The Necessity Of Empathy To Break The Cycle Of Fear-Driven Violence

When we make the choice to move away from fear, the greatest of all possibilities opens up; when fear is moved aside, the human capacity for empathy greatly increases. Empathy drives you to lift others up. Fear drives you to tear them down.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

I was struck by a line from the women's prison drama, Orange is the New Black, when two white supremacist inmates talk about how the one can't read. The illiterate inmate ponders what she might learn from reading and says, "All of the sudden you're like 'what if other people are having experiences that are different than mine but are still totally legit?' And what if I'm supposed to think about them before I start judging their lives?" The other inmate replies, "That's chaos," to which the illiterate inmate quickly ends the thought with "No thank you!"

This exchange was striking in light of all of the gun violence that has been erupting across the U.S. People of all races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations have been losing their lives to violence driven out of fear; out of the inability to empathize with another's situation except the perpetrator's own perceptions. And the more violence that is perpetrated, the more fear it creates and continues on as another form of violence surfaces again.

I experienced what the power of fear can do first hand when I visited Rwanda last summer. No citizen is untouched from a gut-wrenching genocide that they experienced in 1994 that was driven by this exact type of divisiveness. Fear drove neighbors to slaughter neighbors. Every single person I met had either lost family members who were murdered or had family members who were in jail for perpetrating the murders.

The most common reaction that people have when I relate the horrific stories heard in Rwanda is, "how could anyone be capable of killing their neighbor?" In this case, a wedge was driven between two groups - Hutus and Tutsis - over decades, passed down from generation to generation. Then hate propaganda was spread via the radio to the Hutu, telling them that the Tutsi would take their food or harm their families. The propaganda was repeated over and over until many Hutu perceived that in order to save themselves, they had to kill the Tutsi, even if many were close friends, resulting in the deaths of approx. 1 million Rwandans in 100 days.

During the time of the genocide, Hutus began to identify as Hutu rather than Rwandan. No. 9 on the list of the "Hutu Ten Commandments" states, "The Hutu, wherever they are, must have unity and solidarity and be concerned with the fate of their Hutu brothers." Imagine what the state of the world would be if we all adopted this narrow view. Or maybe we already have? When we start identifying ourselves by groups of people with similar characteristics, intentional or not, the lines are being drawn between our differences. The inmate in Orange is the New Black clearly had it backward, it would be chaos if we don't start considering that others might have experiences different to ours that are 'totally legit.'

This cycle of fear is powerful, and as we've witnessed, it can be deadly. I've often wondered what would have happened if different propaganda spread, letting the Hutu know that the Tutsi shared the same challenges and fears. That ethnic boundaries wouldn't help but relationships with their neighbors is what would save them.

When we make the choice to move away from fear, the greatest of all possibilities opens up; when fear is moved aside, the human capacity for empathy greatly increases. Empathy drives you to lift others up. Fear drives you to tear them down.

I don't even want to imagine that amount of fear that a person must drown in to resort to lashing out in violence. This cycle has to be broken, and the only way that will happen is if we actively work to set fear aside and let empathy in. When there is a free flow of empathy and connectivity, it delivers an understanding and embrace of a situation, not control and immediate action.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot