Homo empathicus

Last night I attended the first event in this year's Celebridée speaker series, a talk with Jeremy Rifkin in the spiegeltent (where, last year, I heard a moving speech by Sister Helen Prejean).

I have to say I have somewhat mixed feelings about Rifkin's talk (and I should qualify this by saying I have not yet read his book, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to a Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis). I was surprised to find that, for all the talk of him being a "leading mind," etc., his thoughts last night were a little scattered and, at times, repetitive. I am pleased to report that all three audience questions were quite interesting and thoughtful (this after the host cautioned the audience to ask a question, not make a speech: "we have one invited speaker and you've just heard him"). I actually felt he didn't really address the questions properly, merely repeating past points without really responding to the issues raised.

Anyway, to back up a bit: Rifkin traced the evolution of human consciousness, from a mythological consciousness, to a theological consciousness, to an ideological consciousness and, in the last century and a half, a national consciousness. His underlying thesis is that this age is now coming to a close, in part because it must - because civilization itself must change in order to survive in a practically climatically doomed world - and that we must embrace a global or "biosphere" consciousness. Writes Rifkin (quoted here since I don't have a copy of the book in front of me), "Only by concerted action that establishes a collective sense of affiliation with the entire biosphere will we have a chance to ensure our future."

OK, but I'm not convinced that we will cooperate with the entire biosphere. So far, our response to global warming has been to bury our head in the sand, although Rifkin does inspire with tales of the EU's green efforts and Iceland's Hydrogen Experiment. He is also quite compelling when he appeals to our human emotional response: he spoke at length about babies, and mirrors extending the bonds of empathy and consciousness (in the mirror tent, ha ha!) by allowing us to focus on our similarities rather than our differences. He movingly reminds us that we all ultimately share common ancestors, and that, for many of us, the moments of our lives we most cherish are those when we could connect with others and "feel others as ourselves," suggesting that the empathic human over-rides the rational, self-serving, human.

I just felt he went a bit far, though, and then didn't quite back everything up. He explains the current blowback against an empathic civilization by the rise of xenophobia and intolerance as the last death throes of a dying era (ah, if only I could truly believe that!) He didn't address the question of what happens to the people who, despite a global movement towards an empathic civilization, might resist through violence, hoarding, and so on.

Overall, this was a very interesting evening, and we left still debating about everything. There's no question that we are facing a global crisis, and that the economic crisis is merely a symptom of larger global issues, including the destruction of the environment and a radical change to the biosphere. The question is, will civilization indeed be strong enough, or smart enough, to make the changes we need to in order to survive?

This from a girl whose Honours thesis was about sympathy, and whose blog is called Only Connect. Am I getting cynical?

Everybody is worth more than the worst thing they've done in their lives

At right is my terrible photo of Sister Helen Prejean speaking at Celebridée on Wednesday night. Yes, my poor beleaguered lungs and I slouched down to the Mirror Tent (I prefer Spiegeltent, and better photos are here and here!) to hear her speak. The film version of her book, Dead man walking, moved me immensely as a teenager when I first read it. I was drawn to Sister Helen's compassion (and confusion!), to Matthew Poncelet's acknowledgement of his own guilt, and to the haunting music (I have a serious thing for Eddie Vedder, and grew to appreciate the genuis of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Rezlings can testify - I think they all hated that CD by the end of our time living together...). The movie was also a landmark in the sense that it depicted a killing by lethal injection in almost clinical detail, and, watching it again last weekend with my husband, I noticed that the final 20 minutes of the film correspond roughly to the final 20 minutes of Poncelet's life. The first time I saw it, I was struck primarly by the fear and anger in that room, and by Poncelet's shaking.

Seeing Sister Helen in person was really interesting: for one thing, she is much more warm that Susan Sarandon seems in the film (no that I don't love Susan Sarandon, but Sister Helen is very jokey - she kept teasing Lawrence Greenspon! - , and has a warm Southern accent). She shed some additional light on the story captured in the film (you know this if you've read the book): Poncelet is a composite character made up of some pieces of the various people on death row for whom she has acted as spiritual advisor. Sister Helen also stated that Lloyd Leblanc is the real hero of the story - in the film, that would be Earl Delacroix, the father of the boy killed by Poncelet, who we see in the final frames of the film praying with Sister Helen. Since the execution scene was so emblazoned on my teenage memory (I first saw it in MRE in high school - I think my friend Alice - who became a doctor this spring, whoo-hoo! - brought it in to illustrate a point in a presentation about capital punishment) I was interested to hear that after that first execution she witnessed, she promtly went outside and threw up. I think I would have, too.

Sister Helen made some allusions to Canadian politics, citing our committment to social justice and less punitive penal system. She did, however, allude to the Omar Khadr story, reminding us that this is how winds change in countries and urging us to "stand on guard," as our anthem says, against slippages of this kind.

She said the heart of who we are as a society is contained in the issue of capital punishment: the issue involves related issues of poverty, racism, and violence. She quoted Martin Luther King, Jr., who said that the most moral document you'll ever look at is a budget. The implication being that the United States could be spending money on .... instead of on the immense expenses of one prisoner on death row.

Sister Helen emhasises that the issue of justice is integral to Christianity (although some, including the prison chaplain in the film, and her real-life archbishop, could stand to be reminded). Everyone asked her, as depicted in the film, why she was doing this: acting as spiritual advisor to these men who so clearly had done something utterly reprehensible (well, in some cases, not even that - many were falsely convicted, but that's another point entirely). She countered that with the beautiful statement that isn't "everybody worth more than the worst thing they've done in their lives? Wouldn't you want to be thought more of than the worst thing you've done?"

Indeed.