Empathy

Empathy. Noun. The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. It is, en pathos (in suffering).
at root, a Greek word.

Some people are better at it than others. To one it comes naturally; to another it takes work. It cannot be separated from the need to do something about it once you've got it. Saying 'I feel your pain' while continuing the beating is many things but empathy isn't one of them.

In my first English class at secondary school I was given a dictionary. Chambers Etymological English Dictionary to be precise. I like the conceit of giving an eleven year old a dictionary the title of which included the first word he will have to look up. That dictionary (pictured) was a great friend and companion for the next thirty years until the internet gave me the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Chambers doesn't gather dust though. From time to time it is a useful tool to use to see if a word has subtly changed since the 1960s in its meaning and usage. I look up empathy. Nothing. It's not there. Not a word that an eleven year old would need in 1964, apparently.

My next stop, usually, in researching an essay on such an abstract subject, is to look for a chapter by Tony Grayling. Writing as A.C.Grayling his series of books on applying philosophy to everyday life is invaluable. Is there a chapter on empathy in the four volumes I possess? No, there isn't.

What an elusive word. But then, it is modern. 'The word 'empathy ... appeared in 1908 as a translation of the German Einfühlung (literally “in-feeling”). This early empathy was not about understanding another person, but about projecting one’s own imagined feelings and movements into objects. Empathy explained how a viewer perceived a mountain or architectural column as if it were rising because the viewer transferred his or her own feelings of stretching upwards into the mountain or column. Similarly, viewers could observe abstract lines moving in a painting because they projected their own inner sense of movement into the lines. Empathy was seen as key to the pleasures of art.'
(From Psychology Today)

The concept of empathy was introduced into the history GCSE National Curriculum in 1989 although many commentators felt that students were not yet equipped with the necessary life-skills to approach the subject this way. A society full of natural empathisers would not have bullying. But at this point the study of history became far more about the investigation of sources rather than the memorisation of facts. I passed history O and A Levels because memorising facts can be done for a few nights before an exam. I took the same methodology into the Church History section of a theology degree and passed that. Most facts needed for that exam were jettisoned shortly afterwards although a few make a surprising re-entry into the world during quiz nights as long as my inner archivist isn't dozing.

This change to the National Curriculum began to give us a generation of enquiring historians; people not forced to particular conclusions but learning a historical method by which they reached their own. Not told what historians think but learning how to think as historians. Many of those so educated are now helping us to understand history without its '...colonial legacy and racist under-pinning' (Dr Remi Joseph-Salisbury, quoted in theipaper 16/7/20). Michael Gove as Education Secretary famously took us back a few years to date and fact learning, possibly remembering the history classes of his own school days, who knows?

Between school and that theology degree, growing up and moving on, I worked in insurance claims and developed some knowledge of industrial legislation such as the Factories Act, the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act and the Health and Safety at Work Legislation. At this time (the 1970s) many claims were being dealt with by Employer's Liability insurers for industrial deafness. It was rarely denied that a claimant had been exposed to excessive noise if they had worked, for instance, in a foundry for thirty years. And unless they were also a part-time roadie for a rock band it was usually accepted that work had caused the injury. The question we asked was this, 'When should a reasonable employer have known this was a problem and provided protective equipment?' Our insureds were responsible for all injury caused after that date and full damages were assessed and then divided pro rata. It was a question of empathy. When did you start to feel your employees' pain and act upon it? When should you have done?

I now want to talk about slavery.

The history of humankind is of the development of nation states - land-grabbing, conquest and empire building. From the point of view of our own history it is worth noting that the last truly world-wide empire was the British one. This timeline by the Global Policy Forum lists the great empires of the world in three periods - Ancient, Pre-modern and Modern. It gives the date for the end of the British Empire as c1980. We were still standing when the music stopped.

Some theology.

Some of our world's old literature, such as the Hebrew Scriptures, speaks of people being either ruthlessly slaughtered or taken into captivity when confronted by a more powerful nation or empire. We need to watch out for appropriate translations. Not all the words that make it into the text in English as 'slave' actually meant what we understand by that term. A conquered people would find themselves needing to work for a new master. Dependent. In this lecture Peter J. Williams (Warden of Tyndale House) suggests that '...Exodus does not say that the Israelites were slaves (ebed) in Egypt although it is clear from the text that it was very much like slavery as we normally understand it...'

Joseph, again in the Hebrew Scriptures, was sold into slavery (Genesis 37-50). He rose to power, so the story goes, in the place where he was enslaved. His people prospered and then over a period of four hundred years those people were exploited.

The people whose story of Exodus is then told, in the book of the same name, develop a new set of instructions about attitudes to strangers. They are to treat them as they recalled they were not treated when strangers in Egypt. The 'Golden Rule' can be expressed negatively and positively. Do unto others as you would have them do to you. Don't do to others as you would not have them do to you.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks describes the Hebrew Scriptures as 'A national literature of self-criticism.' Throughout those Scriptures the displeasure of God is often directed at people who treat the poor or the stranger badly, forgetting that they were once poor and strangers themselves ('Not in God's Name' - Jonathan Sacks, Hodder 2013).

