"The somewhat surprising answer at which some biologists have arrived is that babies are innately sociable and helpful to others. Of course every animal must to some extent be selfish to survive. But the biologists also see in humans a natural willingness to help...Dr. Tomasello concludes that helping is a natural inclination, not something imposed by parents or culture."
"The new thinking about compassion from social neuroscience is that our default wiring is to help, that is to say, if we attend the other person we automatically empathize, we automatically feel with them. They're these newly identified neurons, mirror neurons, that act like a neural WiFi, activating in our brain exactly the areas activated in theirs. We feel with automatically. And if that person is in need, if that person is suffering, we're automatically prepared to help.... "
And where does this lead us? Jackson points out:
"Since we are not warlike, destructive, or evil by nature, we can overcome our interpersonal strife, and that means that all wars can end. We humans are good inside, and naturally inclined to care for one another. We can all live lives of peaceful creation. Now we have the tools and skills it takes to take care of our fellow humans and by extension conserve the natural world. Since we have the tools, the talent, and apparently the natural inclination, we set forth to create peace, justice, and an equitable existence for all Earth’s creatures, plant, animal, insect, and man alike.
In short: Humans are awesome, and can do and make anything they like, including turning the whole planet into a cool techno-garden where everyone gets to spend their lives dancing, making art, and visiting their wild animal friends in the forest with their silver flying jetpacks, and living for a long time. Why the heck not?"
Why the heck not indeed, Jackson? Why the heck not?
Ever since I read Nicholas Kristof's column in The New York Times last week, I've been trying to figure out how to draw a connection between what he describes––how we're more likely to help a single individual in need, than to help many in need––and the potential of work in the arts. Here's Kristof:
"...as the saying goes, that one death is a tragedy, a million a statistic. More depressing, appeals to our rationality actually seem to impede empathy.
For example, in one study, people donate generously to Rokia, a 7-year-old malnourished African girl. But when Rokia’s plight was explained as part of a larger context of hunger in Africa, people were much less willing to help."
Kristof quotes behavioral scientist Paul Slovic in saying "the more who die, the less we care." People are able to ignore a statistic, but it's hard to not stop and help a single, suffering child.
Kristof's piece reminded me of the unique ability that the arts have, to create an immediate and compassionate human connection to an audience and why that was possible and necessary. We're in a fog, most of the time, thinking about ourselves, and the arts provide immediate connection and understanding that shakes us out of our fog––whether we like it or not.
Listen to Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank talk about why they create documentary theater:
"All of that work that work that we do together I think is really grounded in asking audiences to empathize with people who they might not normally empathize with... the central mechanism of narrative, all narrative, film, novels, theater, etc. etc., is empathy, and I think with theater, that manifests in the most immediate way because everybody is literally in a room together. There's no screen, there's no wall, there's no page, there's no filter of the audience's imagination. Everybody is actually having a shared experience."
Keith Nobbs, too, talked about theater's unique mechanism, something that's created by being in the same room as someone else, and how that forces you to feel compassion for them:
“Someone described the difference of theater and film as watching someone go through something and being in the same room with someone who's going through something.... if someone is crying in front of you, and you're in the same room, and you're breathing the same air, you have to, as a human being, take that in and exist in that space with them and be there for them. You have to show up.”
Jessica and Erik must've noticed this, too, when they first conceived of creating The Exonerated. The project arose after they attended a conference on the death penalty, and heard stories about a group of guys in Illinois who'd had confessions tortured out of them by a particular police commander. They described how at the conference, they saw a documentary on some of the cases, and heard information that was disturbing, but "kind of on an intellectual level." The audience was presented information dispassionately, in a detached, journalistic way.
The key moment for Erik and Jessica came when the conference organizers presented, via cell-phone held up to a microphone, one of the men whose confession had been tortured from him and who remained in prison. "Within about 45 seconds to a minute, everybody in the audience was weeping.... all he was essentially saying was 'I want to go home' and who can't relate to that?"
Suddenly, a concept - "men who'd had false confessions tortured from them" - became a real live person. And he wasn't even in the room, he was miles away, connected by cell phone. But the fact that there was a real human being telling his story on the other end of that line forced every single person in that audience to notice, and to be personally, and passionately moved. So the key for any artist is to create these moments of connection in anything they do, whether on stage or film, or in any other medium. The arts give us an opportunity to be the opposite of preoccupied: we're able to be present, and fully experience a moment that would otherwise slip by, unnoticed. They give us an immediate and undeniable connection another human being.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and get a little Buddhist on you. Shock! Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book For a Future to Be Possible, talks about Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva who is often called the "universal manifestation of compassion." In this section, Thay is talking about the Fourth Mindfulness Training, which starts with the words "Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I vow to cultivate loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of suffering."
