I’ve been thinking about Jeremy Rifkin’s talk on ‘The Empathetic Civilisation’ which he gave at the RSA last year. It sparked my interest because of this quote:

“There is no empathy in heaven, because there is no mortality. There is no empathy in utopia, because there is no suffering.”

This made think a little about our traditional ideas of heaven and hell:

Taking what Rifkin says, those entering heaven will have to leave their empathetic sensibilities at the Pearly Gates, because there cannot be empathy for those left behind. If there were, there would be regret and sadness, and these are not permitted.

I think that this forces us to reject the traditional notion of heaven as a final, bounded place from which all pain is excluded, and from which those who are ‘lost’ are excluded too.

In the comments on the previous post, Roland noted that “hell is not something Jesus ever threatened people with. He loved everyone.” What is interesting to note about the incarnation is that Jesus had to leave ‘heaven’ in order to properly empathise with us.

This is a principle that religion likes to forget. Heaven has been abandoned because God saw that it was a sterile, unempathetic place. Instead, the church is called to create ‘dirty heaven’ here on earth – a heaven in the midst of hell, if you will, because this is the true locus of love.

I think we can use this to twist the Zizekian understanding of the early church. His understanding is that the Christian community gathers around the death of God. They are the true atheists because they see that the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of the divine – is in the sacrificial, loving, empathetic gathering with one another to serve the poor.

What we might now do is to say that it is not the death of God that signifies this community, but the abandonment of heaven. The truly empathetic community is the one that has given up on the idea of the perfect place to come, and is happy to have abandoned heaven, as Jesus did, in order to make dirty heaven, right here.

In the previous post we considered the adage that ‘an enemy is simply a friend whose story I have not yet heard.’ In his book First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, Zizek critiques this, using the example of Hitler, questioning whether it would be right to befriend him:

“Is one then also ready to affirm that Hitler was an enemy only because his story had not been heard? Do the details of his personal life redeem the horrors that resulted from his reign?”

My arguement is that the adage does hold true, but pivots on the definition of friendship. Unless there is the possibility of empathy flowing both ways, then friendship cannot be a possibility. If it were possible to befriend Hitler, one would hope to be able to dissuade him from his actions. If there was no possibility of change within him (lack of regret or empathy is a hallmark of psychopatic behaviour) then friendship is not possible.

Connectedly, friendship is not possible unless there is some symmetry in power-relations. The soldier who is on duty to see a Palestinian home demolished may appear to be friendly in showing the family photos of his children, but cannot be deemed a friend if they then go ahead and carry out their duties.

Where does this leave this theologically? Clearly we are not framing God as enemy, but it is important to consider what we might mean if we are claiming ‘friendship’ with God. Is there any sense of symmetry in our relationship, and is there any possibility of a two-way empathetic flow? If God is unchanging, does this mean God displays sociopathic tendencies?

If we look at the list of symptoms, we get a pretty interesting picture:

Superficial charm, irrititable, impatient, prone to threats, angry, sense of extreme entitlement, child conduct issues, recurring difficulties with the law…

Doesn’t this read a little like the character we find in the early Old Testament? And if God is unchanging, why should this be any different now – as we see in the attitude in the picture above. We read Zizek’s comment again in this light: Do the details of his personal life redeem the horrors that resulted from his reign?

In the comments on the previous post, Clare wondered: suppose the Israeli soldier dumped his weapon and uniform and renounced his part in oppressing Palestinians. Would there be any chance of a relationship? It seems to me that this is the only way in which genuine relationship could occur, though this would be hugely personally costly to that soldier under Israeli law. This seems to resonate with the beginning of Philippians 2:

Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

So the only possibility of friendship is if this stripping away of power occurs. But, as in the case of the soldier, this can only make sense if power is genuinely removed… Our enmity with God is thus not overcome through God’s anger or might, but only through God’s weakness. A weakness that not only lays down weapons, but ends up crucified for it.

As I wrote in the previous post, one of the fascinating things about the Incarnation is that it stands as an actual interruption, a marked moment of time with a before and after. Nothing was the same before, and nothing will be the same again.

It’s been out of thinking on this rupturing of our timeline that I have been pondering a sort of theological thought experiment. I’ve blogged about it before, but it seems timely to mention again.

We imagine God, in the moments before the Incarnation. The hours, becoming minutes… leading to those last few seconds before, in the traditional sense, Mary is ruptured. What is God thinking? As God prepared this great empathetic act with ‘the others’ that he had created, what were the hopes and fears that played on his mind?

In my series on empathy I outlined two positions – represented by Levinas and Zizek – of where the fear of engaging the other lies. For Levinas, the fear is located in the enigma of the other: we are not sure if we understand the other, they are an enigma to us.

For Zizek, the fear is located in the enigma in the other: we are not sure if the other even understands themselves, and this is frightening. This is connected to Hegel’s maxim that ‘the enigma’s of the Ancient Egyptians were enigmas to the Ancient Egyptians themselves.’

In our theological thought experiment, I wonder if God meditated similarly on these profoundly free beings he had released:

were the mysteries of the humans mysteries to the humans themselves?

This is the real and genuine risk attached to the Incarnation event if we are to hold true to our own freedom: God did not know in advance if it would work. From Levinas’ perspective this is because God is not sure if God has understood the human condition adequately. From Zizek’s perspective this is because God is not sure if humanity has understood it’s own condition adequately, and thus will not understand what he is about to do.

Either way, our second Advent[ure] in Incarnation brings us to understand that all incarnational work has to be based on genuine risk. If we claim to know in advance, then we have collapsed the mystery of ‘the other’ we are going to serve.

One of the nice things I’m involved in is helping put together the Greenbelt talks programme, which means I’m always on the look out for good thinkers with good things to say.

Last year I came across an organisation called The School of Life, which aims to help people engage in practical philosophy and playful thinking to improve their lives in the areas of family, work, play, politics and love.

It was through the School that I came across Roman Krznaric. Roman is an expert on empathy and spoke beautifully at Greenbelt [download talk here] about how a life lived more empathetically will effect radical social change. He has advised governments, charities and community organisations on how they can develop empathetically.

Roman’s book on empathy will be out shortly, but he has just started a blog called Outrospection around the issues of living empathetically and bringing about radical social change. As he notes in the first post:

I believe that empathy can help us escape from the narrow confines of our own existence and guide us towards more adventurous and fulfilling lives. Empathy is also a radical tool for social transformation that has the potential to bring about change not through new laws, policies or institutions, but through a revolution of human relationships. Barack Obama has said the most fundamental problem in modern society is ‘the empathy deficit’. Harnessing the transformative power of empathy is the great challenge of the twenty-first century.

With stories and practical guidance, this is going to be a very welcome addition to my reader, and I’d encourage you to grab a feed too.

It reminded my of a fantastic piece on video games in the ever-fabulous Believer Magazine. In it, video game journalist Heather Chaplin notes:

‘Video games are good at fostering problem solving, but they’re not so good at fostering human empathy or a deeper understanding of the human condition.’

She continues:

‘Novels are about psychological empathy; games simply are not. And if games are telepathing something about the future, maybe that tells us something about the future, maybe that tells us that psychological empathy, concern with the human condition is not going to be that important in the twenty-first century.’

This is clearly problematic.

Empathy [1] |  Empathy [2]

In the previous two posts I’ve been trying to get to grips with the roots of empathy with the other, and the location of our fears of engaging the other. I’ve radically summarised Levinas and Zizek by saying that the former would locate our fears in the enigma of the other, and the latter in the enigma in the other.

I have been pondering a little theological thought experiment surrounding this too. Imagine in the moments just before that first Christmas, just before the incarnation event, as God pondered what he – in Jesus – was about to do. Was he afraid or nervous? Jesus certainly was on the Mount of Olives, so perhaps it’s not a ridiculous concept. The question then is what the locus of his fears were.

Levinas would locate it within God himself: a concern that he might fail, that these humans he created are more of an enigma to him than he might think. Zizek would locate the fear elsewhere, and I think this is perhaps closer to the truth: God looks down and is concerned less that humans are enigmatic, but that they are an enigma to themselves. In other words, will they even understand what God is about to do?

