Empathy might even thrive best in this state, where the easy comforts are denied us. I came to understand Lincoln as someone so beat down by sadness and loss that he developed a sort of crazy wisdom - as if, in sadness, all of the comforting bromides that normally keep us from the harsher truths were denied him. beat him down and made him sorrowful, but also, almost causally, seemed to expand the reach of his empathy, so that, by the end, it included soldiers on both sides and the millions of Americans being enslaved by other Americans. was the way that the burdens of the office. What moved me about Lincoln’s arc during his presidency. Saunders’s appearance on Colbert was partly to promote his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. Empathy for poor immigrants in the United States, who come here in order to earn money that will help their families abroad, is also evident. Woven throughout the story, however, is Saunders’s empathy for the parents, especially the father, who in diary format narrates the tale. His later story “The Semplica-Girl Diaries” is marvelous in many ways, including its satire of America’s consumer culture and depiction of a father and mother who are trying with difficulty to give their children some of the same goods and privileges that their kids’ friends enjoy. In another early story, “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” we are led to empathize with a man who wants to quit his job, but then thinks of the needs of his children and decides to eat his “pride and sit tight.” (See here for all three stories.) We see this empathy in early stories like “Isabelle” and “The 400-pound CEO,” which respectively deal with a girl with twisted limbs who makes “horrible moaning noises” and a businessman who is treated cruelly because of his size. tends to push the narrative toward empathy,” and that he has experienced this “time and again.” In another more recent interview he maintained that “writing a story. These fictional characters would have their share of human faults, but a good writer should enable readers to perceive that they share a certain “commonality” with such characters. Several years ago, shortly after his short-story collection The Tenth of September appeared, he told an interviewer that he hoped his fiction fostered empathy by inducing in readers a sort of “temporary mind-meld” with certain characters. Saunders’s empathy has long been evident in his short stories. It is, in truth, an essential first step toward constructing a lasting peace.” Several years ago, shortly after his short-story collection The Tenth of September appeared, he told an interviewer that he hoped his fiction fostered empathy by inducing in readers a sort of “temporary mind-meld” with certain characters. As Shore writes, “Understanding what truly drives others to act as they do is a necessary ingredient for resolving most conflicts where force is not desired. But first we should try to understand them as fully as we can. Unlike stereotypes, which lump people into simplistic categories, strategic empathy distinguishes what is unique about individuals and their situation.” Such empathy does not prevent us from eventually criticizing positions we find faulty or abhorrent. It is what allows us to pinpoint what truly drives and constrains the other side. In his A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind (2014), Zachary Shore has emphasized what he refers to it as “strategic empathy.” He describes it as “the skill of stepping out of our own heads and into the minds of others. As I used to tell my history students, before you criticize a Hitler, Stalin, or Putin, you should try to understand what motivates such individuals, what is important to them, what drives them. It is at the heart of my moral code, and it is how I understand the Golden Rule-not simply as a call to sympathy or charity, but as something more demanding, a call to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes.” (See here for more on Obama’s continuing emphasis on empathy.)Įmpathy, it should be emphasized, does not necessitate agreement.
In The Audacity of Hope (2006), Obama wrote that empathy is a quality “that I find myself appreciating more and more as I get older. Like Barack Obama and some early twentieth-century Progressives, Saunders is especially insistent on the need for empathy. As Martha Nussbaum has indicated in her Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, it even requires love. Political wisdom necessitates various qualities such as the proper combination of realism and idealism, empathy, humility, humor, and tolerance.
0 kommentar(er)
