Empathy and Arrogance

I've been listening to a book I'm liking a lot—What are you Going Through by Sigrid Nunez.

I just heard a quote in the book that I love:

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who upon seeing someone else suffering think: That can happen to me.  And those who think: That will never happen to me.

The first kind of people help us to endure.  The second kind make life hell.

Note: the narrator of the novel says she heard this elsewhere...from someone famous.  But she's not sure who, and this is her paraphrasing.  

I doubt any person is 100% the first kind of person or the second.  But I think people do lean one way or the other. I'm glad to be able to say that I lean very much towards the first one.  I have a very active imagination, and I'm an anxious person.  

Politically speaking, I think left-wing people are going to lean more towards being the first kind and right-wing people more towards the second.  

I remembered learning that Republicans are less likely to believe that luck plays a part in what happens to us.  I Googled and saw this study.  It's called Locus of Control. Democrats have more of an external one, while Republicans have more of an internal one.

I then had to Google locus of control to make sure it was referring to the thing I thought it was.   

And yeah. It is. 

So Republicans tend to believe if a bad thing happened to you, it's because you made the wrong choices, didn't work hard enough, didn't take care of yourself, etc.  Democrats tend to look at factors that might get in the way such as which family you were born into, your genetics, random bad luck, lacking certain societal privileges, etc   

Do all Democrats, all the time, think with sympathy: that can happen to me?  Definitely not.  The proof is on Twitter with all the ridiculing of Donald Trump about wearing diapers or holding a water bottle strangely.  It's pretty apparent that they don't ever consider that one day, THEY might have an incontinence problem or a disability that makes it hard to hold onto things.    

But in terms of issues like healthcare, refugees, civil rights, etc....I think Democrats want, develop, and push policy with the mindset of...This might happen to me one day or to someone I love.  

In a way, that almost sounds self-centered.  And it kind of is. Maybe.  If you look at it in a certain way.  But it's also about putting ourselves in somebody else's shoes.  

And putting ourself in somebody else's shoes becomes an even stronger mode of compassionate thinking if we truly realize that those someday could become our shoes.   

I think it also can be applied to charity...at least charity directed mostly at humans.  I think both the left and the right donate.  But I think the left more likely is to donate with worry, empathy, and that idea they should help, because one day it might be themselves who need the help.  I think the right is more likely to donate because it provides evidence to themselves, society, and sometimes the Supreme Being they believe in, that they're good people.  

Getting back to footwear.....

Republicans are more likely to idealize the boot strap mythology.  Work hard and you can get through anything.  So where does charity fit in there?  Why help people if the ideal is for them to totally help themselves?

And if we help someone while believing firmly that people should be able to pull themselves up from the bootstraps, what are we thinking about that person while we help them?  Can there be genuine empathy?  Are we looking down at the person?  Judging them?  Feeling superior to them?  

In a recent texting conversation with my (part Republican) family, I tried to sell them on a modified boot strap policy: Lift yourself up from your bootstraps...IF you have boots...and if the straps are strong.  If you don't have boots, we will buy you some.

If I had heard the passage in the book before sending that text, I probably would have added. We will buy you some, because we understand fully that one day we might be the one who have lost our boots. 

  

Note: It is also important to keep an understanding that some things are much less likely to happen to us, because of our ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, etc.  So then the thinking can take the direction of I can imagine this happening to me IF I had been born into difference circumstances.  

 

How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-beloved to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online, a novel by Dina Roberts