Musing upon my last two DMs — one on deep feeling and the other on sustainability — it occurs to me that the two topics are linked in a profound way.
One of the accusations that ecologists have recurrently received in the last few decades is that of being “tree huggers.” Such an accusation shows something important about the mind of the accusers: that feelings should be excluded from the consideration of the ecological issues facing humanity.
It is said that rationality should be untouched by emotions, which might veil or obstruct the flow of thinking, especially when matters of the greatest importance are at stake. While this is the classic position of Western modernity, and thus is repeated by people superficially schooled in such an environment, it is also deeply problematic.
We know that reason and emotion play a balanced game in the human mind, and that rational thinking is, in the end, the faculty deputed to the solving of problems. But, as Matthew Fox has often insisted, values do not originate in the intellect but in deep feeling — i.e., they do not spark in the left brain, but rather in the right brain.
People who suffer an injury to their right brain, while keeping intact their rational capabilities, are often in trouble with making decisions that are viable for them. Not because they don’t choose rationally, but because the grounding of their reasoning in values is impaired. Why would we want, then, to exclude right-brain capabilities when making decisions that affect society as a whole, as Western modernity seems to suggest and implement all the time?
Emmanuel Levinas, the French Jewish thinker, has famously grounded ethics in the experience of “the face of the other.” Not reasoning about ethical principles, but the encounter eye-to-eye between two human beings, which comprises the reciprocal revealing of vulnerability, is the ground of our humanity.
I claim the right to be emotionally shattered — not just moved — by the face of a starving child in Palestine or Sudan, and I consider such an experience the correct grounding for my reasoning about the problems affecting those regions of the world. The same holds true for the face of Mother Earth, which keeps being violated. While Levinas’s thinking remains anthropocentric, I believe that his reasoning can thus be extended.
In conclusion, I want to be able to be moved by Christmas carols while avoiding sentimentalism. I want to be able to see in the face of the child Jesus all the children hurt and abandoned by the Herods of our time. And I want to be able to weep, and cry, and groan as the true ground of my actions in the world. The Via Negativa fully lived, so that I might be able to engage fully the Via Transformativa, that is, social change.
Banner Image: “Holy Family of the Streets.” Image by iconographer Kelly Latimore; used with permission. Purchase HERE.
Queries for Contemplation
What is your experience with tree-hugging, literally and figuratively? Have you been accused of sentimentalism inappropriately? How have you reacted?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action (by Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson, and Jen Listug)
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Natural Grace: Dialogues on creation, darkness, and the soul in spirituality and science (by Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake)
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life
Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
4 thoughts on “The Face of the Other”
The theme of your essay, empathy being based on experience rather than theory or dogma, is exemplified in the book,*Beautiful Souls* by Juval Press. One story in the book tells of a Swiss border guard during the Hitler years.
No Jewish refugees were permitted to cross into neutral Switzerland. One border guard took one look at the frightened Jews and let them all in. He was fired for breaking the law, but after the war he was honored. His innate empathy (or possibly his lived experience with Jews or other minorities) was stronger than his respect for law.
I don’t just hug trees, I talk to them. They listen and talk back. Wonderful creatures! One tree in particular I cycled to for years in Griffith Park, Hollywood, overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the far distance. It was where I went when my brother died very unexpectedly a few years ago; and when my father died. I could climb into it, pray with it. Hug it and kiss it. Not many people knew of my expeditions to this tree but had they known and considered me sentimental, I would have smiled and felt sorry for them, not knowing the beauty and mystery of trees. Of all life, actually.
I think your relationship to that tree is lovely! I say hello to my favourite trees on my walks with my dog. In my experience – those who sneer with contempt on those who believe in active compassion and kindness to all of creation – people, animals and the earth, are also the same people who sneer at science when it suits them, and on close examination, are always protecting their own selfishness and cruelty dressed up in fake business like rationalism.
I love trees but can’t get close enough to hug. A beautifully symmetrical sycamore is one of my favorites in the back yard. Martin Buber’s book, “I and Thou”, has guided my understandings of true relationships for 6 decades, ever since I studied it in college. It also explained how something as horrible as the Holocaust could happen, when certain groups of people were treated as “It”, and continues to explain the cruelties targeting minorities in every country since. If I am accused of being a bleeding heart, I just say that at least I have a heart.