Feeling For and With Others
by
Charles Lamson
“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." -Luke 12:34
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In this book, Schwalbe is referring to what might be called "perspective-taking with the heart" - allowing ourselves to respond emotionally to others. Our responses can be sympathetic (feeling for another) or empathetic (feeling with another). If we feel sorry for a friend whose parent has died, that is a sympathetic response. If we feel some of the friend's grief as if our own parent had died, that is an empathetic response to the other person's feelings. Such responses are not automatic; we can refuse to have them.
Imagine you have a chance to steal a pot of money that has been donated to buy medicine for poor children. The money is right there, unguarded. You could use it to pay bills, buy a new stereo, and have a spot of fun. The chances of getting caught are slim. How will you decide whether or not to take the money?
You might try to imagine how stealing the money would make others feel. The people who donated and collected it would be angry. The children who expected to benefit from it, would be sad, discouraged, and made to suffer for lack of the medicine they need. If you were caught and sent to trial, then your family and friends would feel shame and disappointment. You would probably also feel disgust for yourself. If you can imagine all this, and let yourself feel what others would feel if you stole the money, you will probably leave it alone.
But suppose that your mind is quicker than your heart, and before you feel anything, you think, "The people who gave the money are rich and just looking for a tax deduction. They don't really care about poor children. As for the kids, I'm sure they'll find help somewhere else to get help. Besides, most medicines don't do any good at all. You're better off not taking them. I doubt that much of the money even goes to the kids at all. It probably goes into administrators' pockets. Those folks already have more money than they need. I don't. I'm broke. This money will do me a lot more good than it will do them. I'll just scoop it up and be on my way."
In the second case, you would have convinced yourself (quite rationally) that taking the money is a reasonable thing to do. There is even some perspective-taking involved: "The rich don't really care about poor children." That might be true, though it cannot justify taking the money Since other people's feelings are also at stake. it is only by ignoring these feelings that reason is allowed to proceed to a hurtful conclusion.
It is not just to deter hurtful acts that we must feel with and for others. Ordinary interaction depends on emotional responsiveness. Consider, for example, the ritual greeting we usually enact when we pass someone we know: "Hi how are you? "Good." "That's good." "See you later." "See you." It seems that there is little thought or feeling in this exchange. So why do we do it? What purpose would it serve?
The greeting ritual is a way for people to acknowledge each other's presence. We do this because we know it feels better to have one's existence affirmed than to be ignored. We do it, in other words, because we respect each other's feelings, and they ours. It is a little ritual that uplifts and stabilizes us emotionally as we go through our days. Imagine how you would feel if everyone to whom you said, "Hi how are you?" either did not reply or said, "Bug off,"
Small acts of politeness serve the same purpose. These small acts - the pleases, the thank yous, pardon mes, and so on - signify respect for others' feelings. These acts show others that we can be trusted as interactants. If we signify respect in these little ways, we can probably be trusted not to act in ways that will damage others' feelings, especially their feelings about themselves. What this implies is that being emotionally responsive to others is necessary for getting anything done with other people.
We must also be emotionally responsive to others to protect our own feelings. Others can, if they wish, reject our identity claims (that is, they can refuse to accept us as the good people we claim to be) or treat us with disrespect. Of course, we can do the same things to others, if we are so inclined. We can deny their identity claims and disrespect them. This is another way we are emotionally tied to others. We treat others respectfully, not only so they can feel good about themselves, but also so they will feel obligated to treat us in a way that upholds our cherished identities, and allows us our self-respect.
Most of our conformist behavior is based on our emotional responsiveness to, and interdependence with, others. In other words, our good or bad feelings about ourselves depend greatly on how others react to us, and how we imagine they are evaluating us. Consider for example, the practice of leg shaving.
Schwalbe illustrates his example with this quote from The Sociologically Examined Life on pg. 73:
When I ask women in my gender class why they do such an odd thing, they usually say, "Oh that, well that's just a personal choice; I do it because I think my legs look better shaved." this is a useful answer, because it is not at all mindful. To show this, I ask, "Why is it then that every woman in the class makes this same choice? If it were really a personal choice, wouldn't there be at least 10 percent who choose differently, especially in a culture that supposedly values individuality?" After a minute, the answers come: "My boyfriend would hate it"; "People would think you are a lesbian"; "You couldn't wear shorts in public because people would stare." So what is really at stake are feelings about one's self, as affected by the real or imagined reactions of others. 
In Conclusion
You might think, "So what if our culture favors hairless legs on women, and disfavors dresses on men? What's the big deal? Every culture has its fashions." This is true, but it is not the point, which has to do with why people feel compelled to conform to traditions. What is important to see is that the force of tradition arises, in large part, from our emotional responsiveness to others. This responsiveness, in turn, arises from our ability to imagine how others are judging us, and from a desire to feel good about ourselves, if we imagine that others think we are stupid, ugly, or immoral.
*SOURCE: THE SOCIOLOGICALLY EXAMINED LIFE, 2ND EDITION, 2001, MICHAEL SCHWALBE, PGS. 71-74*
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