treatment, or, as is ALWAYS the case in threads about violence to women, making it about women's fault, or the few women who show masculine warrior tendencies, or why this guy or that guy was not guilty of rape... is all just smoke and mirrors.
Most in this forum are gutless. I've seen the lack of honest discussion on topics other than this one, but this one takes the cake.
You have also presented the idea that there are very devoted Christians doing very important things, and certainly that IS true. However, you have NEVER taken into account what the Christianization of much of the US military means, and what it means that the likes of Erik Prince hide behind alleged Christianity when his business is murder. Or how about all the fundamentalists being Bush's base and championing war? Did you ever even read the Hedges' book?
I encourage you to expand your views. Anyone can sing along with the choir... I am obviously not trying to win any popularity contest here. I've been virtually massacred before in threads like this, but I am compelled to widen consciousness. And while there are many fine minds in this forum, the blind spots are spellbinding!
Only "One More Thought" thus far has shown the slightest sensitivity to the subject matter, or for the most part, responded to the article. The rest are mostly throwing fuel onto the fire, more reason to hate feminists, blame women, jerk off on killer porn, and wonder why the world is a twisted, savage place.
Sometimes I have to take a shower after spending an hour in this forum. From a holistic spiritual context, it IS that bad.
Siouxrose, we have different experiences and we see this issue differently.
I do believe that the powerful usually abuse the weak, regardless of the sexes involved, and I certainly oppose the militarization of US society, with or without the involvement of Christians, but I prefer to approach this issue differently here.
I had an "uh, oh" moment over three decades ago when I was just an undergraduate and took a course in the history of women's rights. I fully supported and do support women's rights, but I saw in the issue the opportunity for the elites, in our society the plutocrats, to split the common man from the common woman for once and for all, ending any chance of the common people ever coming together with enough solidarity and common values and perspectives to effectively oppose their enslavement.
I found it heartbreaking to recognize that human civilization did not have to evolve in such a manner as it has, a manner that has led us to this point of desperation. As it did evolve, it provided a period of a few millennia, as agricultural methods developed and small groups joined together into larger and larger groups, when aggressive bullies, particularly physically strong aggressive bullies, had a great advantage and pressed it in every way imaginable.* Though most men were victims, the simple fact that virtually all the women were victims had the potential to provide the basis for a movement that could separate women from men by creating among those women a hostility towards men, all men and not just those who had been abusive .
And though there is a tremendous reservoir of desire within the great majority of men to do whatever is necessary to ensure that their relations with women are harmonious and mutually beneficial, and a similar desire in the reverse direction, and these desires would normally be sufficient to restore the balance and achieve such harmony in relations between the sexes, predatory elites would not likely allow that to happen. Such elites would prefer to continue the predatory practices of past elites for millennia and also would probably recognize that the war between the sexes was useful in keeping the little people divided and weak,
This crack in the foundation of human society just continues to spread, particularly as predatory elites pound that foundation to worsen the crack. I do not see where it ends, and I am not optimistic.
* Bullies do make rules, laws, for their own benefit, though virtually every set of laws will include those primarily designed for the benefit of the elites along with those primarily designed for the good of the entire society (even the elites benefit when the entire society benefits, at the least there is more to steal, but more importantly a stronger society better resists collapse and destruction from internal or external causes) .
"...ending any chance of the common people ever coming together with enough solidarity and common values and perspectives to effectively oppose their enslavement."
You said it so much better than I did. I believe also that identity politics was a deliberate tactic to fragment the people and destroy any possibility of solidarity. A Universal Human Rights document as proposed by the UN would bypass a lot of that, so you don't have to invent a new document for every specific situation, whose effect would be to make a special case out of every identity group. So much screaming about unfair advantage and favouritism would be appeased.
Good point and agree.
In simpler terms: hate.
Empathy became an empty term when Clinton demonstrated how well he felt our pain. The one slightly honest thing Obama does is not pretend to share our pain. He's too busy profitting from the "jobless recovery".
Karen Armsrong defines empathy as a spiritual discipline which has to deliberately practiced. It's not the same as sympathy which is more like tribal identity. We are naturally sympathetic to those with a history, a moral universe like ours. "USA, USA" or "Go Steelers" is an example of this sympathetic tendency writ large on a national canvas. Such feeling can manifest in a positive, even selfless way when a solder risks his life, or even gives it up to rescue his wounded buddy but it can also show up in an ugly way which shows hostility toward anyone not in the tribe, with a different national, religious or ethnic identidy. Sympathy has limits, sympathy only express the raw sentiment, "We take care of our own."
