Creative empathy

One thing about a pandemic: It’s inclusive. We cannot survive it, move beyond it, by protecting merely some people. We have to protect everyone.

Of all the disruption, paradox and chaos that have been unleashed by the coronavirus, this is the most stunning: It has something to teach us that we could never learn on our own. My God, we are one planet – one people. This isn’t idealism; it’s the most pragmatic social organizing principle possible.

As Robert Reich pointed out regarding the American public health system: “. . .we have a private for-profit system for individuals lucky enough to afford it and a rickety social insurance system for people fortunate enough to have a full-time job.

Without collective health, we have humanity shattered by greed and paranoia, that is to say, social hemorrhage. “At their best, both systems respond to the needs of individuals rather than the needs of the public as a whole. In America, the word ‘public’ – as in public health, public education or public welfare – means a sum total of individual needs, not the common good.”

But health equals wholeness. Without collective health, we have humanity shattered by greed and paranoia, that is to say, social hemorrhage, or what Randall Amster called business as usual: “The simmering cauldron of political vitriol, reifications of otherness, escalating inequality, endless war, even more endless waste, and a rapidly warming world hasn’t exactly set us in good stead to weather the storm.”

But here we are – all of us – stuck in isolation, disconnected from our parents, our children, our grandchildren, one another, even as we value them more than ever. There’s no knowing how long this will last or what outcome awaits us. But if the best of who we are is able to prevail, we may find ourselves living through an extraordinary shift in human consciousness, a rewriting of our own mythology – as we come to understand that we manifest life-enhancing power with, not over, each other.

The word for this is love, a cynicism-producing word when linked to politics and social order. I use it cautiously, aware that its opposite is also alive and well, and that many (most?) people still believe that self-protection at some point means going to war . . . against a disease, against your neighbors.

USA Today, for instance, recently noted that in many parts of the country people are stocking up on guns and ammunition as well as toilet paper, reporting long lines outside gun stores and a big burst in online ammunition sales. Ammo.com, for instance, has experienced a 68 percent increase in sales between mid-February and early March, according to the paper.

And retailers are being forced to limit the amount of ammunition people can buy right now, USA Today reported, quoting one man who had recently purchased 250 rounds of ammo – the maximum allowed – at an indoor gun range in St. Louis.

While, unsurprisingly, there’s plenty of this kind of paranoia going around, our suddenly self-isolated world is also experiencing the opposite of this paranoia: something seemingly unique. I call it creative empathy.

Excerpted: 'Creative Empathy in a Pandemic'.

Courtesy: Commondreams.org