In a world that feels increasingly broken, where should we place the most attention to vital global social issues: Should we prioritize addressing the risks to healthcare? Or the silent genocide of the Rohingya people? How much should we address immigrant and refugee rights while also eradicating the odious cultures of racism, sexism, and xenophobia that still, terrifyingly, linger? When it comes to assuaging these social ills, we have to go back to the root cause of these social problems: a lack of empathy.
As an individual who has dedicated my academic work to understanding the roots of human moral development, witnessing contemporary America’s pervasive aloofness towards cultivating empathy is simply deplorable to witness. While I don’t wish to romanticize a past which always had its share of injustices, it seems that the human capacity for empathy has declined; society, writ large, is simply less empathetic. A study from the University of Michigan found that today’s college students score 40 percent lower than their counterparts from the 1970s in the ability to understand what others are feeling. The biggest drop came at the turn of the millennium and some scholars suggest that the decline of empathy is primarily because people spend less time interacting face-to-face and more time staring at screens.
The most potent anecdotal data for the drop in empathy, of course, emerged over the last year. The rise of President Donald J. Trump is an immediate parable to display what happens when empathy towards others is never cultivated meaningfully. There are many examples of the president’s behavior in this regard, from the tone-deaf response to the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico to the ban on transgender troops in the military, but perhaps the most notorious example to date occurred just this past October when President Trump telephoned a Gold Star widow whose husband had been killed in Niger. In media accounts, the President was reported to have had difficulty remembering the soldier's name, made flippant remarks about the soldier knowing what he got himself into, and dragged the nation into a two-week scandal because of his inability apologize in the face of his mishandling of the situation. When news emerged about how upset the widow became after the call, President Trump accused the widow of lying.
Unfortunately, a higher level of education or income does not necessarily confer empathy. A recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute found that only 49 percent of whites with a college degree considered child poverty a major problem, versus 60 percent of whites with less education. America could benefit by following the example of Denmark, perennially ranked as the world's happiest country, where programs to foster empathy begin as early as preschool and are an integral part of primary education. Indeed, there are programs emerging today that are focused on cultivating empathy in infants; we certainly need more of these innovative pedagogic models for upcoming generations of Americans.
In 2006, then-Senator Barack H. Obama warned that the “empathy deficit” was more problematic than any budget deficit. He noted that society's goals promote being “rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained,” that they encouraged blaming the poor for their poverty, and that these feelings were harder to resist as we age. Years later, after Obama ascended to the Oval Office, he explained the importance of empathy in jurisprudence when choosing a Supreme Court justice: “I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook; it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives.” His words still ring true. For society to progress, it is crucial that men learn what it means to be a woman, that white people understand the struggles of being a person of color, that straight people understand the discrimination felt by the LGBTQ community, that citizens understand what it means to be an immigrant or refugee, and that the rich understand what it means to be poor. Can we learn to hear others’ narratives even when these narratives conflict with our own construction of the world?
Of course, one can never fully understand the plights of others. Nonetheless, one can move beyond being oblivious or merely feeling pity to cultivating a sincere sense of empathy. It means transitioning from self-absorption towards other-awareness. It is incumbent on American society to be moved toward compassion for those who are suffering. Such emotional expansion into the lives of the vulnerable not only opens the mind, but heals the soul as well.
Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz is the President & Dean of the Valley Beit Midrash, the Founder & President of Uri L’Tzedek, the Founder and CEO of The Shamayim V’Aretz Institute and the author of twelve books on Jewish ethics. Newsweek named Rav Shmuly one of the top 50 rabbis in America and the Forward named him one of the 50 most influential Jews.