What would it take for you to risk your life, climbing aboard a boat that was taking on water before it had even cast off the docks, to make a treacherous sea passage, with a crew who were modern-day pirates just last week? In the knowledge, that even if you were successful in crossing the seas, they faced almost certain imprisonment on the other side of the journey?
Honestly, I can’t imagine why someone would do this.
And the reason I can’t understand this is that the experiences these refugees have endured is well beyond my empathetic abilities.
Empathy is all about sharing the feelings with another person and consequently caring about them. In essence, it is a process through which we experience and understand the feeling of others, and that can move us towards a thoughtful and concerned response.
Empathy is not imagining how you might feel if you were in someone elses position. It is imagining and trying to comprehend what the other person feels. The difference between thinking about yourself in another’s situation and thinking about the other person in that situation is simple but profound.
Think for a second about how the police might have treated you after committing a minor misdemeanour and how an aboriginal person might be treated. We’ve done the same thing, but the consequences and our emotional responses could be very different.
Without an understanding of the other person’s position in the world and how they see it, we are blind to their emotional response.
Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal describes empathy as”the ‘glue’ that holds humanity together”.
Empathy is what connects humans meaningfully to each. When the people we know a, even strangers, respond to us in ways that show they understand us, we feel affirmed and worthwhile.
The challenge with empathy is to be open to gaining knowledge and understanding about others. So what are the limitations to this?
We tend to be biased when it comes to empathy. We are better at reading those who are like us than at reading people who are different. If we can’t see ourselves in others, it makes it more difficult to relate.
Researchers conducted an experiment that tested the cognitive response to watching a short video of a hand being priced with a needle. When participants saw a hand that had the same skin colour as their own, the areas of the brain which are involved in a pain response reacted more strongly than when they saw a hand with a different skin tone to their own. The research found that neurologically we are more likely to experience the feelings of someone who is similar to us.
We live in a diverse world, where the divides between groups are wider than ever. In our daily life we spend more time with peope who are like us than ever before. It’s easy to create and believe in stereotypes we create about the others. It’s difficult to find the time and energy neccessary to invest in learning about them and trying to imagine what their daily life is really like. That effort takes empathy.
So does this mean we are doomed to be forever cold to the emotional experiences of people who are different to us?
Perhaps not.
Coming back to our refugee, facing an impossible dilemma, I together with my family have decided to try eating for just one week what they eat. We are taking the “Ration Challenge”. During Refugee Week, which starts on June 16th, We’ll be eating and drinking the same as a Syrian refugee living in a camp in Jordan, based on food packs distributed by Act for Peace. This means 420g Rice, 170g Lentils, 85g Dried chickpeas a tin or sardines , a tin of kidney beans , flour and some vegetable oil.
I am hoping that at the end of the week, I will have trained some of those empathetic pathways in my brain to have a better understanding of what people such as our refugee is thinking.