Richer, we've never been, in our developed nations. And yet we feel the need to fight for resources. To queue at midnight for the latest Harry Potter book. To get the newest iPhone and the limited edition Nike trainer. To show we are special with the custom fitted Bentley. Hurry, stocks are running out! Last few left! Newest! Finest! Rarest!
There is, apparently, a market for second hand plastic bags from designer stores on ebay. So you can pretend your clothes came from a specialist retailer.
It seems important to look like one can afford the scarcer items.
People may get into debt for the sake of their image; may rent lock-ups to store all their merchandise; may feel insecure for the lack of such items.
Likewise, the concern over body image has escalated with pre-pubescent children worrying about their weight as well as their outfits. Plastic surgery is a huge growth sector and mass media ensures that looks are what lead to value.
It seems people feel, understandably, they they must fight for 'the right kind of attention'. Approving glances, appreciation, respect - they seem like rare resources that only the good-looking and well-turned-out can attain. Consequently, too, people curate their FaceBook and Instagram feeds to ensure they get enough likes. All this is explored in The Inner Level.
But, there's another scarce resource we seem eager to seek: empathy.
In a world where people's behaviour is increasingly antisocial, where focus is on self rather than community, where me trumps we and egoism is in greater supply than empathy, the human need for compassion is facing deprivation.
And so, the hierarchy of victimhood. Theodore Dalrymple had much to say on this and there are aspects of his argument with which I agree. Why is it more important to be seen as having suffered than to be seen simply as virtuous? Virtue has, it appears, little 'cash value' in this world, but suffering can be played like a winning hand.
This is not to dismiss real suffering at all; nor is it to deny that many individuals and groups have and are experiencing hardship; nor is it to disregard the vital political and social responsibility of ending or at least mitigating suffering. What I am talking about here is the way in which suffering is further metasticised in an unequal world where status anxiety and scarcity are such dominant driving forces.
On this unlevel playing field, it seems there's a tendency to think that having suffered grants one a certain noli me tangere quality. And a non possum tangere a me quality. That is, don't touch me and it can't touch me. By which I mean that suffering seems to confer a 'pass'. One can become uncriticisable and one can become unempathetic.
I'm not saying this happens all the time. No. in fact, quite often the reverse is true.
But, in conditions of scarcity, it feels as though having suffered can be seen as a kind of protective filter as well as a badge of a certain form of status.
So, as people of ethnic minorities rightly point out the injustices they have suffered and continue to suffer, others, instead of feeling the urge to say, 'I hear you. That is a wrong that needs to be repaired' find themselves unable to emapathise fully. There isn't enough empathy to go round. If they empathise with those suffering from racism, who will empathise with their concerns about the role of women, or lack of political representation for their needs, or poverty more generally? And so, they feel driven to either deny the other's suffering or stand up and shout more loudly about their own. Or both.
It seems that the feeling is, 'Why should they get compassion and attention when I deserve it?' It seems the feeling is, 'I deserve it more.' Or, more brutally, 'Get on with it - we all have a shit time. What are you complaining about?'
As people feel unheard their demonstrations get louder, angrier and cease to be a call for attention, but, instead, a retaliation against an unjust, uncaring world where everyone is just clamouring to have their own needs met without being able to listen to anyone else's.
Battle lines are drawn and groups fragment away from society as a whole. Us and them becomes more of the vibe and compassion is focused increasingly narrowly. My nation, my group, me.
Is this really how we want it to be? Aren't we recreating exactly the environment that Thomas Hobbes feared?
There is a valid question here: is empathy a scarce resource in reality or only in the kind of psychological framework we have created? There are arguments to suggest that it may be the former. Research has shown that people will give more to a charity if presented with an image of one named child than an image of a large group of people all in need. In addition, people are more inclined to care about those who seem, in some way, similar to or connected with themselves. This is what Paul Bloom is on about in his book Against Empathy. When reason is a slave to our passions, we are less altruistic than we might be. The mathematical and reasoned out strategy of utilitarianism appears effective faced with this emotional breakdown of compassion.
As Will Davies points out in Nervous States, though, societies and people have become increasingly guided by how they feel, by the emotional response, rather than the rational one. Gut feelings rather than algorithms feel more salient - especially when the cold and distant institutions and financial structures have done such a terrible job of managing societies.
So how do we navigate a way out of this cul-de-sac?
I do believe that art and unselfing, wonder and awareness of the space between can all help on an individual level. So too, developing clarity and personal virtue. Listening and witnessing and attempting to be open to ideas. Remembering that certainty can be worse than holding ambiguity. Dialogue and reasoning. But that would be the tail attempting to wag the dog. Political, social and economic change are the dog - and that's what really needs to change.
Comments