It’s always fascinated me how relatability can fool anyone into thinking someone understands them when in reality, they don’t.
Setting aside the differences in class that set you and these people of higher authority apart, it intrigued me how these government officials can make lower and middle-class people feel like they empathize with our struggles, and maybe some of them do.
We never really know anyone’s original upbringing so we can’t assume that they don’t sympathize with the individuals at hand, maybe they have been there before so we can’t assume they’re just pretending to care.
But with the way that they’re moving and how their methods of achieving economic growth seem to look more like gaining political advantage, it’s getting harder to believe them.
There’s this word that I find fascinating called a demagogue, first coined in Ancient Greece, derived from the Greek word dēmagōgos, demos meaning ‘the people’ and agogos meaning ‘leading’ it translates to a political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than using rational argument.
At first, the word meant no harmful connotations, but as the years progressed, it has been used in very negative contexts to describe incompetent political leaders, but upon reading the meaning of the word, you’re probably thinking to yourself, what’s wrong with a leader that empathizes with the struggles of their people? Isn’t that what we all want from someone who leads an institution slash nation?
However, looks can be deceiving, and it simply boils down to how one can exploit the public’s trust for personal gain.
Manipulation is a common strategy to either isolate or gaslight someone for the manipulator’s twisted advantage and is achieved by appealing to a person’s weaknesses and desires.
Considering you won’t know how to bring someone down without knowing how to uplift them first, in the same sense that you can’t indulge in the anticipated sunshine without going through the darkness.
Figuring out what makes a person complete is a stepping stone to figuring out how to break them apart as well, as you can’t lure someone in by pushing them away.
For the push won’t be just as strong and the landing won’t hurt just as much if you don’t uplift the person first, and to do that, the only way one will be able to revel in a person’s suffering is to know what spurs their inclinations; what motivates them, and what they yearn for. Studying these means creating your blueprint of someone.
As someone once said, subjectivity is the plate from which our senses eat, and empathy is just a matter of knowing what another person consumes.
Political leaders know this technique better than anyone, they wouldn’t have achieved such a powerful position if they didn’t know how to appeal to the masses, now would they?
That’s why we can’t blame the people who fall for them, because even though one’s intentions are transparent to one person, to the other it isn’t.
These individuals know their target audience. They know the type of crowd who will be capable of advancing them towards the pedestal that they so desperately crave.
That’s why the groups of people they’ve fooled aren’t at fault here, it’s because they were poisoned, and yes, you can say that these people already have principles and moralities similar to those that they look up to.
In the end, it all boils down to how these political leaders choose to exploit those principles for their personal gain than it is about the people.
They know what makes them tick. An example I want to use to illustrate my point is to use the president of my own country — aka, Rodrigo Duterte.
A very controversial personality, this man. I live in the Philippines and I’d be lying if I said that this place was bursting with sunshine and rainbows, because the truth is, it isn’t.
We’re a very corrupted country, and it’s because the people who run our country are also deeply corrupted and they only think about themselves.
With our government stealing billions and billions of money from our health care department — as well as our department of education excusing their inability to provide modules during the pandemic due to a lack of funds but were suddenly able to purchase a supply of ham and cheese for their annual Christmas party that was worth 4.2M pesos, and that’s only describing a fraction of what happens here.
I’m not even going to elaborate on the crimes that were committed by our justice system and how our President dismisses it because he favors what his people do which is reinforcing violence in the face of violence and suffering. I’d be here lecturing you for at least 15 more hours if I do that, so I’m not even going to try.
That’s the gist of it, and you’d think that as this happens the entire nation would be completely opposed to what our government officials are doing, right? But sadly, not everyone thinks that way. There are, of course, people who favor what our government officials are doing and choose to celebrate it just to spite the people who don’t.
You must be wondering, why? Why are there people who are against it and those who are not?
Why are there people who, despite being confronted with tangible evidence of discrimination, offense, and brutality, still choose to support it?
Even if you show them the statistics, the numbers, and the ramifications of their actions, they still choose to support what will inevitably lead them to their downfall.
Why? Because these people are exploited.
Their hatred and opposition towards reform and progress are being used against them by the same people they look up to and defend. What they disguise as empathy winds up being exploitation, disguised as a deep understanding of the struggles that you face.
They will use this as bait, tie it around their fishing hooks to lure you and entrap you, put you in a box, and let you stay there, boiling up all this repressed indignation until it’s finally hit its peak and you turn into this massive ball of hatred that will burn everyone around you.
They will appeal to your prejudices and insecurities and cement you into the same mindset you’ve fostered since the beginning so they can catapult their way up to the top.
