When we lived in Cairo three years ago, we spent half of our time at a private k-12 school for expat children. It had a nice track and great playgrounds, and grass, and trees. My friends and I spent hours watching the kids play in the sand and negotiate the toddler rituals of sharing and being “soft and gentle.” One mother of European extraction always sprayed down the slides before her daughter (4, adopted from India) slid down them. We (I) thought she was hilarious. Here we are, in Egypt, where feral cats probably poop in the very sand the kids are eating, and you are disinfecting the slide that your kid’s bum touches?
I later learned that she was spraying Static Guard on the slides so the electric-friction wouldn’t disable her child’s hearing aid. Oops.
There was a couple in our church who had been married almost eight years and were childless. They were very well-off and both successful in their careers. Hmm. Too good to have kids, I guess. Of course, I later learned that she was struggling with infertility. Oops.
And my favorite story (though it’s probably the least true) is the one about the lady at the airport who buys a bag of cookies and sits next to a nice-looking young man, who, inexplicably, starts eating her cookies. She glares at him; he smiles and offers her one. They eat cookies in silence; the lady gets madder and madder. The young man breaks the final cookie in half so they can share it, and then he leaves. She later finds her unopened bag of cookies in her bag. Oops.
Or the fancy mom in her fancy SUV who bypasses the pick-up line at the elementary school for the handicap space, and then waltzes out with her clearly crippled child.
I looked up empathy at dictionary.com. I thought — nevermind, I won’t bore you with what I thought it meant. Here are two definitions (dictionary.com is awesome):
Empathy: Identifying oneself completely with an object or person, sometimes even to the point of responding physically, as when, watching a baseball player swing at a pitch, one feels one’s own muscles flex. (The American Heritage? New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition)
Empathy 2: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for empathy (Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary)
I like the first definition because it’s so evocative. How would it be if our hearts contracted in synch with the sufferer? The second definition strikes me because it says “without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.” Not only do we not have to experience what others experience in order to have empathy, but we don’t even need to have their motives explained to us. We don’t need to know the rest of the story.
But, boy, it sure does help.
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good post, Shannon. if we could all develop more empathy the world would be a better place. I have been thinking about this more, and reading a few articles – as to children developing empathy and how we can help them. probably the best way is to be good examples ourselves. guess this where i should give up my very occasional use of handicap spaces (our car does have the plates, for Aaron).
I used to get irritated at the lazy people who leave shopping carts in random places instead of walking a couple spaces over to the cart return or up to the store. That’s before I had a heavy infant car seat and one day parked so far from any good place to return the cart. I was still recovering from delivery and it was too much to go to the car, unload everything but the baby, go back to the store, then cary the heavy baby seat back. I wasn’t lazy, it was just not that easy. I gained some empathy that day for other things that are easy for a young single person. You never know what a person’s motives are. Now I park next to a cart return even if it’s a bad parking spot:)
I’m a big advocate for empathy myself, but I have to admit I have a hard time feeling it in certain situations. I can really empathize with the mom whose daughter has been kidnapped in Portugal, but I also wonder at her leaving three small children in a hotel room by themselves. When there’s an earthquake in India or Pakistan that kills thousands of people, I want very badly to empathize, but for some reason I can’t, maybe because I have a hard time relating to the people there. I feel pity for them, but not empathy, and it makes me feel terrible because I think I SHOULD feel terrible.
Tara–i still think pregnant women should get handicap placards.
Tiffany–that is so me. sorry! i don’t think i’ve taken a single cart back since i first had kids (well, since i came back to the u.s. where there are carts).
Marie–Nicholas Kristof (nytimes columnist) had an interesting piece recently called ?Save the Darfur Puppy.? As I?m sure you know, Darfur is a region of Sudan where a terrible genocide is ongoing.
Just a couple quotes from his (as-always-excellent) column on how we experience compassion fatigue, especially when large numbers of people are involved:
I think that, besides compassion ?fatigue? or irrationality of the objects of our empathy, we might also feel some hopelessness when faced with overwhelming tragedy. What can I do, after all, about those homeless Sudanese? It?s kind of like how absurd it was when people told you to clear your plate because there were starving kids in Ethiopia?as if an obese American population could help the Ethiopians who were saddled with a corrupt leader (among other problems).
Also, in the past, I would feel really guilty when I declined to donate a dollar (or 20) here and there to every worthy cause that I?m approached about, because I couldn?t afford to. A few years back, I realized I could probably stop feeling guilty because I?ve (and now my husband and i) always tithed 10% of my/our income. (the average American gives 2.2% of his after-tax income to charity).
