for Empathy

Where is our compassion?

Never have we been more alone.

It’s the height of irony, since most of us are surrounded, virtually every waking moment of every day. Modern technology has allowed us to become connected to each other in ways that would have seemed like something from a science fiction novel only a generation ago. The internet, e-mail, smartphones, social media… the familiar list goes on and on.

Thanks to these miraculous inventions and advances, we now have virtually unlimited information at our fingertips. We can learn about virtually anything. We can reach out to virtually anyone. We can go virtually anywhere.

Thanks to these things, we really should be in the midst of a period of great social, intellectual and cultural development. A second Golden Age. A new Enlightenment. We should be on our way to the stars.

And yet, it’s not happening.

Anyone can see we’re nowhere close to achieving the incredible potential that science and ingenuity have unlocked for us in recent years. All one needs do is take a good look around. Instead of harnessing all of the truly valuable information available to us, we choke on meaningless data and empty chatter. Instead of connecting to each other in truly meaningful ways, our social existences are denatured and reduced to a grotesque tally of followers, ‘likes’ and emojis. Instead of allowing our thoughts and intellectual pursuits to take wing and carry us to faraway places and fantastical ideas, we lay on our sofas and beds, motionless and impotent.

We have come to let social media influencers, mainstream media commentators, massive corporations and fringe elements of society tell us how and what to think and feel. We have come to let them all define us - and then redefine us, whenever and as often as they please - in their own images, to suit their own interests. We have come to let them put us in smaller and smaller boxes. We have come to accept living in those boxes, waiting for the next person or thing or movement or trend to come along and tell us what and how to think and feel next.

And so, hypnotized by our captors, we have turned inward. Little by little, bit by bit, we have forgotten about everyone else in our worlds. Alone in our tiny boxes, we’ve forgotten about their thoughts and feelings. We’ve forgotten that they may have different points of view, that they are free to make different choices and have different priorities in their lives than us, and that they, like us, are free to live their lives as they see fit. We have lost the ability to look outward, to think about others, to feel what they feel, to imagine what it must be like to be them, to live in their world, to see with their eyes.

In short, we’ve forgotten what it means to have empathy.

The result is that we are surrounded. And we are alone.

Is this really what we want?