In order to explain how empathy came to me, and why empathy is lesson number one, I first have to give you the background of the events that lead me to this lesson. I have a retired US politician, a nightclub, rain and some strangers to thank. So if you’ll indulge me, here is how I came to regard empathy as a very important life lesson.
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In an effort to stop my brain from turning to mush over the summer, I decided to take adavantage of the library in college before they revoked my student card, and actually get some books out that might be some way relevent to my masters. I have been reading The Fog of War : Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. Robert McNamara is a former US Secretary of Defense and was involved in some of the major international crises of the 20th century during his career. The Fog of War is a book based on a documentary made about the lessons McNamara learned from his involvement in events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War.
Robert S. McNamara
In terms of stopping my brain turning to mush, it is an interesting and stimulating read based on something called critical oral history. This combines the insights of historians, official documents and the recollections of former officials, who were heavily involved in the events, in order to come to conclusions regarding lessons that should be learnt from certain mistakes or crises in international history. The ‘fog of war’ refers to how these mistakes are often made because of the effect that war has on human rationality, emotion, trust and decion-making ability.
This book explores some of these lessons and is designed to give the reader a chance to understand what it must have been like for rational human beings to have had their judgements clouded by the ‘fog of war.’ The first lesson, and probably the most important one to all the rest, is empathise with your enemy. Empathy is very important in international relations, and it is also often absent. Things that we read or hear about as news or history were more than just monumental events at one point. Each of these huge things can be broken down into a series of decisions made based on the knowledge, sources, fears, beliefs and assumptions of various political leaders. The point of the empathy lesson is that two opposing parties can be in complete disagreement over something and may be completely unable to see eye to eye on aims or principles, but can still understand that the other party may feel genuine fear, concern or interest. It was because of a lack of empathy that the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly became the most devastating loss of human life in history, and it is because of empathy that it was finally averted.
All of this makes perfect sense, and it makes even more sense if you read the book, which you should, if you have the chance.
Allow me now to apply the lesson of empathy to my own life, but instead of the Fog of War, I am going to refer to the events of last night as the Fog of Rain.
So I went to work yesterday evening, with my head full of words and thoughts to take me through the hours. My evening job consists of standing outside the Courthouse handing out flyers for a Cork Nightclub. It’s grand work, when the weather is nice. The time flies and you meet and see lots of people. Last night, the weather was awful. It lashed rain for the whole three hours, and the street was not the same hive of excitment that it usually is when groups of people are coming and going.
So it rained and poured, and I tried to give flyers to the people who walked past in dribs and drabs. In my mind, every one person who accepted a flyer from me made my bundle one flyer lighter, and made it a smidgen easier to hold my giant umbrella. When you’re wet and cross, (or when the fog of rain descends upon you) it’s strange how the tiniest gestures, like someone taking a flyer and saying thank you, can give you a little bit of extra steam. It’s like half way through a run up hill, a sup of water can make you go on for that little bit longer without feeling like you want to die.
In my mind, I knew that if I was miserable under my umbrella, then all of these people trudging to and fro in the fog of rain must be miserable too. Yet I still had to do my job, so I tried not to be too annoying and just do the flyering.
Most people just take it and keep going. Maybe they use it, maybe it gets binned - I don’t know. But some people just ignore you, or just stuff their hands in their pockets and shake their heads or try not to catch your eye and scurry past. Why do they look so frightened? I’m not selling anything, I’m not asking them to stop, I’m not going to beat them up. Every single time a person turns down a flyer it’s like a little kick in the guts. Just TAKE it. I don’t care what you do with it anymore. JUST TAKE IT!!
My anger, their fear, the reason they won’t take it, the reason I really want them to – it’s the special set of circumstances offset by the rain.
And then, under my umbrella, alone, in the rain, it came to me. These are the people, that, given a situation of substantially higher stakes and more serious consequences, would be the non-empathisers. You can always tell about a person’s intuition in its simplest form by how they react to a minor incident with a complete stranger when no one is watching.
The people who refuse to take a simple flyer from me are doing so because they are wet, in a hurry and probably not going to go clubbing. But if they empathised with me, then surely they would see that I’m pretty miserable too, handing out flyers in the rain. And even though we are on opposing sides, with me giving out flyers, and them not wanting them, me wanting them to go to a club, and them not wanting to, they would appreciate that my aims are not malicious, but I am only doing what is in my best interest (earning money, for food), and the best interest of my peple (the nightclub) and what I believe in principle is right. (Go out and have fun, don’t go home!)
The fact that they don’t care about or agree with these ideals and aims, is irrelevant. They should understand that this is what I must do. I understand their feelings. And I’m not getting in the way of their aims. They can still go home, they don’t have to go anywhere, they don’t have to talk to me. Nothing about their life needs to change, other than the fact that they make my night a little better.
So you see: it makes perfect sense. They didn’t take a flyer because they don’t want one, and their personal wants outweighed their capacity for empathy.
And they all passed by. And I was left standing there. With my soggy flyers. In the rain.
The most positive outcome of this whole experience is that I managed to actually remember something I read in a book, and managed to apply it (don’t even think about saying tenuously) to a real-life, 1st principles scenario. And by coming up with this (don’t say mad) theory, I managed to kill few minutes in the cold without resorting to games on my mobile that are likely to murder any brain cells I did preserve by reading a history book in the first place.
Thank you Robert.
Thank you rude strangers.
Thank you Fog of Rain.
lifestyle that accompanies poverty. I still want to do things. I want to go out. I want music. I want to dress nice. I want fun. So if I do get a windfall of a few 2 euro coins behind the couch or a twenty euro note in the pocket of my jeans, I don’t spend it on groceries and washing powder. No No, I live on bread and noodles and find something cheap and fun to do to pass the days until I can skip gaily to the buttered side of the breadline once again.