Is it here that the idea of empathy is introduced to a national literature for the first time? Think, says the text, what it would be like to be treated like this. That's rudimentary empathy, I suggest.

Of course those same Scriptures also include a story about a Moabite being what you get if you have sex with your father (Genesis 19:30-38) and that bashing Babylonian babies' heads in might bring joy (Psalm 137:8-9). So we still have some way to go before Jesus espouses loving your enemy as a default position. For seven centuries before him Samaritans were not the good guys. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) the rich man, in Hades, has no concept of empathy, still. He sees Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham and asks him to serve him with water and then go on an errand to his brothers. Ken Bailey describes this as racism. Lazarus, the rich man more or less says, is 'not one of us' (Jesus Through Middle-Eastern Eyes).

I am very fond of the Maltese Islands. Being a small group of islands set in the midst of the Mediterranean meant that the people, over their history, were in great danger from the armies of every passing empire. So many times the people were attacked and taken off into captivity, subdued by superior numbers and forced to work for others. It was the knights of St John who are seen as the great rescuers, building protective citadels in which all the people of the islands could shelter and be safe.

Whilst it is no comfort to the victims there is, again I would suggest, a difference between capturing a population during a time of land-grabbing (when that was common) and the trade in human beings which developed over the centuries. David Olusoga's excellent documentary programmes should be compulsory viewing:

Black and British: A Forgotten History
Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners

To edit a summary of these down to a few sentences seems obscene, you must watch them, but here goes. In the first he explains how our country has tended to whiten its history; there were black Roman soldiers stationed in this country nearly two thousand years ago. In the second we discover, guilt-makingly, how ordinary members of society with money to 'invest' might purchase a slave on a plantation and receive an income. Clergy included. The people who ought to have been professionally empathic before the word existed were simply pocket-liners. Some of us will have family wealth thus gained.

If you want to know what people feel about this look at the comments on the Twitter feed @DavidOlusoga. They are appalling.

History, the word, comes from the ancient Greek istoria and means 'enquiry'. History is therefore a process and it follows that suggesting the removal of a statue or plaque is removing history is tantamount to nonsense. If anything the removal is part of history, part of the continued enquiry. A.C. Grayling says this, on his blog 'History accordingly is a reconstruction of the past by 'intellectual empathy' with our forebears.'

Many of my readers will have had no experience of racism but will not feel that that is a privilege.

Come with me on a little thought experiment. Imagine a world like ours where, for whatever reason, everyone is required to spend a week of their life alone in a small box with only air to breathe and water to drink. It is horrid but survivable. A rite of passage. It is dreaded, experienced then overcome.

One person learns a perfectly acceptable way to get out of this. Would you call them privileged? Fortunate? Clever?

Soon a small group of people who have never had to be boxed in is living alongside those who still dread it or have experienced it. Privileged? Fortunate? Clever?

After some years those who know the trick of avoiding the box are in the majority. Privileged? Fortunate? Clever? Or do you start describing that as normal and the others as deprived or disadvantaged?

Forget the details. The metaphor breaks down easily. But note that it can be seen as just as much of a privilege if something bad does not happen to you as when something good does.

A correspondent said this to me the other day:

'Do I believe that racism is utterly abhorrent? Absolutely. Do I believe that Britain is inherently and systemically racist, to its very core? No, I do not. It once was, I'm sure, but it is not now.'

The over-emphasis - 'inherently, systematically, to its very core' - makes it a hard disagree. But I do. I would love my correspondent to apply for a job in a predominantly white part of this country with her CV but change her name to Patel, Singh or Adeyemi. Interview just as likely?

I was raised with racist thoughts and ideas placed in my head, possibly innocently, by my parents.

I went to a school where your appearance, your character, the rhymes of your name or your unwanted first name could all become a nickname - Willy, Tadpole and Jim. All me. Were the names we called the only black student in my year and one of the two Jews mined from the same seam, or from somewhere more sinister? I cannot say, but I am sorry.

A school teacher writing in theipaper last week shared the self-hatred she felt when she described something as 'whiter than white' in front of a 75% BAME class. Her friend reminded her this expression came from a soap advert not diversity training (Lucy Kellaway 16/7/20 in an article reproduced from the Financial Times). But it is good that we revisit our language with care and feel bad that phrases can be misconstrued. As a part-time writer I try not to write phrases that can be misconstrued because they cause trouble. Even if I know what I mean I need to be sure that others will. And I still write dodgy sentences because, well, you know.

A white man trying to write about racism. Haven't we had enough of that? Well yes, frankly. Which is why I am trying to write about empathy aware, as I am, that whilst not self-defining as a racist I do and say racist things because of unconscious bias and white privilege. It may well be negligence or weakness or my fault. It is not my own deliberate choice.

A very good ministry review by a Church Warden a few years ago was brave enough to tell me that I appear to find it difficult to understand people who find life less easy than I do. It's true. I have learned to cope and try hard to show empathy but I am being a mimic. Nothing can make me feel what I don't feel. For me empathy is learning to think like those who feel things more keenly than I do. I wrote about this many years ago. Still working on it.

Those who somehow still feel, in their bones, that there are some people who are 'not one of us' need to learn some empathy with me.