Empathy

"Those who did it often, on the other hand, lived for that alone.  The felt so good that their lips were sealed as if they were tombs, because they knew that their lives depended on their discretion.  they never spoke of their exploits, they confided in no one, they feigned indifference [...] They formed a secret society, whose members recognized each other all over the world without need of a common language, which is why Florentino Ariza was not surprised by the girl's reply: she was one of them, and therefore she knew that he knew that she knew."

--Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez  (paperback edition p. 183)

Empathy.  Knowing they know that I know that they know......and so on.  A wise friend told me that of the 10 people who want to help people with a specific kind of pain or brokenness, 9 have experience the same pain or been broken the same way themselves.  I believe that is more true and more far reaching than most people ever realize.

We, as people, want others to know how we feel.  Or to know that they absolutely do NOT know how we feel.  Our friendships and tastes are based on empathetic urges- 'does this thing or this person speak in terms I know to be true from my own experience?'  I read somewhere once that most musical singles are about love or sex or heartbreak: experiences that are universally the same, no matter how different we each want to believe them to be when they are happening to us.  (I banned Jewel at work forever and ever when I was going through a break-up.  Self-identifying with Jewel was a bad couple weeks *laughing*).

So I wonder, is it powerful omni-present empathy that emanates and defines great works of art and literature?  If we all want to be spoken to in our own secret language, are tastes defined by the empathetic projections of creators everywhere?

As I thought about empathy and about the 'secret societies' I have seen and been a part of in my life (and if you don't agree that these are pervasive, think.  I'm sure you know at least one woman who always seems to find 'that kind of guy'-  That guy is feeling something from her before he even knows her, and he is twisting it to his advantage), I would love to think that the most successful artists and writers hit the public on some unseen common empathetic note.  That they make us feel something, deep in our souls, and that as a reward for seeing that fundamental note in humanity they rise to be known, venerated.  However, I hardly think that is the case.

I think empathy makes people uncomfortable.  Privacy, especially in the days of the internet, is a luxurious comfort.  If we know that someone knows how we feel, they have violated a part of our world.  Our private world.  And so, where a work might inspire introspection, more often tastes and popularity are determined by status and artifice, and where a work might have even once had a great empathetic insight, popularity dilutes it with shallow intellect and quotes out of context.  I am reminded of an postscript in C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters in which the author learns, second-hand, that his analysis of human nature and sin, was being recommended as a book that would be good to reference in a interview, and being chosen to read from that list because it was the shortest.

So what happens if I want to connect at an empathetic level through art?  What happens if I try to inspire empathy for a specific situation or set of problems through a painting?  Will the language of the secret society win out?  Or is it not even worth the trouble to try, relying instead on clinical detachedness?

I went into examining this subject hopeful and excited- I am good at empathizing, and it seemed to me to make all the sense in the world if empathy was what drew people to art.  If I could use it to have some degree of influence on the priorities and the opinions of others.  But the more I think of it, the more I remember the intrinsic horror of secret societies, or intrusive knowledge.

Regardless, it feels good to know my experience of a language of silent feeling is not isolated.