Thay says:
"The meaning of the word Avalokitesvara is 'the one who looks deeply into the world and hears the cries of the world.'; This voice relieves our suffering and suppressed feelings, because it is the voice of someone who understands us deeply -- our anguish, despair, and fear. When we feel understood, we suffer much less."
This is what Keith, Erik, and Jessica describe above. By being in a seat, in a theater, faced with a real live person on stage, we're setting the stage for deep listening. This deep listening allows us to understand another's anguish, despair, and fear, and in turn, it allows us to see that others understand our own anguish, despair, and fear. "When we feel understood, we suffer much less."
So how does this all connect to Kristof's point about our ability to ignore the suffering of millions, while we can't help but want to help a single, suffering individual? It's simply that compassionate work actually creates a real, suffering individual in the space before us, whether on stage, on film, or in any medium. We are hardwired to feel compassion, as I described in the recent Daniel Goleman post. So when that real human being is created before us, we can't help but feel compassion; since, as Jessica said above, "the central mechanism of narrative, all narrative, film, novels, theater, etc. etc., is empathy," we enter any space where a story is being told ready to empathize and to feel compassion for another living being.
This works in two ways:
1. When we feel compassion for another, we want to help that person and relieve his or her suffering. So the arts, then, create a world where we are all driven to help others, to relieve their suffering.
2. When we see a character or story created from a place of compassion, we feel understood, because we know, deeply, that the human beings depicted are no different from us in the most fundamental ways. We feel heard. This is the voice of Avalokitesvara, which "relieves our suffering and suppressed feelings, because it is the voice of someone who understands us deeply -- our anguish, despair, and fear. When we feel understood, we suffer much less."
It's possible, then, that through the arts, the suffering of many, for example, "wrongfully convicted death row inmates," becomes present to us as the suffering of a single human being. We then want to help that real human being, and that compels us to want to help others in the same situation.
In addition, when we experience that other human being as wanting the very same things as ourselves - for example, "I just want to go home," we feel understood, because we know that this human being shares anguish, despair, and fear that we have felt ourselves.
So the Kristof piece truly highlights what we're talking about here. A focus on compassion in the arts is necessary, and could even be a matter of life and death. If you, as an artist, want to connect to your audience, choose compassion. If you work with artists, and want them to connect to their audiences, guide them towards compassion. If you, as an artist, or as someone involved in entertainment or media in any way, want to make an impact on others, to relieve their suffering, choose compassion.
*
I recently visited the Navajo Nation in Arizona as part of a trip organized by Save the Children. The areas we visited were extremely poor and remote. We were told the average family income there was well below $20,000 annually, and the unemployment rate was currently 56%. One of the Save the Children staffers traveling with us told me the landscape in some of the dusty towns we visited reminded her of trips she'd taken to the poorest regions of Africa.
This was a trip connected to my work as a manager; I was traveling with a client who's involved with Save the Children as a supporter and spokesperson. So, naturally, I started to think about what I experienced there and how it related to compassion in the arts.
Of course, having a celebrity publicly bring attention to a cause is a powerful way to make a difference for that cause. And I'm thrilled that we were able to bring attention to the amazing work Save the Children is doing in the Navajo Nation and worldwide.
But how did this visit directly inform what we've been discussing here: compassion, as it relates to work in the arts, and how it helps to create the most extraordinary work possible, the work with the greatest impact, and how it helps to give one the happiest life possible?
In that respect, I was particularly struck by two observations. The first was very simple:
• The families we visited were fundamentally no different from my own. I was profoundly and immediately present to the fact that the parents we visited wanted their children to thrive, the same way I want my children to thrive.
“Whether people are beautiful and friendly or unattractive and disruptive, ultimately they are human beings, just like oneself. Like oneself, they want happiness and do not want suffering. Furthermore, their right to overcome suffering and be happy is equal to one's own. Now, when you recognize that all beings are equal in both their desire for happiness and their right to obtain it, you automatically feel empathy and closeness for them. Through accustoming your mind to this sense of universal altruism, you develop a feeling of responsibility for others: the wish to help them actively overcome their problems. Nor is this wish selective; it applies equally to all. As long as they are human beings experiencing pleasure and pain just as you do, there is no logical basis to discriminate between them or to alter your concern for them if they behave negatively..... Because we all share an identical need for love, it is possible to feel that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the face or how different the dress and behavior, there is no significant division between us and other people. It is foolish to dwell on external differences, because our basic natures are the same."
