Archive for the ‘ Empathy ’ Category

Last week, two shocking events occurred: the Norwegian killing rampage undertaken by Anders Breivik, and the death of singer Amy Winehouse. As it is online, many people, armed only with unexamined opinions and a keyboard, lined up to diagnose Anders as mentally ill. Others are certain that Amy died of an overdose, though no evidence of that has been found (her toxicology inquest will resume in October).

There is also a lot of shame being thrown around. Amy and Anders are of course being publicly shamed, but so are fans who suggest that Amy was not merely an addict, but also a brilliant musical talent. The shame-throwers’ position is that if we admire Amy for her talent, we are therefore glorifying her substance abuse — which they assert is not a disease, but a choice. The shamers want us to know that Amy had choices, but made terrible, unforgivable decisions and should be publicly mocked and demeaned — so that others (mostly children, I think) won’t get the idea that drug abuse is a romantic and artistic activity.

Public shaming, mockery, and denigration are being touted as cures (or aversive therapies) for addiction — as if the reason Amy Winehouse was (or anyone is) an addict is that she didn’t have enough shame thrown at her by total strangers. People have also been heaping shame upon Amy’s friends, managers, family, and parents — again, as if the problem was that none of these people tried to help Amy, and as if the solution is for total strangers to publicly shame them (this eulogy from Amy’s friend and fellow addict, Russell Brand, speaks instead to the tremendous devastation addiction wreaks on everyone).

Shame is also being heaped upon people who focused on Amy’s death (rather than the Norwegian deaths), as if there is a rulebook about how to mourn — as if being aggrieved about the tragic life and death of Amy Winehouse somehow makes us less horrified and aggrieved about Norway’s victims and their murderer’s long descent into the hell of radical hate speech, political extremism, and violent xenophobia.

I can understand the shamers’ point about the relative scale of these two tragedies, but I can’t join in with the shaming, because it’s easy to understand what’s going on. In many ways, it’s less overwhelming to think about Amy, because we have a connection with her. Even if we hadn’t heard her songs, we all know musicians, many of us know people struggling with substance abuse, and most of us saw at least one of the wrenching photos that the predatory jackals of tabloid journalism continually posted of her. She was someone we knew about, and her addiction was known to us.

But I’d say that the Norwegian situation was a shock not just because it was a devastating catastrophe, but because Norway seemed to be a functional and mellow place, or so we thought. Violent fundamentalist Christians? Isn’t Norway rather calm and secular? Violent right-wing political groups? Aren’t Scandinavian countries more politically advanced than that? Violent anti-Muslim hysteria? What? Youth camps for the children of a political party, what? The Norwegian tragedy was so much to take in, and the early hysteria about Islamic extremists being responsible really spun the story. So it’s easy to understand why some people focused on Amy Winehouse at first. There’s no shame in it; it’s just what happened.

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