Hurmainologie creative dialogue Some sources of ideas for the open mic session with Zenia tomorrow
- Arthur Clark
- Feb 23, 2022
- 6 min read
“I know that it's hard to believe that the people you look to for safety and security are the same people who are causing us so much harm. But I'm not lying and I'm not delusional. I am scared and I am hurting and we are dying. And I really, really need you to believe me.” – Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk about Race
“Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.” - Dr. Benjamin Spock
“Understand, our police officers put their lives on the line for us every single day. They've got a tough job to do to maintain public safety and hold accountable those who break the law.” – Barack Obama
Since I sent out the original email about our dialogue for tomorrow Wednesday February 23 - an open microphone eventfacilitated by Zenia – my sense of the urgency and importance of our response to the death of Latjor Tuel has grown. I already know how I will use my 20 minutes or so at the open microphone. I will be asking you to contribute your ideas for how we can respond to this in a way that changes the future of Calgary. The purpose of this reminder email is to give you some resources ahead of time that you could use as a source of ideas in responding to my question.
A healthy body responds to an injury by setting processes of healing in motion. A healthy community would obviously do the same thing. Below this email, I will append a book synopsis that may give you some good ideas for how we can do this. The following TED talks may also help you in responding to my question tomorrow night.
The first of the TED talks, and certainly my favorite, is this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYryJIvCXx8
by Danielle Outlaw, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Outlaw
who was Chief of Police in Portland, Oregon at the time of her TED talk.
My second pick would be this one, which illustrates the complexity of situations the police must deal with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pejPe3DjkcQ
Here are three others, in no particular order of my preference – one of which might be your own top pick.
The Black Community. The Police. The Solution:
Mending broken trust: Police and the communities they serve:
Warrior vs Guardian mindsets in policing:
This will undoubtedly be an opportunity to make Calgary a better place to live. Here is the link provided by Shinobu:
Topic: Humainologie Dialogue Session Time: February 23, 2022 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Every week on Wed, until Feb 23, 2022, 8 occurrence(s) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86365003921?pwd=RkRVQVkvaHhML3FoYkRybHpOak1UUT09 Meeting ID: 863 6500 3921 Passcode: 12345
Arthur
Book: (Jamil Zaki) The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World (2019)
If you are old enough to recall the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, you know how easily we human beings can drive ourselves to extinction. The thesis developed in this book is of potentially survival-or-extinction importance. In his Introduction Jamil Zaki writes: “In five years, or one, the world could be a meaner place or a kinder one. Our social fabric could further tear or start to mend. We don’t owe others empathy, especially if they meet us with cruelty or indifference. But if we succumb to our lazier emotional instincts, we will all suffer more. The direction we take – and our collective fate – depends, in a real way, on what each of us decides to feel.”
The author’s parents had divorced. The most important lesson he learned was that both of them were wonderful people, but their priorities (family for his mother, achievement for his father) were very different and they failed to communicate. It didn’t have to be that way. Empathy could have made a difference.
Intelligence (and empathy) are not hard-wired. Genetics plays a role, but within the constraints imposed by our genes, empathy like intelligence can be increased intentionally. Just as geologists in the twentieth century came to accept the idea that land masses could move (continental drift), so psychologists have come to accept the malleability of empathy and IQ. The author refers to this as a shift from a “fixist” to a “mobilist” way of thinking both in geology and in psychology. Yes, we can enhance our intelligence and our empathy if we work at it. This has been the basis for a variety of programs designed to enhance the empathy of participants. Such programs can benefit marriages; reduce the recidivism among young offenders; and reduce tensions in a geopolitical crisis. Sometimes the situation is improved using very slight “nudges” in the direction of greater empathy.
Empathy is affected by early childhood experience, as for example children raised in Romanian institutions infamous for their maltreatment of the children, who had remarkably low levels of emotional intelligence when compared to children adopted out of those institutions into families that treated the children well.
And yet suffering in some cases can increase the empathy of those who have been through it. There is an “altruism born of suffering.” The author cites evidence that 80% of women who have survived rape have deeper empathy than before their traumatic experience. A similar phenomenon was observed by Victor Frankl among inmates of German concentration camps. Post-traumatic growth is almost as common as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to the author.
Whether empathy or some other mindset is appropriate depends on context. Empathy is unlikely to help a boxer stepping into the ring to fight a powerful opponent; anger may be a much more useful emotion for success in that contest.
When the aim is to enhance empathy (among diverse ethnic groups in a city for example) it will probably be easier to do if resources are abundant. Scarcity (hard economic times) will often cause groups to “circle the wagons.”
Poetry, theatre, and fiction can be surprisingly helpful for enhancing empathy. After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, a serialized radio theatre piece which portrayed Hutus and Tutsis bridging their hostility became important in restoring normal social relations.
Empathy programs can help members of hate groups (Neo-Nazis and others) get out. Tony McAleer had been a leader in the anti-Semitic White Aryan Resistance (WAR). He was smart but had suffered from his father’s failed parenting. Jamil Zaki uses the term “hatred” to mean a lack of compassion, not necessarily associated either with anger or with a desire for the targeted group to suffer. Hatred had defined Tony’s life. When his first child, a son, was born he resolved not to make the mistakes that his father had made with him. Kids are expensive and Tony’s public bigotry jeopardized his employability. He discovered an online journal Life After Hate with stories like his own. In 2011, he met with a group of ex-hate group members who shared their experiences, from which common themes emerged. Leaving WAR, Tony worked with others to expand Life After Hate into a non-profit that works to bring people out of hate groups, beginning by building members’ compassion for themselves.
A book club designed for young offenders who had repeatedly been convicted of crimes has shown preliminary evidence of success. The program arose from the collaboration of a professor of literature and a judge frustrated with the rate of repeat crimes by many whom he had convicted. Reading such works as Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and discussing them, the participants became better able to see the stories of their own lives through different lenses and to re-imagine what their futures could be. The professor leads the group and the judge joins the group in its second session to discuss the books as a participant in the class. The program is hugely cost-effective, about $500 per student compared to $30,000 for a year of jail time for reoffenders.
Empathic health care professionals can suffer burnout. At Johns Hopkins Medical Centre, a Resilience in Stressful Events (RISE) program established a hotline for health care professional experiencing such stress to call a colleague selected for their empathic listening skills. The use of that program has increased as professionals overcome their cultural taboo against asking for help themselves.
Burnout can be avoided if empathic individuals learn to distinguish their distress when they witness suffering from their concern for those who are suffering. By consciously reducing their own distress and acting on their concern, they can often be more effective and avoid burnout. So empathy can be influenced by the individual herself, but it can also be influenced by the group. “Organizations that emphasize kindness flourish, even when it comes to the bottom line. …The design and consulting firm IDEO encourages employees to set aside time to help colleagues and considers generosity during hiring and promotion.
“Any organization, private or public, large or small, loose or formal can move in this direction. We are not merely individuals fighting to empathize in a world of cruelty. We are also communities, families, companies, teams, towns, and nations that can build kindness into our culture, turning it into people’s first option. We don’t just respond to norms; we create them.”
Limitations of space for this book synopsis necessitate omitting many of its other substantive and evocative details, such as the origin of police forces in London in 1829 with a mandate for connectedness with community, to an increase in police violence in response to violence directed against policemen in the 1970s. In schools, the “zero tolerance” policies became manifestly counterproductive. This and so much else I must pass over. Suffice it to say that in my own view this book is essential reading for our times.
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