It’s that time of year when the righteous scorn other people’s charitable donations. This year, high on the ridicule list, is helping Philippines’ typhoon victims.
Here’s a comment from Al.com’s (Alabama news) Press Register regarding Walmart putting out donation bins to collect food from customers for Walmart’s employees:
- Help where it’s really needed: I heard that the Midwest got torn up by tornadoes, and it’s 20 or 30 degrees and snowing up there, but who cares?. Let’s go 3,000 miles where those Filipinos are; they’re the ones who need help, to heck with us Americans. What are we talking about trying to help an American; let’s get overseas and don’t help any veterans or anybody in America, but let’s go help anybody else.
I have this to say to the missing-the-point anonymous, comment maker: Well, quick, pack your bags and catch a train to Illinois. Filipinos are the second-largest population of Asian-Americans, and there are lots of “those” Filipinos in the Midwest, so you can even help Filipinos and Americans at the same time. Off you go.
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Why would someone say that? There’s a psychological term for this known as the empathy gap. Extensive experimentation has been done on this phenomenon, but I’m going to over-simplify it so we have a working definition, which basically is: if you haven’t experienced it, or in this case haven’t survived a typhoon and don’t know any of “those” Filipinos, then it’s harder to empathize. However, if the Walmart commenter was now to have a positive, personal experience with a family from the Philippines and was asked (while still in the glow of the home-cooked dinner with their Filipino friends) how they’d respond to the Walmart topic, their response would be entirely different. The empathy gap also has to do with the current state one is in when one makes a decision. If you’re feeling no pain, chances are your prediction of how pain feels is less accurate.
Bridging the empathy gap is a theme often explored in Hollywood. I asked my Facebook friends for film titles related to the topic and 123 comments later, after a whole pile of craziness on my wall, the list was large with overt examples such as Clint Eastwood’s racist character in “Gran Torino” and his transformative relationship with his Hmong neighbors, and Oscar Schindler in “Schindler’s List,” a Nazi party member who goes from profiting off of cheap Jewish labor to saving as many of his workers as he can from death camps.
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The empathy gap experiments included research on pain. If someone has not experienced the pain to be administered, they seriously underestimate what that pain would be like. When this is coupled with lack of empathy regarding sexual orientation, or race — at its most drastic — you get results such as the torture, extermination and medical experimentation that occurred at Nazi death camps or Japanese facilities during World War II. At a lesser degree of drastic, Rush Limbaugh experiences back pain and after years of denouncing drug use becomes an addict himself.
This isn’t just a white race phenomenon. General Shirō Ishii, who wanted to be known as the “father of biological weapons,” got approval from Emperor Hirohito to run horrific medical experimentation units in China. His scientists saw their victims as pieces of wood, logs to be chopped. They conducted surgeries on prisoners without anesthetics, such as vivisecting people or cutting off limbs and attaching them to the other side of the body.
Today in the U.S., the empathy gap and political decisions impact the rights of entire groups of people, such as gay marriage. If Dick Cheney didn’t have a gay daughter, would he have stood up for gay marriage? Wow, did I just say that Dick Cheney has empathy?
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The affluent make decisions daily that affect people who have difficulty affording groceries. I read an article several years ago on CNNMoney about Gary Buslik, an entrepreneur (now also a university lecturer in Chicago), and I’ve heard he gives a cash gift to his newspaper man every holiday season. Buslik is the author of “A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean”; he’s Jewish but Republican, and I’ve interviewed him to give you an example of economic empathy gap:
Gary Buslik: What do you mean Jewish BUT Republican? Most of my Jewish friends ARE Republican. Fuck you. Also, my newspaper man is an asshole. His fucking Democrat car leaks oil on my Republican driveway. Fuck him, too. Cheers.
Kirsten Koza: It’s that time of year when people are busy opening their check books and making donations to various charities and causes. Would you be more likely to donate money to orphans in Africa, victims of the typhoon in the Philippines, or to a food bank for the needy in Chicago?
GB: None. I donate to animal charities only. And I’m absolutely, totally against using public money for this kind of so-called relief. I understand that wasn’t your question, but print it anyhow. Can you make this brief?
It’s already getting on my nerves.
KK: What are you doing for Hanukkah tonight? Or do you spell it Chanukah?
Have you ever heard of the empathy gap?
How do you think the economic gap could be decreased in the U.S.?
GB: 1. Watching “The O’Reilly Factor” and sharing a turkey sandwich on challah bread with my cat. Or do you spell it hallah? Or, for that matter, do you spell it kat?
2. My empathy gap is none of your business. What’re you, Canadian?
3. Better border control.
KK: Is it true your former neighbor parked a helicopter at his house, or was it a plane?
GB: Is this going to be another of your boring, pointless interviews?
KK: Helicopter or plane?
In “A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean” you stayed at some pretty swank-sounding hotels. How much were you paying a night?
Don’t you think if poorer Americans had access to good free health care (like Canadians do in Canada) there would be more productive Americans in the work force?
GB: 1. Helicopter. Why is this relevant to anything?
2. We stayed at nice places because Jewish men spoil their wives. I never understood why. I also bought her expensive jewelry, but that didn’t pay off either. It was a while ago, when we were still married.
3. Oh, God. Do you know how many Canadians come to the States for medical treatment before Canada makes them die waiting? I honestly can’t think of a single thing that Canada does better than the United States, except maybe ham. Maybe.
KK: Your new neighborhood prefers the Learjet, though, I gather?
Have you ever starved?
GB: 1. I noticed you didn’t spell it “neighbourhood.” I’ll tell you something: if you ever tried to use unnecessary U’s in my neighborhood, you wouldn’t leave with that head of kinky hair. Interpret that any way you want.
2. Yes, I starved to death in the late 1970s. I’m now dead. This isn’t me; it’s my cousin Sherwin.
And that, folks, is an example of the ultimate lack of empathy, and possibly the reincarnation of Ebenezer Scrooge (before the ghosts visit), except Buslik likes cats and the typhoon victims lose again.
