ZEITGEIST

We can’t solve all our problems with anger alone.

Ididn’t think I knew anyone who thinks climate change isn’t real. That it’s the most pressing global issue of our time is universally accepted in my world. Admittedly, that world comprises mainly women, and we all get our news from the same places, listen to the same podcasts, follow the same people on social media, drink coffee from the same brand of ecocup and, on not-rare occasion, turn up in versions of the same outfit. But at a family party recently—a lunch served on plastic plates, eaten with plastic cutlery and washed down with wine in plastic cups—I discovered that one of my closest relatives, a beloved uncle in his early 70s, still believes that global warming is a myth. I’d happened to end up next to him at the table, and as all the plates were being collected and dumped into plastic garbage bags, I blithely mentioned what a shame it was to commit such a gross act of environmental terrorism just to avoid washing up.

Whatever response I was expecting, it wasn’t his similarly breezy remark about my lefty generation getting all worked up about the “planet”—air quotes, his—based on bogus science. Suddenly tense, I said something flatly unkind about baby boomers just wanting climate change to not be real since they’re responsible for it in the first place. I may or may not have added that if he had to choke a dolphin with a disposable fork himself, perhaps he’d be more amenable to a bamboo alternative.

Things developed swiftly from there, and the contention spread in both directions along the table. It’s safe to say that no minds had been changed by the time dessert was served (in single-use bowls). I left early, equal parts furious and ashamed of the impact my behaviour had had on 30 people, including my daughters, who’d watched their mother try to take down a septuagenarian for not agreeing with her, and the hostess, also in her 70s, who had been publicly plate-shamed.

For all the ways our argument manifested at the table, my singular crime was acting without empathy. Although it’s no excuse, I know I’m not the only one struggling to relate to other people with understanding in a social, political and cultural moment defined by conflict, anxiety, outrage and so much noise.

Empathy is “the capacity to both perceive and process the emotions and experiences of others in a way that motivates concern and typically leads to a caring and compassionate response,” says Helen Riess, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard University and the author of TheEmpathyEffect. By that definition, it would be difficult to argue that the majority

of conversations playing out right now about climate, politics, equal rights or immigration would qualify as empathetic.

Because these issues are so contentious and change is so urgently required, it’s easy to feel there just isn’t time for, in Riess’ words, the “listening and becoming quiet… the overriding of our desire to shout back” that the practice of empathy requires. But when it comes to human interaction of any kind, empathy isn’t just a nice idea. “Evolutionary biologists would say that it’s one of the most important human capacities when it comes to our survival as a species,” says Riess. “Without our ability to perceive and understand the needs of others, there would be no helping, co-operation, collaboration or reciprocity—vital traits that are integral to social function and our ability to thrive.”

We’ve unintentionally created a world that makes it difficult to react with empathy first. “If you wanted a system to break empathy, you could scarcely do better than the society we’ve created,” says Jamil Zaki, author of The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World and a psychology professor at Stanford University. Although it doesn’t seem possible that our individual and social expressions of empathy could be measured on a graph, the graph does exist, and the line on it has been tracking downward for a long time, says Zaki. With or without the science to back that up, we know that it’s true. In a U.K. study released last year, only 12 percent of respondents said they felt that society had become more empathetic in the previous year; more than half felt that we’d become less inclined toward other people.

Maybe it’s for that reason we’re starting to see the first signs of a pushback—an effort to make empathy and concern for others our personal and collective preset. In her first address to the nation after the Christchurch mosque massacre in March, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern demonstrated how empathy could radically change the dialogue of an entire country. Although she fiercely condemned the attacker,

her focus was squarely on the victims and on encouraging the grieving public to consider themselves one with the mostly immigrant community affected by the tragedy.

Ardern—at just 39, the world’s youngest female head of government—had spoken previously about her commitment to a new style of leadership. She showed how powerful empathy can be when it’s “mixed with swift, concrete action,” as one New York Times writer put it, “shaping her path as a compassionate but defiant and decisive leader” and setting “high benchmarks for messaging and leadership during this crisis.” Because empathy is socially contagious, each time it’s shown in public, it’s more likely we’ll individually follow.

