The Empathizer

This is not a copy-cat of “The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen, nor a co-branding attempt (authors with the same last name but no relations) with a similar-sounding title.

Seriously, we are entering the Empathic Civilization, whether we like it or not. Artificial Intelligence or Robotic technology can accelerate and eliminate guess-work i.e. Japanese robotic care-takers can bring the medicine, remind old folks of time for bed…and can even nod their heads in agreement or ask clarifying questions…but….The Centennial Man can neither cry nor can he die. High-tech, high-touch.

Empathizers are a whole different breed from the Centennial Man.

You have to be wired better than even the best of actors Hollywood can buy. Humanity has taken its time, sifting through thousands of versions to get here ( fake news and fake hair aside), that is, for us to cry, to feel ( for the hundreds missing in the Bahamas, for the low-income N Carolinians who lost their mobile homes because of Dorian) and to hate (righteously) the haters.

The Sympathizers are NATO’s ( No Action, Talk Only) while Empathizers are the pigs that provide your ham-and-eggs breakfasts.

Empathizers went through the grinders barely escaped the fate of sausages (perhaps the machine jammed up).

Empathizers listen often with misty-eyed (not those fake and reflexive nods paid therapists or pastors often do, while stealing a glance at the clock behind you).

It pains the empathizer as much as it pained you.

You feel lightened after you have met the empathizer.

Empathizers don’t steal your turn ( in a hurry to offer canned advice) when you are in the middle of an outpour. Empathizers meet and greet each person unassumingly.

Empathizers are hard to find. You might be lucky to meet one or two in your life-time. They even thanked you for unloading your burden on them.

Empathizers are those who don’t blink in the face of threat or taunt.

Empathizers? been there, done that since they are schooled in risk-taking and risk management.

Empathizers anticipate what’s next, yet don’t act surprised (sympathizers do).

Empathizers offer non-verbal acceptance in response.

A civilization reaches its apex when the majority of its population possess empathy and the machine does what’s it does best: repetitive and remote responses (to stimuli and instructions).

Work on being an empathizer (BTW it is contagious and spreads like a pebble gets dropped in a lake). It’s not the biblical ” wipe away tears from their eyes”. It’s empathic ( there will be a lot of crying together). Not solving but sharing a problem. Empathy is a sub-set of common grace.

An empathic civilization witnesses a lot of people sharing a rainbow, very much like the scene in “Close encounter of the 3rd kind” w/out a need for 3-D glasses.

You don’t get that kind of ending in Nguyen’s “The Sympathizer”. He packed too much in one volume as if trying to make up for all the lost times or opportunities Viet-Am writers don’t often get to have (a substantial readership – historically Asian-American tend to “act up” by packing all their argument into one hurried sentence not only because of English as a second language – see Rush Hour – but also because of scarcity – of exposure- mentality). In “The Empathizer”, time is aplenty ( there exist no clocks in the room, because we are situated at the eclipse of kairos – eternity – and chronos – the here and now- hence making allowance for shared humanity and divinity.

We shall shed skin to take on a new identity, god-like one, without fear, humiliation, shame or constant nagging of the wife and peeping of the Jones. See, when society has empathy, it needs not forced-ranking and ridding off its deviants and undesirables. In this non-zero-sum society, we are all “winners” without the need for competition and elimination. More ham fewer eggs. Empathy, not for the faint of heart.