The Empathy Crisis
Stock image courtesy of SquareSpace
On January 7, 2026, 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed by an officer of United States Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE). You may have seen one of the several videos online that document the event in explicit, undeniable detail.
And yet people are denying it. People from next-door neighbors to family members to those in power in the United States government are employing tactics to sow seeds of doubt about what we all know we saw. For some of these people, this disbelief may be some level of defense. Sometimes, when something in reality is just too awful and horrendous to fully digest, disbelief acts as a buffer between us and the sheer reality of the pain and horror of the thing itself. Defenses like this act as a sort of emotion-numbing plexiglas between us and the terror of disempowerment, of lack of control. Perhaps this is the case for those going through a litany of perceived reasons as to why it was justifiable that ICE officer Jonathan Ross fired his weapon at point-blank-range through the windshield and then the drivers side window. Perhaps people of the belief that Renee Good should have gotten out of the car, should have not gotten involved in an enforcement operation, are similarly employing - consciously or otherwise - strategies to protect themselves from the very stark reality that a human life was arbitrarily taken by an agent of the state. And maybe these strategies are the same ones evinced by folks who tried to convince themselves and others that George Floyd’s or Trayvon Martin’s murder were somehow warranted.
Whatever the etiology of the behavior, the outcome is this - a crisis of empathy. Our compassion is so corroded that we can see a single mother be shot three times in the head and somehow say it was warranted. That we can allow stories like those of Keith Porter and Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez to fall by the wayside and not get the same kind of national outcry. It’s the same corrosion that rears its head when laughter or sentiments like “that’s what you get” are the responses to humans being taken from their families and placed in detention centers as they await deportation or worse. It’s the same deficit that leads to false equivalencies categorizing queer and transgender people as people who wish to harm children. This empathy short-circuit allows for legislation to be passed that strips people who do not look, talk, or act like the “majority” of their human dignity and right to a safe existence.
If we consider that our internal social engagement system emerged over the course of millennia of evolution, it is not an overstatement to say that empathy is and has been necessary for our survival as a species. If we did not have the capacity for empathy, we would not have been able to bring vulnerable others in from severe weather and keep them safe in days long past. We would not be able to form relationships with people that make us feel a sense of belonging, community, and connection. Neuroscience shows us that there is, in fact, a discrete set of structures and processes in not just our brain but our whole nervous system - that is to say, throughout our body beyond just our brain - that comprises this complex and highly evolved social engagement system. That when we are in a state of true connection with another human being(s), we are able to be present and access resources such as play, creativity, curiosity, and compassion. If being in the presence of others can be so co-regulating, it follows that engaging in dehumanizing discourse and/or behaviors runs the risk of degrading that capacity for connection.
Empathy is integral for our collective survival. It is something we must engage and extend to those beyond our immediate circle or group. Others do not earn our empathy by virtue of proximity to what we deem as acceptable. They - we - simply are deserving of it, and it is imperative that we listen to the small, quiet voice inside of ourselves, muted by outrage and denial, that is trying to remind us of our common connection to all humanity.