{"id":18612,"date":"2017-02-16T09:57:39","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T14:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=18612"},"modified":"2017-02-16T15:10:34","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T20:10:34","slug":"empathy-and-the-dog-allusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/empathy-and-the-dog-allusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Empathy and The Dog Allusion"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Coming<\/a>Empathy, writes Martin Rowson, is one of the things that make us human, make us civilized, allows us to interact without tearing one another’s throats out.<\/strong> Without it, we’d have no civilization; we’d be like the beasts of the fields. And we’d have no dogs or gods, either. Empathy is what makes us own pets and be religious.<\/p>\n

That’s one of the thought-provoking ideas Rowson tosses around in his book, The Dog Allusion<\/em> (Vintage Books, London, 2008). The title, as I’m sure you are aware, is a pun on Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Rowson has a lot to say about religion – and not much of it flattering, but generally he’s not as acerbic as Dawkins or Hitchens. Religion, however central to his arguments, is not the book’s sole focus. It isn’t a comprehensive screed against religion or even a paen to atheism; rather it’s a series of essays on various topics into which religion often is cast. The book hasn’t received a lot of attention or garnered many reviews from what I can find, but that may be because most of his readers are likely already on his side of the philosophical fence. It may also be that he meanders. A lot. Still, he offers up a good set of arguments worth pondering, even for the converted.<\/p>\n

I am not here to wade into his comments on religion quite yet, however, but rather to comment on his notions about empathy – about which I agree, at least somewhat. I have often felt that the single most important attribute in a politician is empathy. Without it, the political road leads to all sorts of tyrannies and egocentric self-entitlement. Without empathy, politicians raise taxes, utility rates, user fees without consideration of their actual impact. Just like they do here in Collingwood.<\/p>\n

Having dealt with numerous politicians in my day (and been among their ranks, municipally, for more than a decade), I sometimes think having intelligence would be a better place to start listing desirable attributes. After all, the first thing every politician should have is the wit to understand the consequences of their actions. Yet so many don’t have it. SO many act as if they were the centre of the universe and their actions have no impact on others. But let’s not talk about The Block right now. That’s just depressing. Let’s talk in general terms, first.<\/p>\n

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Steven Taylor, in Psychology Today,<\/a> wrote this somewhat flowery description of empathy:<\/p>\n

Empathy is the ability to \u2018feel with’ another person, to identity with them and sense what they’re experiencing. It’s sometimes seen as the ability to \u2018read’ other people’s emotions, or the ability to imagine what they’re feeling, by \u2018putting yourself in their shoes.’ In other words, empathy is seen as a cognitive ability, along the same lines as the ability to imagine future scenarios or to solve problems based on previous experience. But in my view, empathy is more than this. It’s the ability to make a psychic and emotional connection with another person, to actually enter into their mind-space. When we experience real empathy or compassion, in a sense our identity actually merges with another person’s. Your \u2018self-boundary’ melts away; the separateness between you and the other person fades.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, the minute anyone goes on about “psychic” anything my skeptic’s hat gets pulled down over my eyes and ears… no matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you clutch your magic crystals, you CANNOT enter anyone’s mind-space. You’re not a Vulcan from Star Trek, able to mind-meld. At best you can imagine<\/em> their mind space. But that imagination matters because in animals it’s a rare, perhaps even uniquely human, talent.<\/p>\n

As Rowson himself wrote (an excerpt from the book) in a post for the New Humanist<\/a> in 2008,<\/p>\n

As an innate, hard-wired evolutionary survival tool, empathy allows human beings to project their own individual consciousness in all directions, which we do constantly and incontinently because we can\u2019t do anything else. It allows us to love other human beings, and to hate them, but more importantly to imagine what it\u2019s like for them to be loved or hated, and what it\u2019s like for them to love or hate us. From our capacity to imagine what it\u2019s like to be someone else also spring pity, compassion, generosity, envy, jealousy, covetousness, revenge, hope and remorse. I\u2019d suggest it\u2019s also what moulds the intensity of almost all of our other human emotions.
\nIt also made it possible for us to view the world around us, project ourselves into it and beyond the horizon and then report back so we can reflect on the position and condition we find ourselves in and act accordingly. This isn\u2019t either a spiritual or a physical extension of ourselves beyond ourselves, but the result of our capacity for imagination; it\u2019s not anything \u201cparanormal\u201d like thought-transference or telepathy, although that\u2019s what it actually is, but it is innate and of ourselves. Just like the Bishop of Southwark, it\u2019s what we do, because we\u2019re human.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Empathy IS imagination, inextricably linked to it. It’s the ability to imagine yourself in another’s situation, another’s conditions, another’s space and life. It’s the ability to extend your consciousness outside the little box of your head and put it into what you imagine is another’s self-box. Projecting your consciousness doesn’t mean it floats around in a bubble, detached from your body in some New Age transit system.<\/p>\n

Empathy is what keeps our instinct for self-preservation from being mere selfishness. It’s not some mystical, supernatural or psychic ability. It’s a trait you develop – through reading, through socializing with others, through watching film and TV, through culture, interaction and education. There’s only so much genetic empathy that arises as instinct inside us. A fully developed sense of it is something you have to work at, you have to practice and learn to use.<\/p>\n

Empathy, like language, like walking upright, is a genetic caterpillar that needs to be nurtured, nourished and trained to turn into a mature butterfly within each of us. Seeing through another’s eyes – or at least imagining you’re seeing through their eyes – requires both good upbringing and consistent practice to make it a functional skill in us, to make it a meaningful attribute in our personalities.<\/p>\n

Literature helps us with that: it’s a codified, form of empathy drawn from our instinctual need for storytelling (a trait also hardwired in our brains). Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, Chapter 1 (Economy)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! \u2014 I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thoreau knew that reading gives us insight into the lives of others, thus strengthening our capacity for empathy.*<\/span><\/p>\n

What happens when you have no empathy and you’re in a position of power or authority? You get an autocracy – or kleptocracy – in which the goals of self-entitlement, self-enrichment overshadow any concern for the greater good. Self uber alles. We can see that right now in the Trump administration, in the Republicans in the US Senate and Congress. We saw it in our own Prime Minister, Steven Harper, and we see it in his proteg\u00e9s running for party leadership (Kellie Leitch and Kevin O’Leary come to mind). We see it in The Block on Collingwood Council. What do they all have in common? Little to no concern for anyone but themselves, for no welfare but their own. A desiccated empathy.<\/p>\n

But lack of empathy isn’t unique to conservatives: the Liberal Wynne government in Ontario exhibits the same disregard for the public welfare and wellbeing as the Harperite one did. However, in general, parties on the right are more self-involved, self-interested, self-enriching and self-directed than any of those on the left. They lack empathy more than their leftist rivals (not that the Democrats are particularly left in anything but the alt-right’s spewing propaganda. They’re really right-centrist, at least in comparison with actual leftist parties). Perhaps the real difference between the right and left sides of the political spectrum, once ideology is peeled away, is simply in the degree in which they care about others. How much empathy they have.<\/p>\n

Without empathy, a person is a sociopath<\/a>, described in Interview Magazine<\/a> as “…those creatures who, through their grand schemes of contrivance, manipulation, and deceit, seek to undermine the very fabric of it all because, well, they can.” Does that sound like anyone you know? Someone on our local council, perhaps? Or several someones? As WebMD notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A sociopath typically has a conscience, but it\u2019s weak. He may know that taking your money is wrong, and he might feel some guilt or remorse, but that won\u2019t stop his behavior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Psychology Today<\/a> adds the following attributes (among others) to the definition of sociopath:<\/p>\n