empathic power and politics
Salon, as part of a series in which notable women share their wisdom, ran a piece by Anne Lamott, a favorite writer of mine, favorite partially because she doesn't hide her demons — the very subject that she hits on in the piece.
The whole thing is really about forgiveness. It's wonderful, but there's one phrase she uses that works like a bell tied to a preacher's wrist whose sound completely overtakes the sermon. Doesn't drown out the message — it's just than no one's going to really pay attention to it.
Almost no one: her close audience is made up of people who share most of her political views and they won't even hear the bell. They'll just hear a penetrating sermon on forgiveness, with real wisdom and insight. Others will hear a very marred piece; others will only hear what they perceive as a gratuitous and unnecessary political potshot that undoes the piece.
I don't think she intended it as a potshot. The "as told to" nature of this series means she was speaking extemporaneously or nearly so, and probably we just have an example of her ideology leaking out. Naturally, the editors put it in the headline.
That leak, and the thought process it revealed (that Tea Party people are the most hateful on earth), and the reaction it's gotten, from liberals and conservatives and centrists, got me to thinking about empathy. Not sympathy, the ability to see a person's problems, but empathy, the ability to share for a moment a person's point of view and feelings. When you do that, you can begin to see that there can be another point of view, another way to feel about whatever's going on.
The ability to imagine a different set of conclusions from the evidence the world gives you turns out to be one of the keys to life — and we're all guilty of inability in that area to various degrees.
Liberals often can't imagine why you'd ever want to restrict the rights of women and take away the measures that have helped minorities and make laws that burden the poor unless you are simply hateful and bigoted and repressive.
That leaves them unable to understand someone who wants to protect fetuses and have a meritocratic level playing ground and let the free market reign.
Meanwhile, conservatives often can't imagine why you'd ever want to snuff out the lives of the unborn and give minority students better grades than they deserve and restrict the trade that brings prosperity to all, unless you are simply hateful and repressive and don't care for human life.
That leaves them unable to understand someone who wants to lessen the instance of abortion by measure rather than fiat and give some people the academic and professional tailwind that others have always had and put reasonable harnesses on forces that tend to destroy if unharnessed.
When people have such different reverences, they begin accusing each other of opposite blasphemies, and then very little dialogue can actually take place at all.
One giant step we could take would be to make it so that, politically, we need each other a bit more: the scourge of gerrymandering, in which people from both parties have spent generations carving us up into like-minded districts where primaries and their purity tests matter more than actual elections, is a massive contributor to this talking-past-each-other effect, and, if reversed, could contribute greatly to a healing process in the way we try to appeal to and persuade each other.
The whole thing is really about forgiveness. It's wonderful, but there's one phrase she uses that works like a bell tied to a preacher's wrist whose sound completely overtakes the sermon. Doesn't drown out the message — it's just than no one's going to really pay attention to it.
Almost no one: her close audience is made up of people who share most of her political views and they won't even hear the bell. They'll just hear a penetrating sermon on forgiveness, with real wisdom and insight. Others will hear a very marred piece; others will only hear what they perceive as a gratuitous and unnecessary political potshot that undoes the piece.
I don't think she intended it as a potshot. The "as told to" nature of this series means she was speaking extemporaneously or nearly so, and probably we just have an example of her ideology leaking out. Naturally, the editors put it in the headline.
That leak, and the thought process it revealed (that Tea Party people are the most hateful on earth), and the reaction it's gotten, from liberals and conservatives and centrists, got me to thinking about empathy. Not sympathy, the ability to see a person's problems, but empathy, the ability to share for a moment a person's point of view and feelings. When you do that, you can begin to see that there can be another point of view, another way to feel about whatever's going on.
The ability to imagine a different set of conclusions from the evidence the world gives you turns out to be one of the keys to life — and we're all guilty of inability in that area to various degrees.
Liberals often can't imagine why you'd ever want to restrict the rights of women and take away the measures that have helped minorities and make laws that burden the poor unless you are simply hateful and bigoted and repressive.
That leaves them unable to understand someone who wants to protect fetuses and have a meritocratic level playing ground and let the free market reign.
Meanwhile, conservatives often can't imagine why you'd ever want to snuff out the lives of the unborn and give minority students better grades than they deserve and restrict the trade that brings prosperity to all, unless you are simply hateful and repressive and don't care for human life.
That leaves them unable to understand someone who wants to lessen the instance of abortion by measure rather than fiat and give some people the academic and professional tailwind that others have always had and put reasonable harnesses on forces that tend to destroy if unharnessed.
When people have such different reverences, they begin accusing each other of opposite blasphemies, and then very little dialogue can actually take place at all.
One giant step we could take would be to make it so that, politically, we need each other a bit more: the scourge of gerrymandering, in which people from both parties have spent generations carving us up into like-minded districts where primaries and their purity tests matter more than actual elections, is a massive contributor to this talking-past-each-other effect, and, if reversed, could contribute greatly to a healing process in the way we try to appeal to and persuade each other.
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