The ability to empathize with or speak for the oppressed isn’t what we think
Understanding the plots in my post Why I work on sustainability leadership here and now despite other things I could do instead clarifies how to see our culture. We live in a culture that causes more death and suffering than any other, including the greatest historical atrocities.
People today often suggest that people today who don’t descend from or look like people who suffered and died can’t understand or empathize with them, implying that their voices shouldn’t count as much. They also imply that people who descended from or look like people who caused suffering and death bear some responsibility by dint of that relation or similarity, or benefited from it.
These views miss our complicity by polluting and depleting in causing suffering and death on far greater scales.
It seems to me that more important in someone’s ability to empathize and feel compassion toward those who suffered or died than if they descended from slaves or looks like them, even in a society that ranks people by that appearance, is how complicit they are today in causing others to suffer and die.
That is, if someone says someone who didn’t descend from slaves or have the skin color of slaves (in the US) can’t understand or their voice should count for less, I suggest that their actions today bear more on their ability to understand and empathize. Americans today of any skin color or descent pollute and deplete more than nearly anyone in the world or in history.
We know we are hurting others in countless daily acts. We do what all humans do when we violate our values. We tell ourselves words to say what we did wasn’t bad but was good, right, and natural—“legitimizing myths.” We teach and train ourselves countless times daily to accommodate violating our values. We do in our minds what all humans do in creating legitimizing myths, including slaveholders and Nazis, as shown by abundant research that Philip Zimbardo compiled in his book The Luficer Effect.
I suggest that our daily behavior determines our ability to understand and empathize with the oppressed and that most of us today think a lot more like the oppressors than we’re comfortable with. Someone who flies around and owns cars today doesn’t seem to have much ground to silence anyone. By contrast, someone who, by polluting and depleting far less, resists or opposes the death and suffering our culture cause seems more likely to be able to understand and empathize with oppressed people.
Incidentally, why did I specify “in the US” regarding the skin color of slaves? Because according to State-Introduced Slavery in Soviet Forced Labor Camps, “In 1949, delegates to the United Nations Economic and Social Council criticized the Soviet Union for exploiting in its camp and colonies up to 14 million people as ‘slaves.’” US slaves numbered about 9 million.
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