The recent attacks in Paris were a tragedy. The ongoing war in Syria is a tragedy. Every school shooting is a tragedy. We live in the age of tragedy. In response to these events, there is an outpouring of emotion, seen on the news and social media. Attempting to show support and solidarity for those harmed, we say we stand with the victims. “Nous sommes tous parisiens.” “Je suis Charlie.” Twitter and hashtags only make this easier, #ConcernedStudent1950, #InSolidarityWithMizzou.
But in an age when suffering is constant, a second type of response has cropped up. “Treat atrocities the same,” this call to action says. Recognize all suffering, not just the suffering covered by the mainstream media, not just the suffering endured by those who look like you. Displays of emotional support for Paris have been paired with calls to remember what happened in Beirut a day before or what happened in Turkey a month before. These calls ask us to remember that what we see as cataclysmic events are daily occurrences in the lives of people across the world.
Ideally, we would treat all tragedies the same; we would have the same emotional connection and response to human suffering no matter the context. But what if we just can’t? What if, as human beings, we are wired in a way that limits our ability to empathize with events and people separated from our own lives by geographical distance, culture, race, or anything else?
When I hear that Paris was attacked, there is a part of me that can connect directly to that news. I have been lucky enough to visit Paris, so hearing the city’s name allows me to conjure a mental image. I was not there during the attacks, nor have I watched video or news coverage of what happened in the aftermath. I can, however, imagine the scenes described in article after article. I can create a mental image of the streets of Paris, complete with people running out of a crowded theater. In this sense, it seems more real to me.
On the other hand, I have no conception of Syria. When I hear about the continuous atrocities committed there, I react. Human suffering is human suffering and it elicits an emotional response. But I’m not sure that it is the same as the response I have to Paris or, more directly, a school shooting. These I can immediately relate to. What if a gunman had entered my middle school? What if there was a shooting at Princeton? Simply because of my experiences, I have an inability to even begin to comprehend what it would be like to live in a warzone complete with drones filling my days with the hum of potential devastation.
Psychological studies show similar results. One MIT publication, “Us and Them: Intergroup Failures of Empathy,” posits that members of certain in-groups exhibit “empathetic resonance” when responding to witnessed, or perceived pain in members of their own group. The inside-outside lines can be drawn around explicit characteristics like race, but similar effects have been seen in children separated into arbitrary teams. The same idea, it seems, might be extended to geographic distance or culture. In contrast, upon seeing the pain of a person not in one’s in-group, “people may have powerful motivations not to care about or help that ‘other.’ In such cases, empathic responses are rare and fragile; it is easy to disrupt the chain from perception of suffering to motivation to alleviate the suffering to actual helping.” If I am given advice that I am not physically, psychologically, or emotionally disposed to accept and act on, that advice will wash over me. Or, at best, it might simply manifest in superficial displays like social media solidarity. This is a response – empathetic in the narrowest of senses – that seems devoid of a certain level of personal, emotional connection.
None of this is to say there is an absolute limit to our ability to empathize. In fact, just as empathy can lose potency as we associate with certain groups, empathy can be cultivated. This cultivation, however, must be an active process. It cannot be passively thrust upon others by way of a Facebook newsfeed. We do a good job of pleading for empathy, but could do better outlining how to help it grow.
There are various tools we can adopt to facilitate cultivation. These tools must be used, not in response to tragedy, but in spite of it. In the context of Princeton, the apparent hypocrisy in our responses seems to point, now more than ever, to the need for diversity in education. Diversity, that is, with the intent of integration and interaction, not just diversity for the sake of public image. Interaction with those from different backgrounds enables us to learn from the experiences of real people as well as gain perspective from different ideas. Through understanding, we can empathize. The philosopher Richard Rorty also extols the value of literature in promoting the awareness of human suffering. Novels like George Orwell’s 1984 give us a vivid image of what suffering entails. The act of reading, in a way, puts the reader into the story, allowing her to actively engage with the events that transpire, separate from physical, often alienating, differences.
Integration and engagement with literature are only two examples. They are, however, two examples that aim at the root cause of our moral queasiness about why responses to tragedies diverge. Instead of simply telling people to be more empathetic, we should be working towards a society that not only values empathy, but also acknowledges our own experiential limits. It is only by acknowledging these limits that we can give ourselves the tools to overcome them.