“These are the real challenges for those of us not working on the frontline. Not the best song to sing while washing your hands, but how to react responsibly, without losing our sense of solidarity. How to preserve our capacity for empathy when we are frightened, and worried we’re losing time, and imagining the very worst. How to hold on to perspective, without being complacent.”
-- Jennifer O'Connell, feature writer The Irish Times
Statistics and rates about COVID-19 – in print and on television news – feature cold numbers that we accept daily with little emotion and even less empathy. During this deadly pandemic, we have fallen victim to one of the most baffling and sad aspects of the human response to the plight of others: While most of us will see a single death as a tragedy, we can struggle to have the same response to large-scale loss of life. Too often, the deaths of so many simply become statistics we cannot comprehend.
To date – 2:00 p.m., November 11, 2020 – Coronavirus cases in the U.S. number 11,946,186 and deaths stand at 257,078.
As the number of hundreds of thousands who have lost their lives to the virus grows too large to fathom, we respond to the tragedies with news fatigue and general indifference. This psychological phenomenon is known as psychic numbing, the idea that “the more people die, the less we care.”
“If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will."
– Mother Teresa.
University of Oregon psychologist Paul Slovic has been studying the limits of human compassion for decades. He sums up the findings of his research in one sobering phrase: the more who die, the less we care.
"The difference between zero people at risk, and one is huge. But if I told you that there were 87 people in danger in some situation, and then I told you that, oh no, there's 88. You won't feel any different," Slovic explained.
(Andrew Dorn. “Here’s why people care less as more people die and how that impacts the COVID-19 pandemic.” KGW8 Portland. August 11, 2020.)
The writer and activist Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor, once remarked that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
And, we must acknowledge that we have been conditioned into publicly expressing our care. In isolation, no one can see our concern, and we can’t gauge the commitment of others. As a result, during the pandemic, our faith in each other becomes fragile.
British novelist Sam Byers says what we’re experiencing at the hands of Covid-19 is “nothing less than the exposure of our compassion’s limits,” and “we have we've shaped a society that doesn’t care at all.” Byers explains …
“Every fissure of inequality has become a vector of contagion. Those who most need protection have been left unprotected. Those most in need of shelter have been denied it. Those already on the precipice of precarity have tipped, unaided, into crisis. Generations of health inequalities, divided along strata of race, income and class have culminated in a grossly uneven distribution of suffering and mortality. Even the unchecked pollution in the air we breathe may have served as a vehicle for the virus. Our most cruelly policed borders – between who is cared for and who is excluded; who is counted and who is forgotten – are now gaping wounds …
“We will need … to confront the yawning irony at the heart of our modern lives: the fact that, though each of us cares, though each of us is at pains to show that we care, we have nonetheless shaped a society that doesn’t care at all. What we have made together has failed us. We must mourn its failure, and then channel our grief into rage, not at each other, but at the callously indifferent systems whose power we mistook for love.”
(Sam Byers. “We're all keen to show we care, but we've shaped a society that doesn’t care at all.” The Guardian. May 17, 2020.)
In an address to a general audience in the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican August 12, 2020, Pope Francis said the coronavirus pandemic has shed light on other, "more widespread social diseases," particularly attacks on the God-given human dignity of every person. The dignity of the human person, the pope said, is the foundation of Catholic social teaching and all its attempts to apply Gospel values to the way people live and act in the world. Francis said …
"The pandemic has highlighted how vulnerable and interconnected we all are. If we do not take care of each other, starting with the least — those who are most affected, including creation — we cannot heal the world …
“As disciples of Jesus, we do not want to be indifferent or individualistic – two ugly attitudes, which are against harmony. Indifferent, I look the other way. And individualistic, 'only for me,' looking only at one's own interests. Instead, God created human beings 'to be in communion.' We want to recognize the human dignity of every person, whatever his or her race, language or condition. Taking seriously the dignity of each person and recognizing the God-given gift of creation should give rise to both a sense of responsibility and a sense of awe."
(Cindy Wooden. “Pandemic has revealed how often human dignity is ignored, pope says.” The Frances Chronicles. National Catholic Reporter. August 12, 2020.)
We Americans are in deep pain. As we struggle with the cornonavirus, anxiety, depression and other psychological problems are on the rise. It seems as if almost everyone is at the end of their rope these days. Many people barely have enough energy to handle their own problems, so they don’t have their normal ability to think about others.
Certain conditions certainly contribute to what Judith Hall and Mark Leary, professors of social psychology, call the “empathy deficit.” Some of our leaders have dismissed the seriousness of their fellow Americans’ plight. Some ordinary Americans convey a lack of concern when they refuse to socially distance and wear face coverings, or criticize those who do. These people lack understanding what other people are going through and being concerned about them. This empathy deficit makes the medical, economic, political and societal assaults on our fundamental trust in the world even harder to handle.
(Judith Hall and Mark Leary. “The U.S. Has an Empathy Deficit.” Scientific American. September 17, 2020.)
Experiencing psychic numbing, reaching compassion's limits, showing a lack of dignity for the human person, confronting an empathy deficit – whatever the condition, our response to the virus and to those who suffer isn't optional. Under the duress of the pandemic, we must all make decisions about how to live and how to cope.
What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to react to the overwhelming deaths and the destruction? First, we must accept the reality that we are not in this alone. We should understand that the virus does not discriminate, and that as a result it benefits us all to comply with physical distancing guidelines to protect others and ourselves.
“When we’re in touch with our common humanity, we remember that feelings of inadequacy and disappointment are shared by all. This is what distinguishes self-compassion from self-pity. Whereas self-pity says, “poor me,” self-compassion remembers that everyone suffers, and it offers comfort because everyone is human.”
– Kristin Neff, associate professor in the University of Texas at Austin's department of educational psychology who created the Self-compassion Scales
But, there is more to finding the empathy needed now. We must recognize our empathy has likely been formed by an appreciation of our own personal risk. In truth, any regret and sympathy we feel about those who are suffering is, in no small part, because we can imagine that suffering being our own.
Sandro Galea – physician, epidemiologist, author, and Robert A. Knox professor and dean at the Boston University School of Public Health – says, “Surely this moment calls for careful reflection and a reinvestment in compassion as a foundational approach to health. A healthy person and a healthy world are the same. And healthy people and a healthy world are both strengthened immeasurably by having compassion at the heart of health.” Galea reveals …
“Compassion pushes us to understand how we have structured the world, and to ask how we can structure it better, not because we may suffer but because others are suffering and that is not how the world should be.
“An approach to health that is rooted in compassion would help us see beyond ourselves, and place the good of others first. A world rooted in compassion would embrace health as a public good. This means treating health the way we do parks, education, the post office, fire stations, or our environment—in essence, as a crucial piece of the global commons supported by our collective investment for the benefit of all.
“But our focus should always have been, and more importantly should now be, on building a world that is resilient to these challenges. Our focus should be on health as a state of not being sick to begin with, grounded in an approach that balances the health of all in all our actions.
“We must recognize that unless we invest in the preventive conditions of health – like safe housing, good schools, liveable wages, gender equity, clean air, drinkable water, and a more equal economy – any action we take during this and any future pandemic is likely to widen entrenched health gaps. And that situation should be unacceptable to all of us.”
(Sandro Galea. Compassion in a time of COVID-19. The Lancet. Volume 395, Issue 10241 May 22, 2020)
At some point, this pandemic will be over – hopefully soon – and our lives will get back to normal, but our families, friends, coworkers and patients will remember how we responded and treated one another. This is our time to build a legacy of empathy and grace. Self-isolation, quarantine and social distancing can feel challenging and lonely, but we must remind ourselves why we are taking these steps – not only to protect ourselves, but most importantly, to protect those in our community that are most vulnerable to contracting the virus. And, of course, we must pledge to take action and create needed changes.
“Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.”
– Thomas Merton, American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, social activist, and scholar of comparative religion
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