November 03, 2005
Empathy for the Devil
by Lorraine Berry
My instincts of late have been to shut down. I’m tired, I’m struggling with health issues, and the news is such a tragic clusterfuck that I just want to turn off the lights and “say goodnight, Gracie.” Not permanently. No. I fantasize about going off to live in a civilized country, and spend my days in coffee houses talking about cabbages, kings, and beauty and truth.
And yet. I’m also conscious of trying to stay present, and here, and aware. And awareness hurts. At the moment, it physically hurts; I spend significant parts of my day trying to imagine that I exist simply from the neck up. But I’m finding that as I’ve shut down access to my body, I’ve also shut down the part of me that is capable of empathizing with my brother and sister travelers. I don’t want to feel my own pain; why would I want to feel theirs, I ask myself. And then I wonder why I feel so disconnected from the rest of the world, from my politics, my faith, the people in my life whom I love.
The news this week scares me. More dead in Iraq. Alito’s nomination. Crap. I don’t even want to go over the list. Even the little things—the whole ridiculous American Girls controversy, for example—it feels as if they would overwhelm me if I would actually let them in. I try to make myself impervious, calcified, impenetrable.
For me, as a woman, these feelings are alien. I am not accustomed to feeling hard. I have actively practiced fluidity; it is both my physical reality and my way of being in the world. I allow knowledge and the world in; I allow feelings and words to flow out. Now, I feel stoppered up. I am a stone.
I find myself wondering if this is what it feels like to be a right winger. Whether the key to a non-compassionate politics is the absence of feeling for the self. Think about it: all those rules about how other people should behave. Why? Why is it so threatening if other people are doing things of which you disapprove? Does it make the pain of denial less if other people don’t get to do it, too? Does it make your life meaningful if you think that you’re the one who has the rules right?
I am trying to use this experience, this experience of feeling like crap and not wanting to care about anything, as a window. I’m trying to develop compassion for people with whom I not only disagree—I don’t lose my empathy for people with whom I disagree, after all—but people whose insistence that they are right is such a threat to me and the ones I love. I am trying to use this experience, of feeling overwhelmed and shitty, as AGOG—“another goddamned opportunity for growth” as we call it in the rooms.
I don’t want to feel compassion for people like Bill Frist or Tom DeLay or the women of CWA. I would like to believe that they are evil. I would like to live in a world of binary oppositions in which I know exactly what I am by measuring myself against the things I am not. But I can’t. Perhaps this is why, despite feeling like I can’t give a crap about anything outside of my tiny world at present, I don’t see this as some slide into the dark side. It’s a temporary state. I won’t be here in the dark much longer. So, I’m trying to take something from this experience. I’m looking around the cave and noticing all the creatures that live here, too. They seem sad to me. I wish that I could offer them a way out, but they seem intent on remaining trapped inside, frightened of the shadows. I know the light’s coming.
Little Summer Poem Touching The Subject Of Faith
Mary Oliver
Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear
anything, I can't see anything --
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green
stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,
nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,
the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker --
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.
And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,
the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.
And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt
swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?
One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.
Posted by in Body, Culture, Ephemera, Epiphany, Health, Life, Poetry, Testimonial, Writing
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Say it loud, say it proud!
"Now, I feel stoppered up. I am a stone"
That could be emotional exhaustion, or just constipation.
Either way, you should probably just take some time off from tv news & various online media. Stressing about things you can't change is bad for your mental health.
2
Comment by: Phil at November 4, 2005 01:30 PM
Lorraine, thank you for sharing your feelings during this difficult time for you physically, and know that your attempt to understand others whose views are different from your own at such a time reveal, in my mind at least, a highly evolved state of being.
Best of luck to you in these next couple of weeks, and as you have said, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Please stay well. The blogosphere needs you.
3
Comment by: Mike at November 4, 2005 09:15 PM
Why is it so threatening if other people are doing things of which you disapprove?
Its not that people are doing things they disapprove of, its that a new public moral consensus has arrived that has displaced the old religious one. Put yourself in their shoes. The culture moved past something that was supposed to be forever, and changed the law to reflect the new values. You've been left behind, and everything you believe is eternal is now in the dustpile of history. Society has no use for you or your moldy old books about make-believe gods, why can't you just accept your irrelevance and inevitable extinction? The people have spoken! They have no use for you!
Apparently the religious right aren't going quietly, although I still think it would be a whole lot easier if we just found something for them to do to make them feel needed and relevant, as long as they agreed to say out of the law making and people's bedrooms. They feel that people are trying to get rid of them, and I can't stay that they are wrong. Quite frankly, no matter what their sins are, I can't see how shoving them out the door is a compassionate way of handling the situation. It seems childish, and unfortunately, I think that some liberals respond to them in that way because, after all, they started it.
4
Comment by: happy dude at November 5, 2005 09:35 AM
Firstly and foremost, I wish you well with your health issues and I hope for a complete recovery.
But why all the anger? Do you really believe that EVERY republican/conservative is evil? Do all republican mothers eat their children? If someone does not agree with you, who appointed you the moral voice of the universe to say they are not only wrong but bad?
While I'm not surprised to see that you'd like to be in a civilized country, like France (whoops! forgot those rioters, haven't we) spending your days in coffee houses talking about cabbages and kings and beauty, I'd like to know who you believe should pay for this? You? Those evil republicans?
Anyway, get well and think about an anger management course!
5
Comment by: lorraine at November 5, 2005 09:50 AM
Mike,
I don't think anyone is telling "believers" that they can't believe what they want. The spirit of ecumenicism is alive and well among most people I know; I have respect for people who have found a faith that provides them comfort and structure. The problem, as you mention, is when their need for comfort and structure leads them to think that they need to enforce the decisions they've made for the conduct of their private lives, and insist that everyone live the same way. And fundamentalism--of any stripe--tends to insist on a view of human nature that while claiming "compassion," is anything but.
I also think that those who think they've been "pushed out of the way" also need to read history a little more closely. There was no mythological past in which there was universal consensus. Even in their "godly" cities, such as Geneva, Calvin burned at the stake those who disagreed with him.
6
Comment by: lorraine at November 5, 2005 09:56 AM
Happy Dude,
I believe I used the expression--rightwing. If you want to use that to identify the Republican party, well, those are your words, not mine.
With all due respect, I think you mis-read what I wrote. You are putting words in my mouth. What I am talking about are people whose inability to feel compassion for themselves leads them to have no compassion for others. The other stuff that you inserted in there are not my words, they're yours. In fact, in reading what you wrote, you put me in a country I didn't mention, assumed that I didn't work for a living, and assumed that I think people are evil. None of which are true.
So, while I accept your good wishes for my recovery, my suggestion would be that you take a literacy course.
7
Comment by: lorraine at November 5, 2005 09:56 AM
Phil,
Thank you for your good wishes.
8
Comment by: Mike at November 5, 2005 06:28 PM
I don't doubt that you and many other people have a respect for people of faith, but I think your reasonable voices may be shouted down because they aren't strong enough against the fundamentalists. But in doing so, it may actually incite fundamentalism and make liberals susceptible to nonsense attacks of being "against people of faith." There are people on both sides who want to provoke a dramatic, high-noon showdown of ideologies and don't want to just get along.
1
Comment by: sum guy at November 4, 2005 12:59 AM