Two days ago we read what Matthew’s niece wrote to him: “To me, liberty and justice for all has to mean that people get to live with dignity, hope, and with some kind of stability.”
This is a good summary of American democracy. It is not advocating for socialism or redistribution of all wealth. It is stating the basics without which human societies collapse.
When external conditions prevent people from achieving and keeping a basic level of stability — including a home, a decently paid job, and healthcare — hope soon dies, and dignity is strongly menaced. In Europe we are struggling with the same problems, although in different circumstances and often with better results — but the future looks gloomy.
Matthew’s niece also wrote: Leaders who talk about other humans with such casual cruelty should sit next to the people whose lives they are affecting — share a little life with them — hear their stories— etc. I can’t imagine not being changed by it.
On this I must — sadly — disagree. I have little hope that people cut of the same cloth of cruelty, who openly state that empathy is the problem of Western civilization, would be affected by sitting next to people who are struggling to make ends meet.
Likely their behaviors would include offering help to the individual — crumbs for them — and making of the encounter a photo opportunity. Alternatively, they might erupt in anger and become physically violent against the people in question.
I don’t think that empathy can blossom at an instant. It seems rather that the people who comprise the ruling class of the world have undergone a very serious de-empathizing training. Much as the military whom they employ for sheltering themselves from the rage of the oppressed.
“Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy”. This famous quote by Gustave Gilbert, the psychologist who served at the Nuremberg trials in 1945, pinpoints exactly what deep place American society has reached.
We need to admit that evil is ruling right now, without identifying single individuals whose minds are dominated by evil with evil itself — this is one of the good uses of the theological construct of “the devil” — and without building for ourselves a fanciful world of pleasant lies. It is what it is, and the sooner we find strategies for our inner stability at this time of chaos, the sooner we will be able to counteract chaos itself.
Do I mean that empathy has lost its value? On the contrary, it’s the only deep tool that we have. To deep problems, only deep tools can be applied.
While evil might never disappear from humanity, it remains our responsibility to build shelters and dams against it, to provide areas in which other humans may cultivate with us their gardens of love, of knowledge, of pleasure, of beauty. Such places have existed, and they do exist. They are never perfect, and yet our job is to keep at building them no matter what. If rulers do not empathize, those who can must double their efforts at it, giving space to it, showing how life-giving empathizing is.
Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian peace activist, was kidnapped and killed in Gaza in 2011. His motto was “Restiamo umani” — “Let us stay human.” We need to keep clear before our eyes Gilbert’s quote and know that the total absence of empathy that is being enacted and praised today means that evil is actively present in our society. But, at the same time, Arrigoni’s motto deserves to be painted on the walls of every city. It’s the best exorcism we have.
See Matthew Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
See also Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
And Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Banner Image: “Power to the People” poster by John August Swanson. From the PISLAP website.
Queries for Contemplation
How do you stay human in the present situation? What are your stategies? Do you care to share them with other readers?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
Authors Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox encourage us to use our talents in service of compassion and justice and to move beyond our broken systems–economic, political, educational, and religious–discovering a spirituality that not only helps us to get along, but also encourages us to reevaluate our traditions, transforming them and in the process building a more sacred and just world. Incorporating the words of young activist leaders culled from interviews and surveys, the book provides a framework that is deliberately interfaith and speaks to our profound yearning for a life with spiritual purpose and for a better world.
“Occupy Spirituality is a powerful, inspiring, and vital call to embodied awareness and enlightened actions.”
~~ Julia Butterfly Hill, environmental activist and author of The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox. He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
9 thoughts on “Stability and Empathy”
Strategy for the Here and Now –
If we are to be ‘Kingdom people’ our depth in loving God needs to overshadow our desire attachments for and understanding ‘of the world’. Thus, we are ‘poor in spirit’ for our lives as they are now and desire more, much more. As such our examples to follow are not philanthropists, rather those who have walked away from the world, riches and its trappings and into ‘the better way’. Coming to mind are St. Francis of Assisi and the Buddha. That being such, many that consider themselves ‘poor in the world’ may not be poor in spirit. It comes down to ‘who owns our hearts’? To whom and to what and where have we offered up our hearts? Let’s contemplate that individually and as a group; shall we? If not now, when?
