The death of empathy
Nineteen people were killed during a military operation in Toboso, Negros Occidental, on April 19. Among them were students and a journalist. Two, we find out, were minors. We don’t know much else. There was plenty of prejudgment and mockery despite an independent investigation not yet having started.
How we individually respond to death, regardless of the context, speaks to our character. Are we selective about who we mourn, reserving our empathy only for those whom we knew personally? It makes sense to care more for people we know than those we’ve never met. The more we know of a person’s context, the less likely we are to judge them prematurely. They become less of a caricature—less of a meme—and more of a fellow human being.
We also have the benefit of having a shared reality with someone we’ve been in contact with, increasing their relatability. We can relate to our classmates’ struggles in class because we’ve experienced the crush of the requirements firsthand. We can relate to our siblings’ concerns because we’ve lived under the same roof. The more we can relate, the more compassion we can generate.
Relatability goes beyond direct contact; we can relate more to those who share the same social circles as us. If we identify as middle class, we feel the plight of the middle class more keenly than the plight of the poor. Our environment is more socioeconomically stratified than we think, rendering us a narrower lens. The rich live among the rich; the poor live among the poor. As such, cross-economic relatability remains low, and the tendency to withhold empathy for those who live differently from us increases.
How about when values and beliefs differ? Can we extend empathy then? We tend to compare others’ life choices with ours and judge accordingly. “That could have been me.” “I would’ve behaved the same way.” Conversely, not being able to relate to someone’s actions or decisions can shut off compassion: “That couldn’t be me.”
Beyond our individual beliefs, how a nation treats a killing speaks to our collective maturity as a state. It demonstrates our capacity to exact accountability and render justice when needed. How we value life is proven by how we value death.
How does a state view a killing? Does it consider killing as a solution to a problem? What does it take to consider killing a fellow human being as a credible option? This is something the Philippines must grapple with, given our history of extrajudicial and vigilante killings.
How does a state take responsibility for a killing? If society considers life as having inherent value and dignity, then the decision to take a life, if even at all justifiable, should be done with the utmost care and prudence. It should never be done impulsively or recklessly, much less with relish.
If life is considered valuable, then a death should never be considered a success. With death, we fail because it is an instance where a life couldn’t be saved. This is why we call it a loss. And with any kind of loss, we should seek ways to minimize it, not celebrate it.
Just as a comparison, hospitals hold mortality and morbidity meetings and investigate patient deaths to identify factors and errors to minimize future preventable deaths. Shouldn’t the same standard hold for agencies that are given the directive to kill? We shouldn’t have to put out calls for investigations; investigations should be automatic with any death. The military should have offered itself up for investigation, if only to demonstrate that the loss could not have been prevented.
Each death comes with an immeasurable cost. Death happens not only once, but many times over. Along with the physical death, we mourn the death of a potentiality, a severing of possibilities. The deaths of the young are especially painful. They could’ve grown up to change the world for the better. They could’ve built their own families. They had many experiences ahead of them that now could never be.
A death, especially in this manner, also renders a story incomplete. We mourn the death of truth. There are things we will never know because they are not alive to tell us. Some questions will be left unanswered, no matter how thorough the investigation. Friends and family are left with unfinished conversations.
When death is treated like a joke, and humans are not seen as humans, then something in society dies as well. We have lost our sense of humanity, which means we become more cruel. As we shrink our circle of empathy, fewer and fewer people will care about us as well. A death is not just a single loss, but a loss for us all.
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aatuazon@up.edu.ph
