Empathy in an Era of Inequality

I’ve been thinking about empathy a great deal these past months. Perhaps it’s an unexpected consequence of social distancing and self-isolation which provides greater opportunity for the extravagance of free-floating ideas and uncircumscribed introspection.

So, I was captivated by an essay a good friend and college classmate, David Stringer, recently wrote in his weekly blog entitled “Basic Emotions.” He had read somewhere that all human beings share six basic emotions: happiness, fear, anger, sadness, disgust and surprise.

After offering his personal list of his own basic emotions Stringer challenged his readers to do the same, to formulate their own personal “Basic Emotions” list.

In contemplating my list, I was surprised that since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic I am more fully aware of the unexpected power, pervasiveness and constancy of “empathy” as a driving force for me. Empathy had always been part of my emotional constitution especially when dealing with the life cycle events of congregants and others. But now empathy washes over me and moves me in previously unfamiliar ways.

When I wrote to Stringer that “empathy” had recently become one of the most motivating of my emotions he replied “Isn’t ‘empathy’ experiencing someone else’s emotions?”

His rejoinder prompted an unexpected revelation for me which became the content of my response. “I think not,” I wrote. “Empathy for me is responding to someone’s life situation or predicament without knowing their emotional state. I can imagine, but not know until I talk to a person, the emotions of someone living in the City Housing Projects of New York City, especially at this time. But I don’t need to talk to them to empathize with their life situation, living as they do in a densely populated building with little space to protect themselves by social distancing in the elevators, hallways or staircases of their building. And if they’re out of work I can empathize with the unemployed without knowing their emotional state because I know that buying food for themselves or their children will be a hardship.”

I came to realize that, for me, COVID-19 has powerfully portrayed the inequities in our society. Previously, I had a knowledge and intellectual understanding of economic inequality in our country, but this pandemic has magnified and focused the harsh implications of the economic and other inequalities in our nation. We cannot be blind to the high death rate in black and other minority communities and in the densest neighborhoods in our cities. We cannot overlook the, sometimes, abhorrent condition of hospitals in the poor areas of our country or the dismal lack of basic technology in the schools and homes of the working poor — making home-schooling impossible.

I realize that empathy is limited at best, empty all too often, unless we know people from their real day-to-day experiences. Through a friend, I met a young boy from a family who does not know where they will live from month to month. This child sobs at the thought of living in a shelter. He can think of nothing else when the subject arises. Being with him, helping with real offers is an expression of empathy.

I feel an abiding empathy for the citizens of our country living in conditions which deprive them of basic rights and opportunities many of us take for granted. Inequality is no longer an intellectual construct for me. My hope is that, as we restart our nation in the months ahead, our collective “empathy” will drive us to eradicate the inherent inequalities in our society as we do more, and better, for the well-being of our country.