Who is my Neighbor? (And what does that say about me?)

RSA Animate – Empathic Civilisation from The RSA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Rifkin delves into how empathy is directly tied to self-hood. And as the ability to communicate has improved throughout human history (from verbal to written to modern technology), we have continued to redraw and redefine the boundaries of identity. From tribal blood ties to religious ties to national identity. Rifkin suggests that with the technology available today, we have an opportunity to extent our empathy/ties to the whole world.

My question is, is technology enough? Granted we have the opportunity to connect with more people than ever before, but is there a deeper issue at the heart of all of this that he is neglecting? Will we, who are by nature ‘soft-wired for empathy’, learn to embrace such an identity?

I don’t think it’s quite that easy. Technology can enable us to extend our empathy and broaden our sense of identity, but in actuality we could really just start next door, face to face. My immediate community is filled with tensions of identity, culture, race, socioeconomic imbalance, and sexuality.

I think Rifkin has incredible ideas and has seamlessly integrated about 400 years of research into a ten-and-a-half minute speech - not easy. But I also think it’s easy to get into the ideals of world change before facing the reality that is literally outside our front door. (Note: Rifkin does begin to touch on this at the very end - that repression of empathy by parents, government, educational system, etc. leads to aggression, narcissism, materialism, and greed)

I’m challenging myself to start opening my eyes more to whats right in front of my face. To wrestle with what it means to be human. I’m challenging myself to more intentionally step into the tensions I face (or rather that face me) intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and theologically. To start putting words - giving names - to these tensions. Because

“To name something is to be somehow transcendent to it, not fully imprisoned by it, free of it in some way, even if, like Stalin, it has you under its yoke. To name something properly can be prophetic, a defiant act, an act of freedom. Indeed that is what prophets do. They don’t foretell the future, they name the present properly - often times in a way that exposes its faithlessness and injustice.” (Ronald Rolheiser)

(Blog post transferred from my other blog)

Beautiful

In the mystery of breath
we find life.
And I am turned
one cell to the next
into another being;
An entirely new structure
which, somehow,
looks miraculously the same.

Yet when such an image
stares itself too long in the mirror
new blemishes appear-
new finite wrinkles
that tell of
a distant past;
That tell of nothing
but the present.

When we glimpse at ourselves -
that is, when we have the blessing
to glimpse at our image
with new eyes
-
we begin to realize how
foolish we have been to count
ourselves as 'plain'
and are freed
from the vain attempts to
turn aside our vanity.

Instead
we catch
out the corner of our eye
Beauty.

Tell yourself that story.
Tell yourself daily.
And continue to hold on dearly
to that image,
seared so vividly and delicately in
your brain

When you first called
yourself, "beautiful".

Rat Race

Effort fails as the rate race
lingers on into the struggle
for freedom, for glory,
for the torrent gaze of immanence.

I fit the patters of which they speak
Torn by the wrecking ball of
destruction, climbing the
steeple steps for respite.

'Maybe they will not find me here,'
I whisper to myself with
a quivering, half-hearted reassurance.

But the other half of my heart
screams in voiceless desperation
to hold onto faith
for the belief that it does get
better than this - and that it WILL.

This other half of my heart
rips apart the half-filled glass,
shards of glass flying,
so that my face- nay, my head -
can plunge fully into the
solace of life-giving water.

It pants for such stillness,
for such escape.