Peter singer, a professor of bioethics, has a lot of interesting things to say about monetary empathy.
shannon
The truth is there is something you can do about homeless or hungry people in africa or anywhere else, and you can even help them overcome the poverty permanently. besides tithing our church has the humanitarian fund and the perpetual education fund. those are my favorite charities. one hundred percent of what you donate goes to help people. the church covers its own overhead and transportation costs. I love donating my left over dollar or two every moth to these causes, because when I hear of our church building wells or giving measeals vaccines in aftrica, or sending food there, I know I was a part of it. Hey if a millon church members give 1 dollar every month to this fund, that’s a million dollars per month the church can use for good. and the perpetual education fund is even better. it gives people an opportunity to get an education even in these corrupt countires and they can support themselves and their families and sent their kids to school as well. the effects of my two dollars per moth are limitless.
so don’t say you cant do anything about these problems. you can! pres hinckey has encouraged us to donate to these funds to help take care of all the poor, even in third world countries.
i love donating to our church’s legitimate charities. there is no money wasted and much good is done around the world.
sylwia
Thanks for this post, Shannon. I was going to write earlier today about how if we had true empathy we would stop driving more than one car and live in much smaller houses (yes, I know, especially me) and go without a lot of wants in order to help the starving, oppressed people around the world. We would definitely be doing more for others…
Sylwia, I think you’re right on. Every dollar helps, and I agree that giving it to our church is the best way for it to be distributed.
Sylwia,
i think your desires/motives here are good. you mentioned in an earlier comment that you guys receive government assistance to help support yourselves while in med school. how do you have “leftover” dollars to donate to africa? perhaps i can find satisfaction in knowing that some of my tax dollars have been donated to legitimate charities.
Marcy,
when it comes to monetary empathy (what might be considered “true” empathy because it actually requires a sacrifice on our part, a decrease in our standard of living) i think you are absolutely right about how we would act IF we felt it. the poverty i’ve seen in egypt and mexico would demand much more than I give. i do, however, at this point, feel like i can live with myself with my current balance between giving and spending on my family/myself.
My conscience is not settled. We went up the canyon last night with Grandma and Grandpa B. and Adam showed me the beautiful, huge houses up there. I was worried he was showing me because he wanted a house like that someday. But he said he’d be content anywhere–he was content in our last house. We’ve started giving a percentage of our income to our church (besides tithing) and feel good about that. Though I love my house right now, I think we’ll probably downsize after we sell it. Then we’ll have more to give and maybe my conscience will feel better.
This was a really insightful read, thank you for the reminder to not judge impulsively!
Hey Shannon, I totally understand what you were saying in your blog. Last night at our bake sale for young womens fundraiser, I totally thought the Johnson Family blew us off…it wasn’t until I got home and read that poor Lucy had strep throat that I felt bad for thinking that you didn’t want to come! Who wouldn’t want to be at a bake sale…right? Anyway, only like 2 young women and a handful of people showed, but sorry about Lucy, poor kid.
That is one of the very things that drew me to the Mormon church in the first place. I was raised pentacostal, and every single church my family ever attended ended up with the pastor running away with the money / land / whatever church property he had conveniently managed to put in his name. When I found out how the Mormon church manages money, I was very impressed, and felt that such is the way God would truly intend. In the churches I grew up in, if I put a dollar in the offering plate I had no way of knowing whether it would be used to help missionaries in Africa, put a new roof on the church, help a fellow congregant with their electric bill, or buy the minister’s wife a new set of hair extensions. When I tithed at the Mormon church, I knew exactly where it was going, and I had more faith and respect for church leaders who were there for their faith and not for their paycheck.
shannon
my husband has a military stipend of 1300 dollars per month. We pay tithing and 850 for rent. for a family of six that puts us under the poverty level, so we get 600 per month in food stamps and free medicaid. In addtion to that, if we are still short, we take our student loans which do not count as income, since they are loans and will have to be paid back. It’s probably not your tax dollars that buy our food or medicaid because that’s state run welfare and you don’t live in Iowa. you do however probably contirbute to our stipend because we’re in the military and everything military people get is from your taxes.
almost everyone in america has “leftover dollars”. even the poorest people I know have DVD collections, and if that’s not a waste of money I don’t know what is. I choose to spent my discretionary money on the poor and not on DVDs. you have that choice too, no matter how “poor” you might think you are. also I mostly shop at garage sales. i don’t like any accesories, so i don’t spent money on purses, jewlery, shoes, ect. money is better spent in by our church in africa or other places around the world where people are truly poor.
sylwia
marcy
i’m really impressed with your and your husband’s choices. not many people would give up that bigger house or give a big chunck of their money for the poor in addtion to tithing. in the end, however, that is all that will matter. that’s how the sheep are seperated from the goats.
it’s nice to see that there are others who think that the poor are more importatnt that our wants. we are told that we are supposed to seek riches to help the poor. way to go marcy!
sylwia
Sylwia,
i think that you and Joshua are, and will ever-increasingly be, wonderfully contributing members of society, and i think you’re great parents too.
i see two responsibilities here: the responsibility to be self-sufficient and the responsibility to care for others. for me, i find it hard to focus on caring for others before i have sufficiently cared for myself and my family. maybe i am morally/ethically mistaken in this. but that is my understanding, and that is why my priorities are as they are.
i love the stories of the Mormon pioneers. here are a couple quotes from Brigham Young in 1856 regarding the saints’ obligation to the Willie and Martin handcart companies:
obviously, we do have an obligation to give to those with less, and there are many millions of people who fall into this category, as you say, regardless of how poor i may sometimes feel. but, if i feel it necessary to strive for self-sufficiency first, will that condemn me in the end?
