What if?

The Boston Massacre is a tragedy that we all can identify with. To think that innocent people watching a traditional spring sporting icon would be killed or seriously injured touches us all. We cannot help but think, “What if I or a member of my family were there?” Such random acts of violence touches us so deeply because we can easily imagine that it could have been me. We can identify with the awesome meaningless of such violence. We often refer to this feeling as empathy.

It seems that our ability to empathize is related to our ability to identify with the victims. It could have been us.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could empathize comparably with other tragedies that are remote? We identify with the Newtown tragedy, but there are so many others becoming victims throughout the world. Whether we consider the violent circumstances of South Chicago, the streets of Damascus, the bombings in Iraq, the senseless disregard of women in many cultures, the violence initiated by religious bigotry, we tend to “regularize” the events as almost normal. We become jaded by the constancy of the horror.

It is helpful at times to sensitize ourselves to all sorts of violence that seem so prevalent. Wherever it occurs, it is wrong, it is senseless. The more we are sensitized to such horrors, the more able we will be to do something about it.

So much of political discord flows from the differences in empathy among people. Identifying with victims of gun violence rather than gun-owners, identifying with women as they deal with male domination, empathizing with those who have been decimated by economic conditions beyond their control, as well as so many other tragedies, leads to meaningful action.