UNDERSTANDING, THE KEY TO HUMAN CONNECTION

“I can relate.”

Such an innocuous phrase. I’ve been dwelling on the nature of human connection. You see, it’s my aim, my current obsession… so I’ve started studying it. I listen to many discussions surrounding it.  I listen and I observe in tandem. 

And the more I observe, the more I notice a thing. And this thing is empathy. The great enabler and barrier to human connection.

Empathy. The ability to feel for another. To relate.

But as Carl Jung once said in his book, The Undiscovered Self, knowledge and understanding are factors that greatly affect one’s ability to be empathetic. 

And though insightful and interesting, and definitely worth a read, Jung’s explanations are too laden with clinical jargon. So they alone will not get us any closer to the crux of all that makes up reality. Human experience. And as I read, listen, and observe… I realized another thing about human experiences. 

A seemingly pretty obvious thing, if not for how often it doesn't compute as much as I feel it should.  That realization is that, one can be too many steps removed to ever truly feel empathy. To really relate. 

How many steps removed you are from another person’s plight heavily correlates to your ability to feel empathy for their struggle. To relate to them. 

I am an African born man, who’s spent some time abroad, but by and large has lived the majority of his life in the more western, liberal parts of the United States, though my formative upbringing was on the southeast side of the country. A very different atmosphere. 

Adding ever more of my personal and lived experiences to the specific nature of my life, risks making me pretty far removed from the plight of say- A middle aged, caucasian American woman whose family has lived in the same median populated town in Mississippi for the last couple generations, which she in turn, has never left. 

I don’t have a ton to relate to there. Hardly a surprise. We are too many steps removed. The effort it would take, not to mention the time investment it would require for us to reach common ground in order to empathize, in order to relate, would be tremendous. Or so I’m led to believe.

More time and effort, I fear, than either of us could realistically be expected to put in during the course of an average in-person interaction, much less a digital one. No doubt this would discourage many of us from having more dialogue. A feat made almost effortless by technology, I might add. 

I mean, what would be the point, right?

To understand each other better? Pfft. We have jobs, and families, and projects looming.

Unless, of course, Hollywood intervened and provided us both, me and my unlikely Mississippian match with a handy scenario- like…, being stuck in a snowy cabin after an avalanche following a hike gone wrong. We were separated from our friends and guides and had to huddle together for warmth until the fire of the cabin slowly sputtered to life.( What? Shhh, I’m writing, just go with it.)

This could force a prolonged, in-person interaction. Our walls would be down, our prejudices temporarily put on hold.

We could get to know each other during this scenario, given time and proximity. Alas, that is not the case for most African born males who love to moonlight as a french-speaking European, but are secretly American as their day job- nor is it the case for most Mississippi small town girls who have never stepped foot outside their population of 1500, small rural towns. 

How do we cross that gap? How do we, despite the many steps, relate to each other?

KNOWLEDGE VS. UNDERSTANDING

How could, say Bill Gates, relate to me? Would I even want him to? Considering how many steps removed he is from my particular struggle? I’m sure it’d be difficult. I could tell him of my plight. But then all he’d have is the knowledge of my struggle. 

There would be no understanding. 

Ah, a small obstacle, some of the more empathetic among you might say. Besides, I can articulate with the best of ‘em. I could sit him down, make him understand the plight of me and my immigrant family during our time in the States. Tell him about how we’ve struggled with poverty, discrimination, racism, and all the other petty ills human beings are so fond of inflicting on each other. 

Mmm, what’s that? Sounding too much like another victim, am I? Well, that’s not good.

Last thing I want is for Mr. Gates to think I didn’t work hard enough.

I’m sure, by this point, he has probably had this same thought, at least once or twice. 

Because even now, despite my lengthy and extensively pragmatic exposé, tinged with just a bit of emotionality, about the life of an African immigrant, it’s still just knowledge. Information. And what the mind does with information is unpredictable. Because mostly, people are unpredictable. Paradoxical by nature. Especially people we don’t understand. Having many ills does not necessarily mean a person will find in just sheer quantity, reason to empathize, much less seek to have a relationship with you simply due to your suffering.  

Too many steps. Too much time and effort. 

And meanwhile, remember, they don’t know you as a person, or the measure of your true character. Most people only choose to associate with people they can understand. Or more plainly put, relate to. It’s a small, ever closing window as we are forever shifting beings. Those of us who are lucky anyways.

Understanding is a matter of timing as much as it is a matter of relations. And unfortunately, Mr. Gates has neither, so why would he care about my problems, when they are nothing like his own?

And how could I blame him for knowing, but not understanding?

THE KEY TO HUMAN CONNECTION

So how to turn knowledge into understanding? I’ve been thinking a great deal about it. 

Statistics? Language? Culture? Religion? Politics?

Sure, maybe. These are all human connectors. Sources of common ground. But these are also the great human dividers. 

We, as people, tend to flock to whatever beliefs give us a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose. A way to make sense of it all, a light at the end of that dark tunnel of menial and mundanity. The belief that some just reward awaits, given you are a good little boy or girl. That you work hard. That is the great human disease.

The quest for meaning.

And all of the connectors, the dividers- all the methods we use to specify, classify, codify, identify, and categorize. All the sciences of human behavior have, in my humble opinion, not done a great job in getting us to connect, to understand each other better. Or at least they haven’t done a very great job so far. 

And though I respect and applaud what these social and psychological fields have done in order to further human understanding- I feel all they’ve really done is made it easier to predict and explain the patterns of, and not so much assign a meaning to, human behavior. 

And the reasons are myriad. Countless and varied. Rarely always based in logic or even the ability to predict, much less quantify. And all because of how we talk to each other. 

So let me, dear reader, esteemed listener, propose a thing.

Relations between us, humans, are on the decline. We are doing better than before, but let’s not pretend it’s by much. Yes, we have made strides, but all is not well. And I fear us undoing all the hard work and progress those before us gave their lives to in belief of a- if not always brighter, at least marginally less shitty, future. 

We’ve gained and stockpiled so much knowledge, and what a shame it would be if all we did was use it to outdo each other, preach to other, and only look out for ourselves by means of expounding virtues we seldom practice.

What a shame that so many of us don’t use all our vast and cumulative knowledge, to understand each other better. 

And well, it’s as Carl Jung said:

“If I want to understand an individual human being, I must lay aside all scientific knowledge of the average man and discard all theories in order to adopt a completely new and unprejudiced attitude.”

An unprejudiced and new attitude. And sorry if I go from super rational to a bit more sappy here, but what could be a more new, unprejudiced, and unscientific attitude… than love?

Love, not romantic love, but unprejudiced, and completely new love, is the key to human empathy. 

And it’s hard, because it is, out of all the things we do, the most voluntary. The choice to love for nothing other than the sake of understanding another.

So here’s my call to action, because apparently every piece of political or social literature needs one now.

A way to take that first step. Let’s volunteer more(yes yes, me too). I’ll report on the experience here too so you can’t say I’m bullshittin’ and don’t practice what I preach.

Let’s work out that empathy muscle.

Because I truly believe that the more we do, the more we’ll find understanding, the key to human connection, not as far removed as we first believed it to be.  

And who knows, maybe one day, I’ll write about my experiences with this form of love, and you all can say:

“I can relate.”