ART AND EMPATHY
Empathy has become the hot new subject for social
scientists. A relatively new term coined in 1909, it is defined as the ability
to put oneself in another’s shoes. More than sympathy – feelings of compassion,
or pity for the hardship of others- empathy is the ability to feel as the other
feels and may be followed by some form of action – to support, assist or simply
be available.
It is identified as a fundamental skill in a world where
businesses cross continents, migration brings cultures in proximity to one
another, and religious polarization generates wars with devastating
consequences. Not restricted to humans, empathy also informs environmental
policies to achieve human “progress” without destroying nature and animal
habitats that are shrinking with alarming speed.
The creative arts - Literature, Cinema, Music, Art, Dance - have,
since the establishment of human societies, gifted society the opportunity for
empathy. Empathy gives people the
ability to feel the emotional states of others. Leo Tolstoy wrote “ (the)
Hamlet that I carry in me is mine and not Shakespeare‟s" .
Rembrandt’s self-portraits from youth to old age, Van Gogh’s
Starry Night, Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Akram Dost’s new Gwadar ink drawings,
Sadeqain’s crows nests, Khalil Chishti’s
polythene figures, Francis Bacon’s tortured faces, Balchand’s Dying Inayat
Khan, the Gandhara Starving Buddha, Michel Angelo’s Pieta, Degas’ Guitar
Player, Picasso’s Weeping Woman, are
only a few of a long list of artworks that transport us into the world they
create. As far back as 1435, Alberti
writes in his book “On painting”, art moves the soul: “ we weep with the
weeping, laugh with the laughing, grieve with the grieving”
Artists stepping out of the studio and gallery, have created
the Empathy Museum with a travelling and online presence. The exhibit, “A Mile
in my Shoes” quite literally asks people to walk in shoes belonging to a Syrian
refugee, a war veteran, a sex worker while listening to an audio of their
stories.
Empathy can also raise our spirits, listening to jazz,
witnessing a flash mob performance or watching stand-up comic. It can encourage
better understanding, such as the Gillette ad where a young man shaves his
ageing father.
The new term, Conscious Capitalism, developed to ensure
businesses serve all principal stakeholders, including the environment, uses
empathy as the cornerstone of its communication strategies.
The docudrama has replaced the fly-on-the-wall format in new
journalism with a subjective perspective and literary qualities. History ‘O’
level exams may ask students to describe the WWI Battle of the Somme from the
dual perspectives of a French and German soldier.
Museums, whether natural history museums using holograms of animals in their natural habitat,
or through new policies in art museums, attempt to foster empathy, to enable visitors
to understand and feel the experience of others from a new perspective.
Dacher Keltner, co-director of the Greater Good Science
Center and professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, speaks of the science behind
empathy – lowering levels of pro-inflammatory proteins, the role of the vegus
nerve in generating positive emotions.
For him its survival of the kindest, which he believes was Darwin’s conclusion rather than survival of
the fittest which was Herbert Spencer’s analysis of The Descent of Man by
Darwin. A year later, in 1872, Darwin wrote “The Expression of Emotion in Man
and Animals” in which he says sympathy is the strongest of instincts.
School education theorists encourage activities that allow
students to experience storytelling, crafts and culture of other social groups
especially in multicultural societies. Students are able to imagine and
empathize with the emotions and values of other communities.
Fiction and storytelling is a powerful form for empathy and
imagining oneself in another’s life. Another successful method is role reversal
- as Faiz Ahmed Faiz asked “ yahan se shehr ko dekho” ( see the city from here ). The Diary of Anne Frank cannot but move even
the most belligerent of anti-Zionists.
A collaborative course for medical students at UT South
western, “Art of Examination” teaches compassion and empathy to aspiring
doctors through viewing art. Students are required to slow down and think about
each patients in their care the way an artist pays attention to each part of a
painting or sculpture
Edinburgh has established a Festival of Empathy. The
Minneapolis Institute of Art has initiated a Center for Empathy and the Visual
Arts. More and more advertising relies on the viewer feeling empathy rather
than the usual emotions of desire, fear and the traditional range of hard sell ideas.
War is one stage where allowing empathy would make it almost
impossible for soldiers to kill the enemy. Wilfred Owen’s poems written from
the WWI battlefield show the anguish empathy can create for a solder. The harsh
training of a cadet is not only for physical fitness but to make a soldier obey
orders without questioning. Nevertheless, the estimated statistics that in USA,
830,000 Vietnam Veterans and 20% Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer from PSTD
and depression, and that on average, there are 22 suicides per day amongst war
veterans, suggest that it’s almost impossible to exclude empathy. The glib
solution would of course be to end all wars. Or we can ask with Yasmin Anwar of UC
Berkeley “Can art penetrate the walls that divide us, and make us kinder?”
Durriya Kazi
August 17, 2018
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