Music is empathetic. It brings us together, synchronizing our pulse, breath, and brain waves. We move to the same rhythm. We sit in silence next to each other, listening to the fading decay of the last note of a song. Music reminds us that what we share is greater than our differences.
In a recent podcast interview, Elon Musk called empathy “the fundamental weakness of” and “a bug in” Western civilization. Empathy, like music and good partnership and citizenship, requires care, attention, and time – things he seems to be short of.
The unapologetic display of apathy abounds in the news these days. Hundreds of thousands of federal employments and contracts were terminated in the name of efficiency, with complete disregard for the workers’ professional dignity, personal circumstances, and essential services they have been providing the beneficiaries. Many detained migrants, including asylum seekers, have been sent to federal prisons in violation of their civil rights, exposing them to inadequate care and violence due to lack of staffing resources. Our aid to Ukraine is no longer a response to Russia’s violation of the UN Charter, Ukraine’s national sovereignty, or human sufferings caused by war, but about rare earth and critical minerals in blatantly transactional terms.
Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale and the author of “Against Empathy” (2016) argues that the danger with empathy is that we tend to empathize more with pains and sufferers we feel closer to. According to him, empathy does not scale appropriately to the complexity of our multifaceted global sufferings. He also argues that feeling negative emotions can be paralyzing rather than motivating.
As a musician, I argue that empathy is not a tool to address global issues, but an exercise for us to become more humane. It is also a commitment to our interconnectedness. Choosing to recognize others’ joy and pain as our own ensures that we serve, and avoid hurting, each other.
“There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit,” Then-Senator Barack Obama said in his 2006 commencement speech at Northwestern University in stark contrast to Elon Musk.
Empathy is also an exercise in humility. To extend your empathy to someone else is to acknowledge that, given their circumstance, their situation could have been ours. I pity those without this capacity for empathy. It must be lonely to see everyone else only for their utility in their self-centered agenda. It must be boring to be so convinced of their own singular worldview. They remind me of King Midas, who wished for a touch that turned everything into gold, even his food, even his own daughter.
