Empathy, in my view, is the most human trait. It is probably a form of emotional and cognitive intelligence that is not found in other species to the same extent as us. That we can feel the pain and suffering of another person without going through the same journey as them is marvelous. And I marvel at it each time, I see one of us feel for another individual.
What I have come to observe though is that we feel and show our empathy differently depending on who we are relating to. This, of course, makes sense. I would feel strongly if one of my family members is in pain compared to a distant relative or even a stranger. I like to think of this as the Radius of Empathy. Each of us has a different capability and capacity to feel empathy, and with a small or large radius.
How far can this radius of empathy span? Can it truly include all of humanity? What would it take for us to not be disconnected from the miseries of war or poverty in another part of the globe?
Let us start small. When can we extend our empathy beyond our families and our loved ones? When can the radius of empathy include the society an individual is part of?
This, I hypothesise, is not solely dependent on personal capacity but also depends on the society an individual has been nurtured in. In (relatively) more equal societies, like the Nordics, the radius of empathy is generally larger. There are many reasons for this–smaller communities, shared history, harsh environments. Most importantly equal societies make it easier to relate to people we may not know personally because the shared experiences are similar. Equality makes it easier to imagine the plight of a neighbour next door or even at the far end of the country.
On the other hand, take a country like India. It is the largest country on the planet, which is also one of the most unequal societies in the world. This invariably makes it harder for an urban engineer working for a multi-national company to relate to the plights of a daily wage worker who emigrated from a far off rural corner of the country to a harsh and unwelcoming city. I am unsure if this is due to the lack of imagination about another person’s plight or not.
I sometimes struggle to imagine myself in a situation that is extreme; when they are painful and/or uncomfortable. It is perhaps a coping mechanism that is trying to protect me from difficult thoughts or extreme imagined experiences. I am sure others also have similar limits. But the extent of what can be imagined may be different.
This, I think, is related to how the radius of empathy manifests in us. If I cannot imagine, I cannot relate, and I cannot empathise.
This post is not a justification for why we can continue to be unaffected by the miseries of others. But it started as a genuine inquiry into the psyche of people who do not feel the same as I do about a particular issue. For example, the ongoing wars. And I have also been introspective in trying to see why I cannot entirely understand and empathise with some issues. I feel it at the macro-levels but not with the nuance the person’s affected feel. Could it be because my radius of empathy is limited, because I cannot imagine everything they go through?
How do we then increase this radius?
Educating oneself is the only way. And what works best (for me) is to read. Reading the journeys of others and immersing in their words has a great effect in sensitising our imagination.
For the longest time, I thought fiction reading was not for me. But with the right characters, fiction can help us put ourselves in the proverbial shoes of others, and this imagination can help us build our empathy. Even then, reading personal journeys (non-fiction) are some of the best resources to educate oneself about the circumstances of others. Images and movies can be impactful, but they can also overdo it and saturate or distance people from others. Reading, on the other hand, allows us to integrate ourselves into the lives and experiences of others to the extent we can handle.
In any case, my answer to the question “What We Owe to Each Other” is empathy.
PS: The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara is a moving book, and it moved my radius of empathy many folds larger. I wrote about this raw experience in 2011.