Empathy

Katy Perry's song 'The One That Got Away' is one of those tracks that is loaded with meaning, not just with the intention behind the lyrics but the experiences that people associate with it when they hear it.  This is one of those songs where the impression people have of it will vary with the emotion that it evokes, or the lack of emotion if people don't have a connection to it at all.  As for the merit of the song itself, I quite like it but I know that when a work of art evokes emotion there is inevitably the question of how much the emotion effects your ability to criticise it objectively.

This concept isn't one that is limited only to music, it spans almost every art form and it even goes beyond art and invades our lives in other ways.  The idea can perhaps be best described as "emotional blinding" where a concept is loaded with emotion to the point where logic and reason are overridden.  When the head battles the heart, the latter invariably wins, even when you try and fight it, even if you manage to have self control, that strength crumbles because emotions persist longer than our logic and reason, probably because they so often seem to lack both of these things.

The idea of blinding people with emotion however has become perverse and incredibly pervasive.  It has gone beyond the remit of the artist and to an extent it has been turned into a commodity, to be bought and sold and to be employed in the purchase and sale of other products to increase revenue.  Advertising and Marketing increasingly seek to form emotional connections to products, from mascots for brands, through to manipulative advertising that attempts to exploit your emotions.  Guarding yourself against this pervasion is difficult, for the same reasons as it is difficult for us to deny our emotions when we are confronted with conventional triggers.  Ignoring the pain of heartache is difficult regardless of the source of that heartache.

When we live in a world where we are bombarded with emotions all the time and bombarded with things telling us how we should feel, how do you stay true to yourself?  For some it seems the answer is to disconnect from humanity, not by refusing to engage in social discourse or by unplugging the Internet, but rather by avoiding any emotional attachment at all.  How they manage to do this, I do not know, but some people seem to be perfectly capable of completely detaching themselves from reality.  20 years ago if you had told me people would be doing this I would have been genuinely concerned, and like many others of the time I would have worried that this sounded like psychosis and yet this seems to be the default for so many.

I will be labelled as a bleeding heart liberal by some, and to be honest I'd rather hold that label than hold the label of psychopath incapable of empathy.  The former label is dismissed by those who use it as insignificant and simply criticism, but the same people take offence to the latter label and refuse to accept the criticism directed back at them - or as some would put it, they can dish it out but they can't take it.  That seems to be the reasoning behind this motivation and prevailing desire to which it portends, namely the avoidance of any accountability and fear of scrutiny.  Most young people I know do not fear either of these because that is their life, they are constantly critiqued, constantly judged, and constantly scrutinised, whereas those who are older and more conservative tend to be people who have never had to stand up to scrutiny, who hate the idea of being held accountable probably because on some level they know if they were put to rites for their actions they would be found guilty.

The question inevitably comes back to one that is simple - how did we end up in this position in the first place.  It is easy for older generations to blame younger generations but the reality is that does not hold up to question because we live in a world they designed, they built, and for the most part they still control.  Politics, Government, Commerce, these are all dominated by people who are part of much older generations.  You have had the power since before we were born, you can't blame us for the state of the world, you're the ones who built it, we're just inheriting it, or what's left of it.

When it comes to the lack of empathy at least I can take solace in the fact that this seems to be something that is much more prevalent in that older generation and much less common in those who are younger.  If you are older, and this doesn't apply to you but you still take offence, you might want to take a look at the people around you, those part of your generation and consider the possibility that it might not be that my words are offensive but that this is something you realise is true and applies to others of your generation and that you don't want to be applied to you, which it might not, as there are exceptions to the trend there always will be.  I have seen people from my own generation and the ones that come after me who completely lack empathy but I can also see that they are a minority and I am grateful that is the case, and I hope that age in and of itself does not take that from us as we grow, because when it comes to aspiration and the example that people set, I can categorically say I do not want to follow in the footsteps of those who came before me, that is not a path I want to walk and I hope it is a path that others won't have to either.