Empathy

Are we allowed to have it? And for whom? And is social media the right place to even express it?

I’d like to think that my hyperawareness of how social media rots our brains makes me immune to its clutches.

Lol.

No matter how conscious I may be that these platforms depend on outrage and negativity to keep us glued to our phones, I still spent the last few days scrolling my various feeds like a zombie, desperately seeking clarity and finding only confusion.

I saw politicians offer carefully worded rebukes of political violence, I saw private citizens skewer those rebukes. I saw acquaintances mourn while I saw others celebrate. I saw conspiracy theories. I saw terrifying vows of reprisal reposted with terrifying captions promising “this is what’s coming.” I saw jokes. I saw memes. I saw analysis. So, so, so much analysis. I saw fights break out in comment sections. I saw a friend post a sponsored video for a cell phone provider and I was so hungry for a break that I watched it in its entirety.

It is with good intention that we dive into the cesspool of social media after a large national event: to understand what people are saying. But, personally, the more time I spend seeking this understanding, the more my moral compass becomes a wet ball of clay that assumes the shape of the most persuasive take my algorithm has just fed me. I momentarily forget where my deeply held beliefs end and a random stranger’s post begins.

More than once this week I’ve had to throw my phone across the room to stop myself from taking another spin on the diabolical merry-go-round I willingly got on in the first place.

It’s only when I take time to myself, when I go quiet and stare at a wall or the sky for way too long, that I can begin to understand what I think, what I feel.

Social media is a place for statements, not questions. Brash certainty plays far better than earnest curiosity. (We know this, I’m not saying anything new here.) But, ironically, the countless statements I’ve seen this week seem to circle around one main question: what determines who we have empathy for?

Can we have empathy for someone who has said such vile, cruel things about other people? Is feeling empathy for someone’s family the same as feeling empathy for them? If we do feel empathy, must we post about it? Is empathy a transgression? And is even asking these questions a transgression itself?

I wrestled with similar questions when I began my Conversations with People Who Hate Me project. In my long phone calls with strangers who said hurtful things to me online I found myself feeling something strange: empathy. Many of these people held beliefs I strongly disagreed with. Did seeing their humanity mean that I was cosigning their hateful ideologies?

I dug deep. I stared at many walls for many hours. And what emerged was a mantra I created for myself: empathy is not endorsement.

I shared this quote on a public stage. I became known for this quote. Now, whenever a Big Social Media Event crash lands into the zeitgeist, people share this quote.

A few days ago, I got a notification that someone had posted this quote on Instagram. The comment section erupted with, um, shall we say, spirited disagreement.

Commenters seemed to interpret these four words as a mandate imploring them to foster empathy for a public figure who they believe fostered no empathy for them.

I actually get where these commenters are coming from. Last week was, candidly, not the time I would have chosen to re-share this quote. The temperature was way too high and feelings were way too raw. Plus, cute phrases can ring hollow against the backdrop of national strife.

Still, I understand the deal we make when we put something into the public square. It is no longer ours. We can’t control how and when people invoke a thing that was once deeply personal. We also can’t control how people receive it. I have had to make peace with this.

For the last seven years I’ve been careful to surround this tidy four-word mantra with context. I actively caution that it was born entirely from a personal experience, in very specific circumstances. I have also quite openly wrestled with the limits of this phrase. Every time I speak about my work publicly, I vocalize my belief that empathy is actually a privilege, not a virtue. I own that fostering “radical empathy” was something that I felt well suited to do, but that in no way should we expect it of others. But alas, a catchy alliterative phrase travels better on social media than multiple paragraphs of caveats and considerations. Again: social media is a place for statements, not questions.

So where do we go from here?

I know well not to answer this question yet. Or here. But I will go stare at some more walls and more skies as I keep mulling it over.

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