Marcy–your discussion with Adam is interesting. i am usually frustrated with tom bec. he says “i don’t ever want a big house,” and what he considers to be big is like 1500 sq feet and a 1 car garage. wouldn’t that be extravagant? i need some storage space, dang it! if only to save the hand-me-down clothes for the next kid.
thanks, Gladis–i like how you say to not judge “impulsively.” i think we do need to make judgements about things, situations, and even people, when we are considering what to expose our children (and ourselves) to.
Danielle–this is funny because i was kind of miffed at you yesterday bec. you didn’t respond to the email i sent late wednesday (?). anyway, sorry about the bake sale. did you freeze any amazing confections? (maybe i can buy something late?) lucy is feeling better, so we’ll be at church, and hopefully we can talk there! i hope you’re feeling better from your cold.
I think there is a problem with the statement that you made:”i find it hard to focus on caring for others before i have sufficiently cared for myself and my family”
the problem with this statement is the word “sufficiently” . does that mean food, house and clothing? does that mean dvds a tv and digital camera? if we just keep waiting till we have sufficient for our needs and wants it may be everlastingly too late to care for the poor. but it is a commandment to care for the poor always in order to retain a remission of our sins.
Progress and repentance and becoming better everyday is not sufficent to enter the kingdom of God. taking of the poor is required. or our sins dont stay in remission. at least that’s what the book of mormon says.
of course even the poorest person in the world can fast once a month and give the eqivalent of his meal to the bishop. fasting does not make us poorer in any way. everyone can contribute to that.
another way to contribute is walking down the isle at walmart or kohl’s or wherever you shop. and when you see that adorable article of clothing that you want so much for your little girl, you don’t buy it. instead you look at the price tag and give that amount to the humanitarain fund or the perpetual education fund on Sunday.
i think life is too short until we have “sufficient” for our wants and needs. there are way too many wants and needs in america. it’s best to always be in a habit of helping the poor. whether it’s with 1 dollar or with 1000.
sylwia
Sorry Shannon, I left you a message instead of responding to your e-mail!! I should have remembered that you rarely check your messages!! Next time I will do both. Anyway, nothing is left from the bake sale, we made sure to get rid of everything even if it was for $2.
Sylwia,
when I said, “i find it hard to focus on caring for others before i have sufficiently cared for myself and my family,” “sufficiently” referred to it being me/my husband who pays for our needs.
or, to re-state the responsibilities i wrote about earlier: we have a responsibility to feed 1) ourselves, 2) our kids, 3) our extended families, 4) those in our church, 5) our communities, 6) our nation, and 7) our world. i believe our responsibility runs in that order. If we have trouble with these responsibilities (I’m sure at many points in my life I have needed and will need help fulfilling these), then we also have recourse on other people in the same order.
“sufficiently” refers to the principle of self-sufficiency, which our church teaches as well as caring for the poor. i won’t bore you with the details of our budget; all i need to say on that is that i feel comfortable in my heart with how i spend my family’s money. i hope that at some point we have more, so that we can 1) have a higher standard of living than we do now (including moving out of a dangerous neighborhood), and 2) give more to the poor.
“sufficiently” means that we don’t take money with one hand and with the other hand donate excess to charity and then pat ourselves on the back with both hands all the way home because we are so righteous and so generous.
the first is not wrong, and the second is certainly worthy, but the third is a little hard to take.
Shannon
Let me get this straight. Even though my husband works hard for the money he makes – we should never spend any of it frivolously on ourselves or our children? We should never buy new clothes that are not strictly needed, treat ourselves to dinner-out for date night, or save for a bigger house, or new items for our current house? And Shannon shouldn’t worry about trying to get out of her current crime-infested neighborhood, since it does provide the necessary shelter? Or pay off their student loans, or car loans, or credit card loans? I think everyone has different ideas about their own standard of living and we cannot judge others for what they choose to spend their money on. I agree that the Church provides the best charities to give extra money too, but if I give to the temple fund and missionary fund, am I condemned for not helping the poor? The Lord gives us all we have and all He asks for specifically is our tithing. After that we are expected to be wise with our money, including surplus funds. I pay my tithing, give a generous fast offering, am working to pay off any debt, saving for my family’s future, and don’t feel guilty about the occasional fun purchase – even a cute outfit for my kid at Walmart. I do think we need to care for the poor – that’s why I pay a generous fast offering, much more than the cost of 1 day’s meals. And I know that money will go to help the needy in my own ward even – before the starving in Africa. Charity and caring for the poor starts with family, extended family, and wards and friends – before moving to the millions of needy around the world. I know that the church is doing their part for that with my tithing money.
