About Numbness and Action

My friend Scott just wrote a blog post about violence, the school shooting in Virginia, and the feeling of being stunned. Originally this was meant as a comment to his post, but then it turned into a blog entry instead:

It's so easy to become numb. There is a difficult balance between empathy and distance: if you're too empathetic your ability to help will drown in the misery of those who need you, and if you're too distanced it's hard to be involved enough to care. Often we end up in a paralyzing middle: we are left dazed, stunned, helpless, the misery is beyond our control, there's nothing we can do about it. And so we cry for a while, and then we go on with our lives believing that we are good people because at least our tears expressed our sympathy.

But this is of course, as the old proverb goes, the real danger: that evil happens because good people do nothing. Sympathy doesn't change the world and crying doesn't define our virtue. We need to escape numbness, and that does not mean escaping that which make us numb. We need to find that constructive, productive balance of just enough empathy to make us able to care and just enough distance to give us room to act.

And then we need to make a choice. No-one can save the whole world. We have to avoid taking in all of the world's misery at once. We have to acknowledge that it is there, and also remember that it has always been. The history of human cruelty didn't start with the Iraq war, or the six day war, or WW1. Cruelty is human. And so is morality. Morality is what gives shape to our integrity, it is what should guide us while we balance down the line trying to distribute the weight of empathy and distance evenly in our hearts. Morality is what make you say I object to this. The I refuse, the j'accuse, the thing that make you able to act and make a change. Do not be blinded and benumbed. Choose your focus, distance your empathy, and be assured that you can make a difference at that one point you want to fight for.

Said Margaret Mead: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, commited citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Photos from Rashedie (2003)