Empathy on the other hand makes us uncomfortable and can put us ill at ease. It would be like me saying; " You know if I had grown up in Cleveland instead of Pittsburgh I would probably be a Browns fan. I should remember that when a Browns fan with his odious Orange and Black comes into my stomping grounds, Heinz Field, (as happens once a year,) and try to be civil with him." Yes, Sympathy can have its positive side. We celebrate it in the wonderful expression of shared purpose of our cheers, of generosity one member of the Steeler Nation will show to another at the giant tail gate party. But sympathy is a two edged sword. Sympathy has its dark side and also explains the inevitable fighting that breaks out in the stands when the Browns "nation" confronts the Steeler "nation" at a particularly tense moment in the game. Sometimes more than Sympathy is required. Sympathy, the most immediate human emotion does not extend itself to the Bengals quarterback when his leg is broken in an explosive tackle by one of our heros. "That's just one for our side, the "breaks" of the game." the Steeler fan callously thinks and soon the justification for the violence is added, "We've taken our licks now its their turn."
Sympathy does not provide us enough resources to be the best human we can be. It takes something more to say, "Well he may be a Bengal (Cincinnati) but it''s too bad that this happened to him." It takes a willingness to distance oneself from the immediacy of emotion we are feeling, to disengage for a moment our feeling of moral approval or disapproval, to even try to widen the circle of sympathy to someone who is at first impression not like us. That's such a stretch that it forces us out of our immediate welter of emotion and that's why Karen Armstrong calls empathy, not sympathy a spiritual disciple. For all its religiosity I don't think it's unfair to say that America is not a very spiritual nation and that it has not yet tried very hard to cultivate the spiritual discipline of empathy.
Karen Armstrong is wrong.
It's obvious her belief about empathy are based on religion. A religion which assumes that teh natural state on humans is one of evil, ie original sin, and that goodness comes from without, ie god or some other spiritual and supernatural source and must be learned.
It's a very nasty nasty belief to think that people are bad and must learn to be good. Very nasty indeed.
The reality is that people are naturally good . To be accepted evil acts are usually rationalised in a number of ways. For the greater good. The target of evil deserves it. The target isn't human. The target is dangerous. Etc etc
Well, maybe people aren't bad but they sure have some very self destructive ideas in their heads and they seem to be more easily roused by hatred and fear of the other than any notions of how we can make alliances with the stranger and work collectively to make the world a better place. To get to that better place requires compassion or empathy and that requires spiritual discipline. If it didn't, if our most natural and powerful inclination were to work together we'd be in heaven by now instead of on a dead end trip to the other place. I do agree that organized religion isn't much help. It is a leading cause of war, division and disrespect for anyone who does not share our beliefs. On that we can agree.
Morticia, IMO evil is a learned behavior. Who is most responsible for teaching that behavior? Religion.
Religion is the first experience a child is exposed to by his/her parents that teaches that there are good people (those who belong to the same denomination) and bad people (those who don't and are mistaken about Christ's love.)
Very small children, when allowed to play with one another become friends. I have yet to see that vary. Sure, their selfish need for survival play into the picture, but they will also share without being told to do so. They quickly resolve any "disagreements" and go on playing.
That said, where have we gone wrong? Maybe we as adults should learn from observing our children. They may not be as naive as we think?
Perhaps it is the fluidity of neural connections in children that allow this. The adult brain may revolt at altering its perception of the world to accpet the "other".
I know I an having a hard time deprogramming myself of empathy, sympathy and consideration in order to psychologically deal with the imbecile sociopaths I am surrounded with and it is causing me much psychological and physical stress trying to understand I will need to become as inhuman and stupid as them in order to survive amongst them until I can find the means to get back to my "own".
We do, despite the political incorrectness of stating it, exist on an evolutionary continuum and some of us are further along the social evolutionary ladder. But in the overall scheme of evolution, the most brutal, non-empathic tend to survive.
Because, while you're busy trying to reason with them and showing them your point of view, hoping to make them understand what their brains are simply not capable of, they're beating your skull in with a stick. While you're sharing your last fish, they are hording every fish they catch and eyeing yours and the stick in their hand.
Capitalism breeds sociopaths and they, having no conscience - but lots of greed, prevail. When you have no concern for the consequences of your actions, you do not tend to care about anyone but yourself. That lends a great evolutionary advantage.
Evolution does not care what humans, or any species, becomes, it's only concern is that the species exists.
My best friend was a Mormon, I was Lutheran--we swapped Sunday School stories--they were different, but we got along. Children believe strange things. I would have a hard time accepting an adult Mormon as a friend--adults shouldn't believe made-up stories.
People are naturally neither 'good' nor 'bad'. There is an inherited tendency to compassion (empathy), but it can easily be suppressed (eg. child soldiers). What is good in one society can be bad in another. I avoid terms such as "evil" because of their religious content.
