Last week US President Donald Trump made another one of his shocking statements. While speaking about Afghanistan, he said that he could win the war in that country in a week if he wanted to and wipe off Afghanistan from the face of the earth. I was stunned. How can a man, that too the President of the US, openly talk about wiping a country and its people off the face of the earth! Does he even realise what he says? These are 32 million Afghani lives he is talking about. How can he even think of killing so many people? How does it even cross his mind?
True, Trump is a politician. But even by that standard, his utterance was appalling. Politicians by nature are cynical. Let's say they are at the most cynical end of a society's spectrum. But if the rest of society is more empathetic, then politicians too will be less cynical. If politicians seem more cynical today, that is because the rest of society has become less empathetic. Thus, we are facing a veritable empathy crisis in this day and age.
All the chaos in the world today can be traced to this. It is because we have reduced levels of empathy that we have become more selfish. We don't feel the pain of others. We are unable to put ourselves in their shoes. At best we can conjure up mild sympathy which too is ephemeral. We have acquired a 'me first' attitude. Therefore, it is no surprise that politicians are consequently amplifying our lack of empathy. After all, they are representatives of our thinking and attitudes. That's why Trump talked about wiping out a country so casually.
We need to reintroduce empathy in our lives. We need to feel other people's pain. That's the only way we can avoid chaos and usher in harmony in the world. And harmony is what we need today more than ever given our increasing interconnectedness. Otherwise our increasing interactions will only create chaos through suspicions and mistrust. Empathy ought to be the mantra of our times. And cultivating it in our day to day lives is the only way we can ensure that our politicians become less cynical.
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