NOVEMBER 28, 2020 – Yesterday, as I approached the entrance to “Little Switzerland” (a nearby hilly park) and my daily hike, I saw a couple walking toward me up the sidewalk. To maintain social distancing, I hurried to reach the break-away point before the other two walkers. As I peeled into the closest “canton,” the couple called out my name.
Winter clothing rendered them unidentifiable. They were Billie and Terry, our “up at the lake” neighbors, whose permanent abode is within a few blocks of ours here in the city. I hadn’t seen them in many months, so we stopped to chat.
It didn’t take long to reach politics and the pandemic. I offered my two cents’ worth of observations. My first cent was this: “A generation from now, this era will be the focus of intense study, not so much by historians and political scientists as by psychologists.”
Billie, a PhD clinical psychologist agreed spontaneously. “That’s for sure!” She said. Terry, an HR consultant, joined his wife’s reaction. “Already some pretty intense work is being done,” Billie said.
My second cent: I explained that soon after Election Day I’d had a phone conversation with our son Byron, a mid-Millennial, who’s a moderate Democrat, very much a “people person,” and highly analytical in sizing up how the world works.
“Byron’s take,” I said, “is that our polarization is attributable to a divide in our caring for others. Roughly half of the people truly care about those outside their immediate circle—family, friends, co-workers—and the other half doesn’t care so much more about people outside their closest contacts.”
To this Billie again agreed and said, “There’s been quite a lot of research done on the science of caring.” She cited examples of people in her own family who are exceptionally caring and generous within the clan but, in her words, “don’t give a rip about the George Floyds of the world.”
Succumbing to the wind, we closed out the conversation, bade farewell, and went our separate directions.
I later Googled, “Psychological analysis of caring,” which produced a long string of hits. I settled on one, an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, entitled, “The Science of What Makes People Care.” (https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_science_of_what_makes_people_care#)
I dug into the article and found its five nuggets to be convincingly insightful. They support my long-standing criticism of people on the hard left, whose policy dispositions I often embrace, but whose messaging is all too negative. Exhibit A: Bernie Sanders. Exhibit B: Elizabeth Warren. Exhibit C: The Squad. As it turns out, the browbeating, guilt-imposing language of progressives runs afoul of the science as revealed in the aforementioned article. But in studying the article, I was forced to acknowledge my own frequent disregard for the science of caring. It won’t be easy to change old habits, just as “The Eiger” wasn’t easy at first. Yet every day I climb it seven times—now with such ease, the repetition is habit!
One never knows where a walk and a conversation will lead.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