Use your battles against you so they could win the war and roam freely upon the corpses they’ve used not only as their shields but also as their weapons.
As stated, one of the many factors that come into play here is romanticizing the difficulties you’ve faced, and if someone goes out of their way to tell you that they are just looking out for your best interest, they would not allow themselves to see you stuck in the same place all your life being tormented with the same cards you’ve already dealt with.
That is not empathy. Empathy is being able to recognize but not endorse the issues a person struggles with and not letting them manifest out into the real world to the point it contaminates their environment.
Acknowledging the problem and letting the person know their experiences are valid is what empathy is, letting them know that they are not alone, but also reminding them that what they have gone through is not permanent.
That they will not remain in pain.
What’s not empathy is choosing to acknowledge the issue but not doing anything about it — milking other people’s trauma and suffering is not empathy but rather false vindication.
They can say that they understand you, they can say that they’ll take action to resolve the issue, but if the outcome isn’t any different from what’s already been and said, and you just feel a quiet sense of superiority that your struggles are being normalized, that is not empathy.
You are being exploited so that the people at the top can remain at the top whilst doing the absolute bare minimum.
That’s why so many inhumane laws are still not being dismissed today. That’s why we allow these government officials to do as they please despite society crumbling before them because it doesn’t necessarily affect them as long as they’re still sitting pretty in their thrones, as long as you’re in the same living conditions you’ve always been in, but less glamorous.
But they’ll praise you for surviving it.
That you’ve emerged from the ashes like a phoenix and how they’ll applaud you for being strong instead of realizing that yes, that is messed up and that they’ll make sure the future generations that come after you will not experience that.
But they don’t do it, they coddle your pain to not take accountability for it. One of the few instances I want to use to highlight this predicament is the recurring trend here in my country when it comes to the people who live in the province as opposed to those who live in the city.
Anytime a catastrophe happens to the people who live here in the city such as being laid off from industries they work in, you can pretty much expect that those who live in the province will celebrate it or downplay it, and it’s all because our president used to live in the province, and one of the definitive factors that take a huge role in this debate is because those who live in the province have always felt inferior to those who live in the city.
They have been mocked for their lack of education and knowledge about the system in contrast to those who live in the city who are aware.
In the end, they detest those who live in the city for knowing what they don’t and having what they don’t have… instead of blaming the people who could’ve provided them with the same resources.
This is why I can’t bring myself to detest them because they are still victims. They have been dehumanized enough in ways that either make them feel horrible about themselves or empower them but in very unhealthy ways.
You also can’t say it’s that easy for them to reach out and educate themselves all on their own, because how are they gonna do that when they aren’t provided with the appropriate resources? This is why those who are granted these resources aren’t necessarily saints either because they are perpetuating the idea that it’s just that easy to know things.
But it’s not, and the reason why it’s not is that the people in power aren’t doing enough to change that, and we need to encourage them to do something about it, those who have all the more suitable resources that will help these people, but are doing nothing of the sort.
They instead choose to push this agenda of Anti-Intellectualism so there’s a division between these two groups, and it’ll continue until one of them outweighs the other group and they crash and almost become non-existent.
That is wrong on multiple levels because you are not raising awareness, and neither are you doing anything to take action and make a difference, you’re capitalizing out on people’s struggles so that your pockets can remain filled whilst every aspect of their lives remain empty, and the reason why they choose to dismiss those who support the democratic party is that they know those people won’t allow these types of behavior anymore once they’re pushed off their pedestals.
They want to continue feeling in control and powerful whilst they look down on the people that are fighting for their breaths, continuing this battle to achieve a brighter future ahead. But that won’t happen as long as they keep focusing on the darkness and nothing more.
In the end, what can fix this is confronting that you were taken advantage of. To not want to face the possibility that the cards that you were dealt with could’ve been prevented because there’s always that slither of shame that courses through you, preventing you from speaking up because you still want to preserve the littlest bit of dignity you have left.
And because you’ve earned what you had fought for, but in exchange for what you’ve gotten were years and years of oppression and wasted possibilities of having it easier.
That’s why there are people who are opposed to the idea of a new generation fighting for things that can reduce the exertion and exploitation of employees and students. Not because they think this new generation of individuals are lazy, but because they don’t want to face the fact that if they just weren’t so complicit to those of higher authority, they could’ve avoided the long-winded sprint that earned them that rusting medal they still boast about today.
And that needs to stop, the exploitation and romanticization of your suffering because you don’t wanna see others prosper because you weren’t able to have it. You applaud people who choose to lend so-called empathy to what you’ve gone through but can’t have in it yourself to lend the same type of gesture back because you want to be coddled and validated.
Validated for the pain that doesn’t have to define who you are as a person.