Similarly, how we’re choosing to work, the kinds of companies we’ll work for and the office culture we expect is changing, thanks in large part to millennials and their renowned emphasis on value-driven work. According to a recent study by Deloitte, nearly 90 percent of millennials believe that financial performance shouldn’t be the chief measure of a company’s success and that factors such as social responsibility and inclusiveness in the workplace are just as key. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian told Wired last year that he has heard about Silicon Valley founders “walking out of investors’ offices because they went to an all-partner meeting and didn’t see a woman.” Expecting empathy and inclusivity toward half the population from the people shaping our future is a low benchmark, but considering the Valley was once a bastion of gender inequality, we’re happy to see it being set.

Even on social media, popularly blamed for an upswing in intolerance, there’s a push toward mindfulness. A new feature on Instagram uses AI to identify offensive comments, with users being asked “Are you sure you want to post this?” before a comment goes live. And when you post on Reddit, a reminder to “Behave like you would in real life” comes up. As Reddit board member Sam Altman once said, “Figuring out how technology can encourage empathy is one of the more interesting and important open research problems in the world right now.”

The public’s change in attitude toward plastic is evident in a collective show of empathy and concern for the environment. The outpouring of grief in reaction to David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II, which shows the devastation that plastic has had on oceans, spurred widespread action. We’re concerned for our world and we’re concerned for those people—mostly in developing countries—whose lives are already being impacted by climate change.

Even the TV we’re watching is increasing our empathy. The Netflix phenomenon WhenTheySeeUs, which tells the story of the wrongful conviction of five teenage boys for assaulting and raping a woman jogging in New York’s Central Park in 1989, shines a light on police racism and highlights how we’re no longer so quick to believe the worst of people from a particular race or class.

“Change doesn’t come in a sweeping movement,” says Riess. “We all want the quick fix—get rid of this politician or leader and everyone will think in a different way—but change comes by listening and understanding others through one little relationship at a time.”

And even if the forces allied against empathy today seem overwhelming, there’s empowerment in knowing that, as human beings, we are social, interdependent creatures, so we’re wired toward it in the deepest evolutionary sense. When we see another person physically injure themselves, the same part of our brain fires as when we ourselves are injured. From the tiniest facial cues, we can infer another person’s emotion and, without thinking, reflect the same emotion. Purely by imagination, we’re able to untether from our experience, enter into someone else’s and be moved to compassion. Connectedness and well-being are felt on both sides. “We run on empathy,” says Riess. “It enriches all of us.” No matter how much empathy we have naturally, we can acquire more through intention, practice or simply by exposure. The decision to tap into it is where personal change begins.

Social change, meanwhile, requires some outrage. “It starts with our abhorrence when people are being mistreated,” says Riess. “The feeling that this cannot be.” Yet stopping at outrage isn’t good for society or us. In last year’s Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, Rebecca Traister put forward the case that “women’s anger spurs creativity and drives innovation in politics and social change, and it always has.” But, citing Traister’s argument in a piece about #MeToo fatigue, New Yorker writer Amanda Petrusich described how after so many stories and so much pain, she “just felt incapacitated by [her] own fury.” “Anger corrodes a person,” she wrote. “Your insides rot. You turn sour. [ It’s] infantilising, endless and frightening. There is no dignified or productive way to scream until your eyes turn red. All thinking about my anger did was make me angrier.” So after the anger, there needs to be empathy—quiet, nourishing rather than depleting, enhanced by practice, socially contagious and, when it evolves into kindness, says Zaki, “a soft skill in a hard world.”

There is another family lunch in my calendar, and, although the gesture feels small, I have called to offer my help with the washing up. The next call I’ll make will be to my lovely uncle, asking if he’ll help me. Because, as I tell my daughters, who will be there too, you can talk and get things done at the same time.

“Change doesn’t come in a sweeping movement. We all want the quick fix... but change comes by listening and understanding others through one little relationship at a time.”