Do we live and rely upon the God of our faith as the woman in the Bible did when she offered up her last copper penny to live on? Poor in the world and poor in spirit indeed! She, of apparently nothing, possesses the same mind, heart and Spirit of Christ as St. Francis and the Buddha do. Does that not tell us that we need not wait to be a glory led and honoured Saint to enter the Kingdom in the here and now? Here and now. If not now, when? – BB.
We are to be Light bearers indeed.
“No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:15-16).
Thank you, Gianluigi.
I must also disagree with the young lady aforementioned.
We already ARE sitting right next to the consummately disadvantaged!
As a CRNP ,having practiced in south central Alabama , with a client population consisting of Medicare, Medicaid, and indigent individuals, the most basic beginning must be “to walk in each other’s moccasins”.
Nietzsche’s quote from Beyond Good and Evil in the video illustrating this DM reminds us that “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster, and if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” Similarly, we should beware of gazing too long into the concept of “light bearer” lest it makes us blind to the fact that “light bearer” is also a synonym of “Lucifer” (from Latin “lux-ferre”). Blaise Pascal had a similar aphorism that says, “whoever wants to act the angel, acts the beast.”
Being human in “the present situation” to me is being spiritually open and aware to the sacredness of every changing present moment within and around me. This spiritual openness to the sacredness of every changing moment is a large part of my Faith in Our human and Divine Natures/Our Eternal Souls, and Presence of God’s Loving and Living Spirit as close to Us and even Part of Our ongoing unconscious breathing. This spiritually sensitive conscious awareness lived, experienced, and taught by mystics of most genuine spiritual traditions is what they variously name as the Loving Sacrament/Grace of God’s Presence Always Being within and among Us nourishing Us and connecting Us to Beautiful Sacred Mother Earth/Her living creatures/Her graceful essential abundance, and to All Our Co-Creation~Evolving Cosmos, with All Its physical and nonphysical spiritual dimensions, in the Sacredness of the ETERNAL PRESENT MOMENT (All timelines of Our Spiritual Selves).
As you can tell, I nearly always repeat this spiritual mantra/prayer of Faith at the end of most of my comments to the DMs to remind me of this PRESENCE of God’s LOVING~WISE SPIRIT in Our evolving Humanity and Unique Eternal Souls — LOVING DIVERSE ONENESS~COSMIC CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS….
I practice The Twelve Blessings, a sequence of blessings that have cosmic reach with prayers for the upliftment of humanity. It has sustained me for the past 40 years. I highly recommend it. http://www.12blessings.org
I love the Heineken commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etIqln7vT4w
Challenges your thought, Gianluigi – I agree more with Matthew’s niece.
Unless sociopathic, the hope is in the exposure; whether painted on the walls or having a beer together, sitting next to each other.
Nothing has changed me more personally
Thank you, GG. I often think of that warning from Nietzsche. And I also agree that people consumed with evil not only would not have empathy for “the least of these” if in the company of one or more of them, they also would find every possible to denigrate or even physically harm them. What I find extremely concerning about those who are destroying our government is their joy in the pain they are causing–they are sadists. As you say, we need to face the evil that seems to have taken over and find inner and outer resources to help us discern what is ours to do. Contemplative practices and keeping in touch with spiritually nourishing centers like this DM and others online can create a sense of solidarity and community. There are so many inspiring podcasts like “Learning How to See”; I just listened to Fr. John Dear and was astonished to learn about his work in non-violence–he and Mother Theresa worked together to save prisoners from execution and did in fact save at least 8 by her appealing to the better nature of a governor–and/or scaring him to death that he might go to hell. It is also important not to get enmeshed in the evil as Nietzsche advised and as one of my favorite poems advises: “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.” https://poetrysociety.org/poems/a-brief-for-the-defense