4 minute read
Eumundi Voice - Issue 108, 12 December 2024
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Empathy: A critical skill for the 21st Century
Have you lost your job, your home, an important relationship through other people’s choices or all three at once? If you have you may feel as if you have lost a part of your identity, your place in the world. It also may feel like a sense of powerlessness because the choice was imposed.
The level of grief that will be experienced will depend on your emotional attachment to your job, your relationship or your home. You may say well this is obvious. Everyone who lives life will come across such obstacles. This of course is correct. What has changed however, is the number of people who are losing “their place in society” at the same time.
According to Roy Morgan research, in October 2023 a massive 3.12M Australians were unemployed or underemployed – 20.1% of the workforce. This is the highest figure for 3 years and this number was predicted to increase in 2024.
The divorce rate in Australia in 2021 was the highest since divorces were recorded in 1976. In Australia according to Hugh MacKay – a social demographer – almost 40% of women over 60 live on their own. This is unprecedented. What is significant is that we can disassociate ourselves from a situation more easily than ever before. We can send a text to fire someone or end a relationship, or use a killer drone from thousands of kilometres away to destroy the homes of people with unknown faces.
A United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Global Trends report showed by the end of 2023, 117.3M people globally were
forcibly displaced from their homes. This is the highest number in recorded history.
The number of people that are losing their sense of place, together with some of the younger generations who are struggling to find their place, is contributing to the mental health crisis, including the epidemic of loneliness. According to recent research one-third of Australians feel lonely some, or all of the time, which is up from 1 in 4 people feeling lonely prior to the Covid pandemic.
One contributing factor is that as a society we are losing our ability to empathise. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. It is important because it helps us build trusting relationships, understand others’ perspectives, and act with compassion.
Children in the last decade have reduced their ability to empathise by 9% on the past generation. Experts suggest that 1 in 6 people
could be defined with a narcissistic personality in 2024. When narcissism and narcissistic traits are on the incline, empathy is on the decline. Some experts are defining it as a “modern epidemic” partly because the past few decades have witnessed a societal shift from a commitment to the collective to a focus on the individual or the self. It’s all about me not we.
The data may be challenged but in essence we only need to observe our own lives and the lives of others to understand the impact of lack of empathy. Lack of empathy can create cold, dispassionate decisions that destroy the lives of others and our own humanity.
Empathy can help us manage difficult decisions better, whether it is helping someone move on from their job or leave a relationship.
The difficulty is how can we keep so many balls in the air? How do we develop the skills at the speed required? The answer is not simple however there has to be focus and priorities on education and training at every level.
Schools need to help train children and guide parents. Governments need to review their policies to ensure that the students wanting to do humanities are not financially penalised in favour of technology courses. Organisations need to re-engage in leadership programs that have a dual focus on technology and humanities.
Those in power need to act quickly. The good news is, these skills can be taught and are becoming more appreciated as the scale of societal issues escalates.