These people we encountered were beautiful and friendly, but the lives they live are very different from the life I live, and the life I share with my family. And what was clear to me, and present in an extraordinary was was just that: they want what I want. We are the same.
This may seem obvious, but for me, personally, I'm not always 100% aware of this fact. I would venture to guess that's how most of us exist, with occasional flashes of awareness. Here's author and psychologist Daniel Goleman from a recent TED talk:
“The new thinking about compassion from social neuroscience is that our default wiring is to help, that is to say, if we attend the other person we automatically empathize, we automatically feel with them. They're these newly identified neurons, mirror neurons, that act like a neural WiFi, activating in our brain exactly the areas activated in theirs. We feel with automatically. And if that person is in need, if that person is suffering, we're automatically prepared to help.... but then the question is, why don't we? The simple fact is that if we're focused on ourselves, if we're preoccupied as we so often are throughout the day, we don't really fully notice the other.”
We don't really fully notice the other. So by being present to the fact that the people I was meeting were fundamentally no different from my own family, no different from me, I was momentarily shaken out of my fog, and I briefly understood the necessity for compassion. I am often and ordinarily preoccupied, but being in this unique circumstance shifted my awareness. Context is decisive.
Shantideva said, in The Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life:
"When happiness is equally dear to others and myself, then what is so special about me that I strive after happiness for myself alone?"
So how do we create this awareness in our day-to-day lives? This sense of compassion for every living being we encounter? As Goleman says, we're preoccupied, we don't notice it when it's right in front of our faces. How many times has each of us stepped past a homeless person on the street, someone stricken with tears on the subway?
This awareness is exactly what the arts can provide. That each of us is fundamentally the same as each and every human being on the planet, each wanting happiness, each wanting to avoid suffering. And, as Goleman says, this is our natural way of being; we're hardwired to be compassionate. Maybe that's why it feels good, maybe it's a product of evolution, the same way we naturally think puppies and children are cute and we instinctively want to take care of them.
And it's our natural inclination to compassion, to connectedness, to humanity, that attracts us to this work in the arts. When we see work that comes from a place of compassion, we're naturally brought to that awareness, of our essential human "sameness," and it feels good.
To clarify:
The arts can break through our usual fog and provide access to our natural tendency towards compassion,
We are attracted to work with a foundation in compassion, because it feels right. We share our inherent needs with everyone else on the planet, and seeing that recognized on screen, on stage, or on paper makes us feel with automatically.
The second observation I had on this trip was this:
• There is a cost to inaction.
There have been plenty of times when I've thought, I don't have the time, I'm tired, I'm busy, someone else will do it. And on this trip I saw the direct impact of the work Save the Children was doing, on real kids. Just like my own kids. And this relates to the arts in the same way. We can choose to remain in a fog, and rob the world of the real impact we have to offer. Or we can take on compassion in our lives and careers and make a difference.
This is what I said in an earlier posting, talking about work that was mercenary, uninspired, and bereft of compassion:
"There's a deep cost to the world that comes from this kind of behavior. We're suffering, and we're being deprived of the things that bind us, that show us what we have in common, that give us hope.
And where does that lead us? To a world full of entertainment created by the uninspired. Sure, there are exceptions, but in a world where artists are being told to focus on business strategy, those exceptions are sure to become rarer and rarer."
So here it is, the call to action. Taking on compassion in your work, in the arts or in your daily life, is the key to the most extraordinary career possible, the most extraordinary life possible, it allows you to make the most extraordinary impact possible, and it's the key to the happiest life possible.
"When you begin to understand the suffering of the other person, compassion will arise in you, and the language you use will have the power of healing. Compassion is the only energy that can help us connect with another person."
"Ultimately, the reason why love and compassion bring the greatest happiness is simply that our nature cherishes them above all else. The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence. It results from the profound interdependence we all share with one another. However capable and skillful an individual may be, left alone, he or she will not survive. However vigorous and independent one may feel during the most prosperous periods of life, when one is sick or very young or very old, one must depend on the support of others...
...It is because our own human existence is so dependent on the help of others that our need for love lies at the very foundation of our existence. Therefore we need a genuine sense of responsibility and a sincere concern for the welfare of others."
Jackson told me about a great piece by Nicholas Wade in Monday's New York Times, about how we're born with an urge to help each other!stence for all Earth’s creatures, plant, animal, insect, and man alike.
Posts
