Recently, I have been writing more and more fiction. While this has been something that I am okay with, there are more intellectual things that are in my mind.
In one of my film classes, we talked about “Silence of the Lambs”. That was the first time I had heard of Hannable Lector. After finding out that there were many spin-off films and tv shows, I stumbled upon one of them. (I don’t know the title, I have never watched any of them.)
The premise was that of a very empathetic person being asked to work with a cannibal to track down criminals. The empathetic person starts to care more and more about the cannibal even to the point of loving him. As an empathetic person myself, I first asked why anyone would even remotely care about someone as lowly as a cannibal.
But empathy (and especially extremely empathetic people) can fall into a trap of seeing humanity before seeing morality.
After taking a few weeks with that question still at the back of my mind, I started researching different writing projects that I have been working on.
I have noticed that while researching, I will fall into one Masterclass class and find a world of information I can use. This particular one is that of Doris Kearns Goodwin who teaches U.S. Presidential History and Leadership. One of her lessons is about how emotional intelligence is better than IQ.
During this lesson, she gave examples about how resilience is important in leaders and how it is obtained through adversity. She gave examples of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. After she talked about resilience, she started talking about how we could develop our own empathy.
It hit me in that very moment that I already had the answer to why an empathetic person would care about a criminal. I knew because I had done it.
I had a friend a long time ago who enrolled during the middle of the school year. He was a mix between energetic and tired (a feeling I knew often back then) and he was kind but also brutal at times causing much drama in my friend group.
One of my friends introduced him to me and he was apart of my friend group from then on. But as time grew on, I felt like there was a mystery to him. Something I couldn’t explain. Still, I pressed onward with my friendship with him.
I learned that he went through trauma and hardships, and that he was suffering many medical trials. Most of the time he complained and all I wanted was to be far from him, but my empathy wouldn’t let me.
Then we graduated.
No more than six months later, my friend texted me. She said, “did you see this?”
It was a news article about our friend. Police officers arrested him and he confessed to doing the crime. He was now in jail.
I was in shock for most of that next week and after realizing that my last date was with him, I quickly tried to find another date. But one thing kept on nagging in my mind. Why didn’t he ever tell us what was going on?
While that question nagged inside my head, I kept on feeling complex. Was he still my friend? Would he continue to be my friend? I wanted to completely get rid of him, but I also wanted him to be okay. My feeling of empathy was great, but my logic kept on telling me to stay away from him.
I was in a situation that the same guy from that tv show was in. How could someone care about a criminal? Because when you start to learn about someone, you start to relate to them, and then you start to care.
Is it okay to find the man in the monster? Is okay to see humanity before morality? These are still questions that I don’t have answers to. I do know, however, that while developing more empathy is good, becoming more empathetic creates the need to be more self-aware. To realize both humanity and morality and then deciding whether it is harmful to you.
Empathy can be hard. I have been around that corner too many times and have put humanity before morality. Maybe, balance is something we can all benefit from. Whether it is about empathy or anything else.
