9/20/21

By Josh Rubin

We are here for a while and then we are not. We will all suffer for some of that time; rich and poor will both know loss and sorrow. There is no border that can protect us from all of it, and even the comfort of wealth and privilege does not fully shield us.

Our nature is a precarious balance of self-interest and empathy, with a sort of inverse square rule that reduces the quanta of empathy as social distance increases. That distance can be increased in effect by turning our eyes and ears away. The distance is reduced, we find as witnesses, when you look straight into someone’s eyes.

Self-interest can fill more space in our consciousness when we feel ourselves and our safety threatened. There is a special irony that makes those most in denial about their empathic side grow somewhat furious about that threat. It is almost as if they were feeling threatened with an invasion from within, and that they feel the need to fortify barriers to that side of their nature.

From within, projected on a world that builds walls. Walls that never quite work. We hurt ourselves by denying our nature. And, when we glimpse through wincing eyes the suffering this causes others, we double down.

We have doubled down at our southern border. We are now, angry at the reminders of our cruelty, willing to crush desperate people who have affronted us with their suffering. Who have shown us their faces.

And who have shown us ours.

Image: Melissa Bowen Rubin