This week, in Finland, a young man paid society back for his his feelings of rejection by blowing himself up amidst a crowd of children watching a clown; in the Washington area of the States, some unknown marksman was playing at being the angel of death and mocking the authorities for their impotence in being unable to catch him, and in Bali, a group of fanatics exploded a car bomb, destroying 200 + lives, because their victims represented an ideal they did not share.
"WHY? WHY? WHY?" shout the banner headlines. The answer is obvious to me, people who carry out these horrendous deeds lack EMPATHY.
For me, empathy, or the ability to put yourself in the other's place and sympathize with their predicament, is the distinguishing feature between civilization and barbarity. As the father of a three year old I know that this sense is by no means an in-built mechanism - it has to be learnt. Being encouraged to think about how you would feel if they did that to you should be central to the education of every small child. So, what happened then to the empathy of those committing these atrocities? This is a very complex question, but surely part of the blame, in the West at least, lies with the violence that passes for entertainment in so many television programmes. From the fantasy violence of Japanese Manga cartoons, to the brutal blood and gore of a Van Damm movie, it appears to be enough for the hero(es) to define another group as evil, in order to then justify any amount of blood letting shown as "action" on the screen. The simplicity of these blanket condemnations are so appealing that even tPresidents of the most powerful nation on Earth have been known to use the trick when defining regimes whose ideas they do not share as "empires of evil" or "the axis of evil" etc.
In the first Austin Powers film (1) there is an extremely comic, and, at the same time, truly poignant scene, which, like the best comedy, makes the audience question things it has taken for granted up to then. The almost gratuitous killing of one of Dr Evil's henchmen is followed immediately by a scene showing the news of the man's death being broken to his devoted wife and loving step-son. Another similarly structured scene follows the violent death of another henchman and is equally moving and hilarious. The point is economically made: behind every expendable follower of the villain, there is a real human being who has family, friends and a social history. This is a point that the action films aimed at the young adolescent male of the species seldom, if ever, stress. The repeated treatment of real human beings as nothing more than extras to be included in the body count at the end of the story must surely be having serious psychological effects on the way in which our children build up their picture of the world into which we have brought them.
Then there is the television news. Horrendous images of real suffering are piped into our homes day after day often with barely a sympathetic comment and often accompanied by the kind of hounding "What did you feel when you saw your husband's head blown off ?" questions that seem to want to exploit the victim's misery, rather than seeking to relieve it. This surely adds to the sense of the unreality of others that must be behind the psychological make up of the kinds of people I mentioned at the opening of this article.
Society itself, and politicians in particular, also have to take their share of the blame. Since the triumph of the unacceptable face of capitalism and the destruction of the corrupt totalitarian farce that had the audacity to call itself "communism", there has been a mood in the West of "laissez-faire" everything. Individual greed has become the only yardstick by which to measure success. "Looking after Number One" has been elevated to the status of a new religion. Unlike in the days of my adolescence, there are no hugely popular youth movements dedicated to solidarity with the poor and downtrodden, no dreams of creating communes, etc. In fact, with the possible exception of the anti-globalisation lobby, there appear to be few idealistic movements based on "solidarity" around with any sizeable membership base. In the West, this lack of ideals for youth to look up to has led to either apathy, nihilism, or else conformity with the prevailing received wisdom that capitalism is "as good as it gets". In the rest of the world, and particularly in the Muslim world, this ideological vacuum seems to be being exploited by the most narrow minded bigots to foster their anti-life, puritan views as expressed in its highest form by the Taliban in Afghanistan. These life negators are no new phenomenon: from earliest recorded history there appears to have been a tendency for some people to face the terrifying to some, liberating to others, idea of our "God given free will" by laying down strict ground rules for the faithful to follow. Of course, if they then simply lived by their own impositions and left everyone else to get on with it, then who could complain. Unfortunately, like many addicts, they only feel comfortable by spreading their addiction and seeking to enforce others to believe as they do....or DIE!
Of course, it is going to be hard now to create movements based on solidarity, because there are powerful forces which benefit financially from the current status quo. However, I feel that unless we can find some way of encouraging a sense of empathy among our young, of a recognition of the rights of others to differ and of solidarity with those who are less fortunate than ourselves, then we truly are at the beginning of a new dark age.
In our current age where we have the means to make more people's lives comfortable than at any other time in history, a tiny proportion of malcontents can have the wherewithal to sow mistrust, fear and alarm among the majority of people who just want to get on with their lives. Fostering empathy is a priority. It is more than that, it is an essential survival tactic. The Beatles sang "All You Need is Love" - I don't think you need to be that demanding or idealistic, it is enough that we all bear in mind that other people have as much right to exist as we do and that the old biblical adage "Do as you would be done by" is still the best maxim by which to live.
Capellades 19th October 2002
Last updated: 19th October 2002