Empathy got a beating in the 80's as a result of Thatcherism/Reaganism/Friedmanism. Remember all teh institutions that were emptied out and the sudden increase in the number of vagrants/homeless. There seems to be a paucity of it in countries where Anglo-American capitalism has a solid hold. Countries that have a stronger socialist influence, where families have a chance to thrive, have people with greater empathy. Obviously, capitalism is anti-empathic, destroys empathy, makes predators of every citizen. So, in the US, empathy has become a bad thing. Remember that everyone has been deliberately set against everyone else by the splintering effects of demographics, interest groups, fashion, style, tribalism, and other divisive trends. Then the security industry scared and still scares the hell out of everyone - no one trusts anyone anymore (something I noticed when I was travelling in the US during the 90's - the raw fear of a stranger asking for directions or simply saying hello). Blaming feminists for the lack of empthy and the decline of American society is nothing more than a cheap shot by pathetic ignorants. I think women were rather duped into thinking they had a better deal because that was exactly the time that whole neocon-capitalist train started rolling in earnest. Women were just the first cohort to swell the ranks of labour and so force everyone to underbid each other. Two incomes where once one sufficed, a bigger labour market so that wages could be driven down, etc. No, this lack of empathy was created deliberately - we all need to recognize when we passively go along or accept without thinking. We need to see ourselves in each other. That's the best antidote.
RED BALLOON: Excellent post (and Phineas, I can RELATE to your earlier post). I would add that the Reagan-Thatcher model also dovetailed with the rise of the make-war state, for after all, the enemy was at last (Russia) essentially gone! So the Mars rules model, which pumps up a macho version of masculininity that sees in COMBAT, the warrior ethos, its single most definitive expression, is also the model that must downplay empathy. For one thing, if a soldier feels for "other," he may not pull the trigger. Empathy and feelings are seen as aspects of the female, and it's amazing the degree to which they are disowned, to the point of all the violent portrayals of that distancing process as seen in porn and video games.
The increasing sexually grotesque props used to hold up this model are more than troubling.
In any case, I appreciate your points. At least a few "get it."
As Joseph Campbell pointed out, the world is ruled by Mars, Apollo, and Hermes. One of the foundation bocks of male bonding is contempt of the Feminine Principle - nature, women, empathy.
Today, as I was walking with my dog in a waterfall gorge, I fell into the river. On the shore were sitting a youngish couple. The woman held my dog for me as I struggled to my feet, offered to pull me up, engaged in conversation with me about how nice the cool water was. The man just remained seated, scowling a little, offering nothing but brief grunts to my remarks. Maybe he thought helping an old woman out of a river was women's work? I hope she's not married to him - what a lonely life that must be!
Following one statement with another is not a proof.
One of the foundation blocks of bigotry is labelling a whole group. In your case, men.
You must have a sad existence believing that men hate you.
Wow - you leave me breathless. Are you channelling Gollum? Obviously. And stop trotting out Philosophy 101 in your undergraduate remarks.
And BTW, I'm fine, thank you.
Go run that through your Plato-lite cruncher, Ayn 2.0
I remember the comment but not the source, unfortunately, sorry. It's been a long time since I read the material or listened to the tapes. One of the elements of Campbell's work I found interesting was the Jungian interpretation in which he found a common basis in hard-wired human psychology for the myths. He did cover non-European myths, though, finding parallels among them and European. You are correct that stopping at Rome or even Greece is only a partial study. I'm impatient with that tendency myself; I think it's political because we are inculcated with the idea that our culture is based on the Roman or Greek. I see that as a problem.
Have you read "The White Goddess" by Graves?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Goddess
Another series you may find interesting is Campbell's Historical Atlas of World Mythology; Vol. I, The Way of the Animal Powers (2 parts), and Vol. II, The Way of the Seeded Earth (3 parts). Lots of illustrations. He covers every culture on the planet.
Came across the goddess Vesta from before Romulus and Remus, The keeper of the hearth. The romans incorporated her as the "Vestal Virgins" and upped her responsibility to Ignis Inextinctus or keeper of the eternal flame. I think that's the very same flame used in the Olympics. We like our stories.
"Absolute power corrupts absolutely." That's what happens in Congress. We vote nice people in, they see all the money they can make selling out, the more money they make, the greedier they get and they become ugly.
I'd like to think I'm nice but if someone paid me enough money, how ugly would I become? Or would I just say , "NO". I can afford to revel in my sweet innocence because I'm WORTHLESS.
Perhaps empathy has to be learned, or takes an extra-human amount of cogntiion, thereby limited to a small %tile of humans, by nature.
The ostracized, who never feels connected to the natural group in which he belongs, can become empathic - though not necessarily. While the connected, who come to self-indentify with the group, gets stuck in the sympathy mode - only capable of feelings for the group to which he is attached, because he never esxperienced the situation of being separate or apart and to empathize risks his own ostracism.
Perhaps having sympathy only is some form of arrested social development.
so, Three Rivers is gone? I loved that name...so descriptive...
Heinz Field? Like, named after Senator John Kerry's in-laws? I am so mad at John Kerry, I will never be unmad...what a chiseling weasel...check out his investments...
still, at least ketchup is edible, and relevant, from a hotdog-vendor perspective...
we have Safeco Field...insurance...kiss my ass...