Catch-2022
Catch-2022
In Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel “Catch-22,” the author writes—regarding
self-diagnosed insanity—that “There was only one catch and that was Catch-22,
which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that
were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.”
In his protagonist Captain Yossarian’s world, empathy was
postlogue to insanity: an entirely different conversation. Empathy,
at mid-century, was the ability to feel—deeply and physically—the pains and joys
of another person. It wasn’t a demand upon others, it was a psychological
anomaly that resided within a special individual who knew, among other things,
that not everybody had the shine.
In 2022, empathy is manifest differently. In 2022, we are all imbued
with some bit of empathy—a physical firing of neural synapses—and expect others
to honor us, not for our actual emotions, but rather for our externalized
empathy itself. Across time and across our competing conceptions of empathy—we
are both empathetic (individually) and non-empathetic (socially) at the same
time.
All we have to do is ask; and as soon as we do, we are no longer
empathetic.
This is as much a study in linguistics as it is in psychology,
history, and politics.
In Captain Yossarian’s mid-century, the meaning of empathy (like
“insanity” itself) was in flux. When the word “empathy” first entered the
English lexicon (literally meaning “feeling-in”: to enliven an object: to
project one’s own imagined feelings onto the world) in the early 20th century,
it meant almost the opposite of how it was used in Yossarian’s Cold War world
of letters and aerial sorties.
At mid-century the word “empathy” transformed from “projection
onto” to “internalization from.” Sometime during the subsequent half-century,
“empathy” transformed again into what we have today: inverting the
subject/object relationship: demandingly “feel like I feel”: an impossible
perversion of the rubber and glue maxim.
Thus, when the semi-devout, semi-originalist Cold War
generation—Yossarian’s direct descendants, Heller’s comrades—is told, in 2022,
to be empathetic to the problems of a new era, they flop: “How can I feel that?
May I retreat to compassion and altruism? I’m sympathetic!” Carnegie’s halls,
Coke’s science education and Musk’s StarLink aren’t sufficient.
Thus, when the semi-woke, semi-progressive post-Reaganite
generation demands, in 2022, that others be empathetic to their problems, they
know immediately to follow up: “No! Not enough! We need you to experience, not
merely feel.” Today’s empathy demands Jesus without deity, Teresa without faith
and King Jr. without compromise.
We find that there exists a physical and genetic link to both
senses of empathy. When an empathetic person sees another person who is
experiencing a range of emotions, the empath's neural circuits respond with the
same brain activity to physically feel what the other person is feeling.
Therefore, the confusing difference between Baby Boomers’ empathy versus 2022’s
empathy is not so much in what empathy does, but what empathy triggers: what
follows.
Fancying oneself empathetic in the mid-century sense is akin to
self-diagnosed insanity in the 2022 sense: reflexively impossible:
Catch-2022:
“I feel what you feel,” the mid-century empath might
whisper.
“No, I insist that you feel what I feel,” the 2022 empath will
demand.
At this linguistic crossroads—or is it convergence—do we
seek out a new word to replace “empathy” or do we continue to shout at each
other from our entrenched linguistic spaces?
“Love hasn’t changed, though.”
“Of course it has.”
At least the way we talk about love has changed over 2,000 years,
over 150 years, and even over 50 years.
“Jesus hasn’t changed.”
“Of course he has.”
At least how we talk and think about him has.
Or are we just insane? We are a cross-generational nation of
upside-down flying bombardiers, both wondering why the bombs haven’t hit their
targets and also wondering why the bombs haven’t detonated. We are caught in a constantly
breathless state of empathetically inspired interruptus.
A bombardier who flies upside-down drops bombs upon themself. We
learned this as we fought to replace communism with technocratic oligarchism in
the mid-century Cold War. A bombardier who does so under the orders of a
technocratic oligarchy in 2022 is championed as a patriotic martyr whose own
fragility is defined by what lies un-birthed within his own belly.
A semi-woke nation of self-identified 2022 empaths is sure to
crumble beneath its own frustrated intransigence: to scorch the earth with
hypocrisy reified by delusional self-importance.
A semi-devout nation of mid-century Christs-on-cross-empaths is
sure to crumble beneath its own frustrated post-millennial myopia: to dissolve
the social contract through hypocrisy and reified delusional
self-importance.
And then that frustration gives way to either defeatism or
inflexibility. We can neither exist in a nation without people exhibiting some
sort of empathy, nor require—spiritually or legislatively—others to feel what
we feel.
Rubber: Glue.
While we work out this linguistic impasse—waiting for a radically
poetic approach to empathy that cuts into expectations, wealth gaps and nuclear
winters—let’s breed our hill on love: let’s make love our bunker.
Glue: Rubber.
A semi-woke, semi-devout nation of individuals who love others
with no expectations of being loved back have the best potential for real,
meaningful, sustainable, and scalable evolution within the boundaries of shared
values, shared laws, and shared expectations.
"They don't have to
show us Catch-22," the old woman answered. "The law says they don't
have to."
"What law says they
don't have to?"
"Catch-22."
I’m lookIng forward to catching the new version of empathy in
2022.5: organic, love-infused empathy without reciprocating demands: rubber:rubber.
I know, I know, I’m probably nuts. Cuckoo…off my rocker.
Read more essays, poetry, and short stories at Momentitiousness.com
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