Progressive Values Stories: Joe Brewer on Empathy

Progressive Values Stories: Joe Brewer on Empathy

So when people are treated unfairly, like with inequality, we have a responsibility to do what we can collectively in our community to care for those people and provide for them, to be sure that they are given the opportunities that everyone deserves.  So I think when we’re talking about progressive values, we’re really talking about empathy and responsibility. 

Now we extend that and say “What happens when I care about someone else, and I want them to have some kind of well-being”.  What is going to be entailed in that?  Those values include fulfillment, and if you care about someone else and put yourself in their shoes, then you’re going to want them to have the same opportunities and pursue their dreams as you have.  So, you’re going to think about their fulfillment.

And your also going to think about basic levels of material wealth, which means moving into prosperity.  Because people who don’t have the basic things they need to take care of themselves are going to suffer, and they are not going to seek their dreams.

And all that is really about freedom, which is another important value.  Each person needs to have freedom guaranteed to them, with opportunities to be able to pursue their dreams and goals.  As long as those freedoms they express don’t impinging on the freedoms of others. 

And a corollary of that is that you need to have another kind of freedom, freedom from harm.  Freedom from people restricting upon or infringing upon your freedoms.  So we have to work together as a community to guarantee those things.

Now if we start extending those things out on a community level, then we’re going to get to other kind of values. They don’t sound like normal values – values like the common good, the common wealth.  We invest in collectively what we each individually can’t afford, so have to provide together.

Things like education, public infrastructure, highways, funding of scientific research and medicine.  The things that no one can provide for themselves, that are extensions of basic levels of progressive values.  So, when we start talking about progressive values, there’s a lot we can say.

Edwin:  The first thing you mentioned was empathy.  Can you talk about your own personal experience, how you developed that value?

Well, I look at it from a perspective of what psychology teaches us.  My experience – I grew up in a small town in Missouri, in a place where there was a lot of poverty, and most people fell pretty much trapped where they were.  So I was immersed in a living condition of feeling trapped.

What I felt when I was around other people in that condition was I felt the same lack of opportunity they felt, and I resonated – their suffering became my suffering, because I saw in them the hardships that I experienced. 

So when I talk about empathy, I talk about it at a really concrete level with the people around you.  It’s the people I interact with directly on a daily basis.  When I’m around other people, as I get to know them, I care about them.  I want them to do well.  They’re my friends.  They’re my family. 

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