If this is right, then we might say that God’s empathy with us is perhaps thus not grounded in overcoming his internal fear of failure and being able to look at us from a state of fully resolved self, but grounded in accepting what he is going to look like from our perspective as conflicted and unresolved selves. As Zizek notes:

For Hegel the Incarnation is not a move by means of which God makes himself accessible/visible to humans, but a move by means of which God looks at himself from the (distorting) human perspective.

In other words, the empathy towards the other that God displays is not about seeing the other, but about seeing ourselves as the other sees us. To reflect on a practical example: a parole officer needs to empathise with the released prisoner they are dealing with, and understand their motivations and background as they overcome any fear of ex-offenders that they may have. But I don’t believe that that is enough. What Zizek is trying to get us to do is perhaps not to reject Levinas, but move one step beyond him. Levinas urges us to look into the face of the other and see the sacred there. But Zizek says we should look so intently into the eyes of the other that we see our own reflection in their eyes. In other words, we begin to see how the other sees us.

The parole officer must then not simply try to understand the ex-offender before them, but come to an understanding of the way that person is going to view him as a parole officer. It is only then that we can get beyond some of the power imbalances that so often come with our attempts at ministry to the poor, the needy, the oppressed.

[And, in the light of today's news about Jackson's death, one might reflect on how much better for him things might have been if the media, and those around him when he was young, had looked closely at how he was seeing them, rather than just at how they could commodify him. A tragic tale...]

I’m interested in this short series in trying to reflect on the best ground for our attempts to empathise with ‘the other.’ In the first post I ended by suggesting that it would be fruitful to consider where our fears of engaging the other lie. So here we go:

It seems to me that Levinas would argue that we fear connection with the other because we have unresolved fears about them within ourselves. Zizek, on the other hand, would appear to argue that we fear connection with the other because we are wary that the other has unresolved fears within themselves. I may have this wrong, but my perception is that for Levinas the problem is the ‘enigma of the other,’ whereas for Zizek the problem is the ‘enigma in the other.’

Supporting this arguement, Zizek quotes Hegel’s famous dictum (discussed by Pete Rollins here) that ‘the enigmas of the Ancient Egyptians were also enigmas for the Egyptians themselves.’ From Levinas’ standpoint, we are wary of these mysterious ancients because we don’t understand them – their actions and language are strange to us. But for Zizek/Lacan/Hegel that is not enough: we should be wary of the Ancient Egyptians because their actions were strange even to themselves. In other words, if we were to engage them it would not be simply a case of overcoming our fears of their strange ways, but but reconciling ourselves to the fact that they have not overcome their own fear of their own strangeness.

This then reflects back on to us, and our consciousness of the enigmas within each of us too. As Pete has noted:

In short, if we find ourselves getting frustrated by the enigmatic actions of those we love we must remind ourselves that our own actions are just as mysterious and require just as much hard work to decipher.

An interesting theological thought-experiment around this concerns the moments just before the incarnation, that engagement with the other par excellence. And it’s to that we’ll turn in the next post.

One of the themes I have been wrestling with in the new writing I am doing (firm news on that soon, I hope) is around the subject of empathy for ‘the other.’

Philosophical lines appear to have been drawn between thinkers like Levinas on the one hand, and Hegel/Zizek/Lacan on the other. I personally felt more settled on the Levinasian view, until it was nicely disturbed by some converstations with Pete last weekend.

Levinas’ view is perhaps best summarised by his words that, ‘the other has a face, and it is a sacred book in which good is recorded.’ Or, as Rsyzard Kapuscinski paraphrases in his book ‘The Other’:

‘Stop,’ he seems to be saying to the man hurrying along in the rushing crowd. ‘There beside you is another person. Meet him. […] Look at the Other’s face as he offers it to you. Through this face he shows you yourself: more than that – he brings you closer to God.

Zizek, and others, are very critical of this over-romantic view of the other, and accuse Levinas of too simplistic a view of the idea of ‘neighbour.’ I would agree that this is a risk, and that for a faith that looks to a God whose face was battered beyond recognition, we need to be careful not to have too saccharine view of the face of the other.

Levinas’ position is perhaps towards the optimistic, whereas someone like Lacan would want to affirm that true love for the other does not spring from the ground of our seeing them as good, but from the fact that the other is not perfect.

What I want to discuss in the next post – is where our fear of engaging the other might lie, and how the location of that fear may be important in our attempts to live more empathetically with one another.