When the Cruelty Is the Point, What Is Left? Radical Empathy

We always knew that humans could be monsters. We knew about Nazi Germany. We knew about the European slave trade, and about Jim Crow and its ritual lynchings. We knew about Europe’s genocide of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, and about the cruelty of European colonialism in Africa, Asia, and across the world. We knew about the genocidal wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.

But we also knew about the other end of the spectrum: the people in Europe who hid escaping Jews in their attics. The abolitionists, the Underground Railroad. The nonviolent movement in India that freed millions from British colonization. The pacifists who went to prison in refusal to kill. The Suffragettes; the labor movement; the civil rights movement; South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement; the liberation movements in South America, Africa, and Asia; the Western anti-war movements that finally brought the horrific US-sponsored wars in Southeast Asia to an end.

Somehow, we (or perhaps I should just say I) saw these opposing forces as continuous struggles, continuous choices, continuous needs to resist, build alternatives, create community, connect. A flux with, more or less, equal chances of success if we just kept going. Somehow, we also held a common belief, especially following the traumas of World War II, that there were universal human values, that we as ‘humanity’ could name them and subscribe to them, and that they could protect us from the evils that haunted our world. This seemed to give us space to act for the good, the just, the value of the universality of human rights.

Today, I’m not so sure of that.

There is no time to waste, no neutral space "in the middle." Clearly, in our own innocence, we have not taken seriously enough the depraved power of greed and cruelty, nor understood how far evil has reached. They have grabbed it all… almost.

Like so many others, I am unable to ignore the news about the latest horrific war, launched by the US and Israel against Iran, also unable to ignore the Epstein files and the revelations of the systemic corruption, the evil—no other word for it—that is built into the structures of power that rule not only the US, but the entire "Western" world and all that it dominates, while pretending to represent "democracy" and "human rights."

And the direct connection of these forces to the most evil, or at least the most visibly evil, disaster of our current period: the ongoing genocide in Gaza. And the connection of that genocide with the global arms trade, the US-UK-EU-Israel weapons and surveillance deals. The establishment of concentration camps in Albania for refugees seeking safety in Europe, the cyber-technology that identifies desperate people at the EU border in Eastern Europe by the warmth of their bodies, and sics Frontex attack dogs on them.

"The cruelty is the point." I’ve read this so many times about Israel’s policies and practices toward Palestinians, so extreme in Gaza, only slightly less so in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Children shot in the head, chest, genitals—target practice for Israel Defense Forces soldiers. TikTok videos making fun of Palestinian mothers grieving for their murdered babies. Israeli soldiers blowing up hospitals, universities, schools, refugee camps, and then sharing this online as if they are party jokes. Even a so-called "humanitarian aid program," luring starving people with food, and then shooting them as they desperately scrounge for a pack of flour or rice.

"The cruelty is the point."

And now the back story is revealed: Epstein’s circle of powerful white men, linked to child trafficking, rape, torture of the most defenseless, the most innocent, the least resilient. Meanwhile, these men run the most powerful countries in the world, lead the international banking establishment, steal resources from the citizenry, protect each other, trade off deals, influence, and wealth: "the Epstein class," as it is now being called. Within this cabal of evildoers are the so-called "trans-humanists," wishing to leverage their power to give themselves eternal life—while meanwhile calling for the killing of "all the poor people."

Look at them.

Blank, empty eyes. Stiff bodies. Angry faces. Immature, not as innocent children, but as confused, grown-up boys who never learned the most important lessons, who think they’re powerful because they have a lot of money. People who have understood nothing of the essence of life, people who have probably never held a baby in their arms, never grown a garden or helped a neighbor, never walked through a forest in wonder. Rich kids with simple, underdeveloped spirits, lured by superficial values and massive monetary wealth, now imagining their own eternal longevity. Men coming from loveless backgrounds, who, in our societies dominated by competition, individualism, and greed, have come to own the Earth’s resources and rule our world. (Mostly white) men, compensating for their own moral voids with fantasies of unlimited power, fueled by cruelty.

It is easy to trace the origins of this evil: oppressive medieval Christianity, white European supremacy, patriarchy built on the violent domination of women, greed and vacuous cruelty. Domination through violence and fear of violence.

The cruelty is the point.

Well, guess what. There are other forces alive in today’s world. Decades of resistance to domination and colonialism, the learnings of movements across the Global South, the freedom that Western hegemony for a few decades inadvertently released on its majority population, and access through social media to some of the reality of the actual horrors perpetrated in our names have together led to a worldwide awakening to fundamental injustices, and a worldwide longing for a livable, connected, survivable future.

How to capture this reality, how to describe the alternative to the evil cruelty that so dominates the stories of our time?

Let’s consider the idea of Radical Empathy, which, I believe, is our only hope.

What is Radical Empathy? We know these two words but, together, what do they mean?

Empathy is the ability to feel what the other feels, not the "sympathy" of feeling sorry for someone, but the ability to identify with the feelings of the other, to engage with those feelings as one’s own. To connect with other people, with other living beings, to connect with the planet and all life on it. Perhaps we can describe empathy as a mix of compassion, identification, and solidarity.

And radical means going to the roots, going all the way to the source. Radical has often been interpreted simply as extreme, but that does not do the concept justice. Radical means rooted, grounded, solid, strong.

Combine these two, and see here a powerful concept to help us resist the cruelty and evil now dominating our airwaves, threatening the future of all human and other life on our beautiful planet, threatening the planet itself.

Radical Empathy must be fierce, stubborn, creative, persistent. We must hold on to each other, build community, be willing to take risks and accept consequences. Seek alternatives. Stand in solidarity with all who resist oppression and the violence of power and greed.

We must hold and nurture our sense of humor: not joke telling, but the ability to see oneself in perspective, gently; the ability to use our creativity and the power of the unexpected to flip the story, turn reality around and move it in another direction. We must have the courage to stand up to unjust power, take the risks, and accept the consequences.

And we artists must nurture artistic bravery, using the power of the arts to tell truth, to build community, to turn our capacity for Radical Empathy into a force for good.

There is no time to waste, no neutral space "in the middle." Clearly, in our own innocence, we have not taken seriously enough the depraved power of greed and cruelty, nor understood how far evil has reached. They have grabbed it all… almost.

What they do not yet control: our spirits, our creativity, our ability to defy cruelty, to invent and reinvent Radical Empathy. And, thank you life, they do not control the youth of our world, who increasingly stand bravely against the organized cruelty of today’s powerful.

There is no guarantee that Radical Empathy will prevail, that the powers of connection, compassion, and love will be able to carry us to a place of repair, redress, reconnection, rebuilding, for all who have suffered from the unlimited cruelty of our time. There is no guarantee that our children and our grandchildren will grow and thrive in a world of compassion and connection.

But even if we do not succeed to turn the global tide, we will still be living our best possible lives as changemakers, planting seeds of change, creating islands of survival.

I remember, reading Joanna Macy, her admonition to embrace your grief. Look straight at the horrors, acknowledge the dangers, the threats to our world, the destruction, the cruelty.

And then look beyond, choose, and move together.