I Feel Your Pain, See Your "Empathy," and Raise You a Little EST

Empathy is our newest cultural celebrity, now that Susan Boyle has collapsed in the face of the unrelenting beast of huge and instant fame. (But we really feel for her and understand her let-down and nervous exhaustion as if it were our own. Honest.)

Like "networking" years ago or "creating community" more recently -- or Diversity, Synergy, Empowerment, Wellness, and Green -- empathy is the current buzzword bait dropped into our civilization's fighting cage.

Lionized by the president and blackjacked by conservatives, the empathy scrap is furious. The pro side was luxuriously argued on truthout by George Lakoff; Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, in his own uniquely articulate style, dissed it as "empathy right on your behind."

But the historical trajectory of this empathy thing has some roots and I know where they lie because it was right here in San Francisco and I was around then.

These warm and fuzzy feelings we're debating now are a direct backlash to a '70s movement/hustle that was the antithesis of empathy. It was about being guilt-free and basking in the wonderfulness and perfection of yourself. This deal was a conscious-numbing plague of narcissism that crept into the upper reaches of the Jimmy Carter White House, and had hundreds of thousands of adherents who came to believe they were fine just the way they were. No feeling other people's icky pain and suffering necessary.

They called it EST.

Right. That thing. Erhard Seminar Training, the brainchild of former encyclopedia salesman and new age wizard Werner Erhard (actually Jack Rosenberg; apparently not everything was perfect "the way it is" -- as his EST slogan had it.)

To be fair, Mr. Erhard got a lot of people on board his feel-good wagon, including celebrities (John Denver, Diana Ross), political wives and a lot of young adults who felt the flames of '60s social activism licking the edges of their BMWs and just didn't want to have to feel guilty about their own creature comforts.

As I saw it, EST boiled down to this: don't feel bad. Don't worry about anything but yourself. And you're pretty damn perfect the way you are. Who doesn't want to hear that, even if you're Woody Allen?

Brilliant! As James Lipton would say.

Werner Erhard even started an offshoot called The Hunger Project where, so far as I could tell, no one actually got fed, directly. But the message seemed to be that you don't have to actually do anything about world hunger. Just acknowledging its existence is enough. How freeing is that!? You could do that and play a game of squash at the same time.

While he brilliantly synthesized useful tips from Zen Buddhism, Dale Carnegie, and mass hypnosis, his jewel of conscription was a full weekend of large room, haranguing lectures from Jack himself where no one could leave to pee the entire time.

Suspicious by nature, I went to an EST orientation briefing around 1971 after hearing about this "life-changing experience" from friends whose eyes seemed a little opaque from their own seminars. I took a lot of notes and was immediately surrounded by several EST coordinators demanding to know what I was doing. Always a good sign that something's up other than what people are telling you.

What I recognized in the EST shtick there were some basics I'd heard when I briefly got trained and sold Great Books of the Western World door-to-door to support my journalism habit in my late teens. Sure enough, when I looked it up, Mr. Erhard had the same job years before, though I'm sure he was much, much better at it than I was. ("And if you sign tonight, I can throw in a bookcase for free!")

Today, President Obama and many others are leading a rebellion against the self-comforting bath of EST, and in a big way.

Caught up in his own empathy epidemic, Mr. Obama is now inviting evil Iran to US embassy Fourth of July celebrations overseas. Just check the firecracker load carefully.

Even Dick Cheney feels someone else's urges and has signed up for the same sex marriage camp. (Did Gavin Newsom reach out to him personally?)

It's unclear where all this will end, but let's remember where it started: with Werner Erhard's "revelation" on highway 101, driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, when the me-generation was conceived.

Vestiges of what became EST are still around and their lawyers can be pretty assertive. So let me hasten to add, watching out for my own behind, that this is all my opinion.

I'm sure an empathetic judge like Sonia Sotomayor would defend my right to have one of those.

Comments

[howard16]

Mr. Bronstein - Aside from your perceptive thought that Werner indeed was a catalyst for the rise of spirituality in our culture, your article is typical nonsense spoken by someone who is simply repeating lazily accepted media clichés without any direct experience of what they are writing about.

You obviously have not taken est or Landmark because if you had you would not be repeating such untruths. The fact that in the course of 32 years only a miniscule percentage of over one million people who have done the trainings have had anything negative to say is remarkable.

The training (est and Landmark), broke new ground and was a direct challenge to the psychiatric establishment that had so embedded itself in the popular culture as the only way to deal with emotional problems.

Consequently, the media could only focus on the methods of the program and completely ignored the results, pinning cutesy labels such as the "me" generation. The truth is that when people get beyond their ego, they are much more likely to reach out to others, not less likely.

My own relationship with Werner lasted seven years in which I volunteered my time so that others could experience their own value as human beings. He is a man who is dedicated to making others great and can be very challenging to be around. I did not always appreciate what he was trying to do at the time but in retrospect my admiration for this man is boundless.

[Guzzy]

It's interesting that you would cite the recent activities by President Obama as "a rebellion against the self-comforting bath of EST, and in a big way." I found your post by doing a search to find out if the president had ever done the EST training because many of the things he does remind of the EST "philosophy." Might want to actually have a better understanding of what the EST shtick is before you write an article about it. I'm not suggesting the president does have ties with EST or its predecessors, but I have participated in the programs and in listening to him and watching his approach, it made me wonder if he had at some point.

[jasonmannington]

This broad attack on the est training appears to be pretty much a textbook case of the big lie - criticize something you don't like by saying the exact opposite of the truth.

As someone who took the est training 30 years ago, I can say that what I was taught was to get over myself - stop worrying about myself and start worrying about making a difference for others, which is exactly the opposite of what Bronstein alleges ("Don't worry about anything but yourself").

Similarly, the Hunger Project (which Werner Erhard did not start, by the way) was revolutionary in that it realized that food donations, as laudable as they are, did nothing to actually change the cycle of hunger or poverty afflicting societies. Instead, the Hunger Project pioneered other approaches which have made a long term difference, such as microcredit and empowering the hungry to rebuild their communities.

I also find laughable the ridiculous notion asserted by the author that "President Obama and many others are leading a rebellion against the self-comforting bath of EST". Empathy for others was always at the heart of the est training, and just about every est graduate I know these days worked tirelessly for Obama to be elected, because he embodied the very empathy that they believed in!

[NAPinMtPSC]

I believe EST is now called Landmark Education. I've had some very unpleasant experiences dealing with people who are initiates of this method.