When I taught at the American Univ. in Cairo, one interesting assignment I gave to students (who were all rich Egyptians) was to respond to Peter Singer’s ethical analogy about a train wreck. In short, Singer says a train is on course toward a switch. One split of the track leads to a new sports car, the other to a child. You are at the switch and can direct the train down either track. Which do you choose?
Singer says whenever we spend money on luxury, we choose to save the sports car rather than the child. As a result, we’re all irresponsible murderers out of neglect. I don’t think I ever had a student argue in favor of Singer’s moral argument, but rebuttals are hard to make. Here’s Singer’s argument if you want to read it.
The best argument against Singer that I read was a student who objected to the assumption that he had a responsibility to help others. That implicit responsibility usually rests on moral/religious grounds, which become subjective and only true for specific communities who subscribe to that morality.
Because the implicit responsibility rests on moral grounds, we can look to the source of our morality for direction. No prophet has ever indicated that we should live spartan lives of poverty to save suffering people in remote lands. We give what we’ve been asked to give, and should feel good about that. To believe Singer’s morality is to go in a new moral direction. (Singer does actually practice what he preaches, but only to some extent — he gives away a good chunk of his Yale salary, but I doubt he’s living in a trailer and biking to work.)
Great post, Tom.
dear shannon and tara
I am sorry that my comments have upset you. They were not directed at you personally, but at the topic on empathy. when I used the term “you” I did not mean you; it was a generic pronoun.
obviously it is up to you what you spent your money on. it is none of my busineess. it is your stewardship and not mine. I was trying to make a point that there are things we can do to help the hungry in ethiopia. It is just another way to give if you feel so inspired. you may feel inspired to give in other ways or to other causes.
i was trying to make the point that none of us are too poor to give something, and i used myself as an example.
i have bought cute clothes for my kids at walmart before and I probably will in the future, but I have also walked away from my urges to buy stuff and therefore I had some extra money for other things.
it is very easy to get caught up in worldly things instead of thinking of ways to give. that was my main point. im sorry if it has led to an argument. that was not my intention.
sylwia
Personally I don’t think empathy has much to do with money. This is coming from someone with no money, who had to borrow money from her parents to pay this month’s bills. Empathy and charity are not the same thing. Personally I think a lot of people use charity as a cop-out. They feel bad about something but are afraid to touch it themselves, so they drop a dollar in a bucket and feel gratified. That’s not empathy (not saying those are the motives of anyone on here, I’ve never met most of you, I’m speaking generally).
I think there are better ways, more proactive ways of helping others. When I was single, I used to go to Catholic Charities every Friday morning to make sandwiches, which were made of bread and such donated by local grocery stores. There was a period of time that I helped a friend run her TCBY store, she had to fire her entire staff so I helped out for a couple weeks. There were a lot of homeless people in the area, so as I was getting set up each morning I invited them in and gave them free coffee (with my friend’s blessing) and let them read the communal newspapers I had picked up. Those acts were kind, but they had nothing to do with empathy. They had to do with kindness and generosity, and a percentage of “there, but for the grace of God, go I.”
Empathy isn’t an action, it’s a feeling or emotion. Is handing someone a dollar the best way to help them improve their life? Personally, I could REALLY use a dollar right now, and would be very grateful to anyone that handed one to me. It would buy me a case of Top Ramen, or maybe a cabbage or something, and I could feed my family abit more easily than I’m otherwise able to. But it’s just going to come out the other end tomorrow, if you know what I mean. What would help me would be an opportunity, a door opening to new possibilities. The whole “teach a man to fish” thing.
True, it can take money to create an opportunity. But it also takes effort and creativity. Money can be a part of it, but only a part IMO.
This one is a tough one for me – empathy is a combination of charity, patience, and self-control and it is so much easier to just judge rashly and feel good about myself.
My example is the Gospel Doctrine teacher in our ward that I have to keep covering for because he can’t get to church in time (8 AM for us). I found out Sunday morning that the reason he has been late is that he works the night shift on Saturday as a Phoenix police officer. When he’s late it’s because he was at a crime scene (triple murder this last Sunday morning) and has to write up a report and document everything. I told him on Sunday at the end of my lesson that I’m grateful to him and would rather teach a lesson on short notice and let him catch the bad guys.
I’ll be sure to have more empathy from now on