Alexa Mergen's Blog - Posts Tagged "empathy"
Bearing Witness: Attending
I first heard the term "bear witness" applied to paying attention to the non-human world years ago from Terry Tempest Williams. I was in my late teens, at that age when everything you read molds you like hands on soft clay. I loved to hike and cross-country ski, to paddle and swim in lakes; Williams showed me how the notes I made in my journals in the waning daylight, before slipping into my sleeping bag for a night in deep quiet outside, mattered. They mattered because I was logging, recording, noticing, caring enough to make a mark in the way only humans can, translating stimulus into ideas that can be communicated across time and space.
Now I read how Melanie Joy is applying the term to what she calls "carnism," eating meat. She writes, When we bear witness, we are not merely acting as observers, we emotionally connect with the experience of those we are witnessing. We empathize.
Joy's cause is farmed animals and the meat processing industry. Williams's is the natural world, particularly the Great Basin. Mine is the intersection between human and non-human, local and global.
In my Day Poems classes, I ask my students to "bear witness" to their immediate environment. I do believe observation leads to an imaginative connection, which is a way of understanding empathy.
We think of empathy as an extension of compassion, a practice of moral obligation, the responsibility of a citizen. But when we witness, and empathize, we are enriched because what we are really doing is loving in that moment. And it really is better to give than to receive.
Now I read how Melanie Joy is applying the term to what she calls "carnism," eating meat. She writes, When we bear witness, we are not merely acting as observers, we emotionally connect with the experience of those we are witnessing. We empathize.
Joy's cause is farmed animals and the meat processing industry. Williams's is the natural world, particularly the Great Basin. Mine is the intersection between human and non-human, local and global.
In my Day Poems classes, I ask my students to "bear witness" to their immediate environment. I do believe observation leads to an imaginative connection, which is a way of understanding empathy.
We think of empathy as an extension of compassion, a practice of moral obligation, the responsibility of a citizen. But when we witness, and empathize, we are enriched because what we are really doing is loving in that moment. And it really is better to give than to receive.
