Do You Care? Here’s How

image: Mayur Gala for Unsplash

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about caring.

I recently finished writing a novel that takes place—at least partially—at Everest Base Camp, and so have immersed myself in reading about climbing, watching some truly terrifying YouTube videos, and generally thinking about the immense and utter indifference that nature has toward human life and death. It’s a stark reminder of our true size and importance… even when viewed from the top of the world.

I remember, as you may, Melania Trump’s infamous trip, back during Trump 1.0, to visit children at the border with Mexico, children separated from their parents, children held in cages, and how her wearing a designer jacket that said, “I don’t really care. Do u?” was such a representation of the callousness of that administration. Just as indifferent to those children as Everest is to climbers, her attitude made me feel small. How do you change that kind of glacial indifference?

The more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I feel the answer is obvious: by caring even more. We are living through a dark time, true; but we have been witness over the past few years to awesome examples of caring: overburdened healthcare workers rising to the myriad challenges of the pandemic; Polish mothers leaving baby carriages and strollers at the border for the use of exhausted Ukrainian refugee mothers; firefighters from countries maligned by the present administration going to southern California to help fight fires; moments when people are able to meet and surpass even the most frightening challenges to our shared humanity. 

Our ability to empathize is a deep-seated feature established across species. German philosopher Theodore Lipps coined the concept of Einfühlung, which literally means “feeling into,” and refers to an act of projecting oneself into another body or environment. Lipps encountered Einfühlung while engaging with the arts, noting that the impact of an artwork didn’t seem to reside in the work but rather in how it was viewed by the observer. 

So we are in dialogue with our art—including the stories we read.

I don’t know much about hope, but I do know we’ll only get there by caring about (and for) each other, and that can only happen through empathy. As a storyteller who tries to be a thinker, I know of one way to become more empathetic: by reading. Stories—whether fiction or nonfiction—invite you into someone else’s life. They allow you to feel pain and sorrow, joy and transformation; to love deeply and hate just as deeply; to achieve and to fail. But, importantly, they do not make any of those feelings or situations about you: they create a reality in which you are part of the characters’ lives, emotions, and cares.

Read enough, and you won’t look at other people the same, not ever again. I promise.

image: Kateryna Hlizitsova for Unsplash

I can’t just leave it there without a warning, however. Our empathic responses are driven by how we operate subconsciously. We don’t react to everyone’s pain the same way, and studies show we’re more empathetic toward objects that have greater resemblance to us. That explains in part why Americans and Europeans have rallied to the side of Ukrainians with more vigor than they have to the Sudanese, for example, whose need has been arguably even greater.

Additionally, the algorithms of social media are stripping us of empathy. Increased exposure to content that is disturbing, along with brief engagement with each news item (doomscrolling), makes it difficult to process the more complex feelings associated with each of these pieces of information. And the platforms we use encourage empathy bias, since they circulate similar types of information through feedback systems that create echo chambers. Since we’re not exposed to new, unfamiliar situations, we can’t empathize with them.

For some of us, the answer is to quit social media, or certain social media platforms. I’m not willing to do that—yet—as they keep me in touch with people I can’t access in other ways. But we can all alleviate what they’re doing to our caring for each other, by challenging ourselves (since they’ll never do it) to listen to stories and connect with art that is different from us. I love nothing more than a cozy novel about an English country house murder, but that’s not going to help me care about anyone other than white aristocrats… a group that definitely does not need any additional attention. I’m trying to step outside of my comfort zone in my reading these days, to include voices that belong to people who don’t look, and think, and feel like me.

These are the stories that can move us forward, the stories that can connect us, the stories that can help us become the people we all think we already are.

image: Kranich for Pixabay