Empathetic understanding opens social world

On April 2, 2008, the Housing Authority of East Baton Rouge Parish indefinitely closed the waiting list on all public housing. To most University students, that doesn't mean anything.

Why should it? University students are currently freaking out about final exams, projects, papers and - for the lucky few - graduation. All these things can distract us from the world around us. Besides, they're not University students - what does it matter?

The truth is, it does matter, and in reality, we are all tied together. Every person you see is a part of the same system - our social world - and its exploration is key to our development both as people and as a civilization.

When one takes into account all of the things that go on in our lives, it's easy to think of someone else's plight as distant and remain detached from another's problems.

Take the recent closing of the Housing Authority waiting list. East Baton Rouge Parish Officials have closed the list, meaning they are no longer accepting applications for public housing, and there are already too many people on the waiting list.

They offer no estimated date as to when the waiting list will be reopened.

On the University's campus, it's easy to ignore something like that. The University can create a bubble that, outside of national news coverage via the Internet and page two of The Daily Reveille, can be difficult to see past.

Odds are that most students didn't even know the waiting list was closed and may not even know anything about the process of finding public housing.

But for a portion of the Baton Rouge population, the closing of this waiting list is a big deal and has dire consequences on not just their future, but on their family's future as well.

That still seems distant to some people, but in reality, there are public housing units located within a couple of miles of the University.

Some of the people we see on our drives to and from campus are likely some of the same people affected by the closing of that list, and some students may even know people directly affected by this situation.

Regardless of how far away or irrelevant some things may seem, we are all a part of the social world - even though it's often easy to ignore people outside of those we are directly in contact with.

On the odd occasions we do help out others, it's abstract and often removed from the people themselves.

University students recently slept in boxes to raise money for the Homeless Awareness Organization of Louisiana. At the event, participants played Frisbee golf and had a good time. It was a noble thought, and the money went to a good cause. But it's still detached from where the problem actually lies.

We apparently only think about the plights of others when they are separate and abstract.

Social scientists often use the term "verstehen" when thinking about the lives of the people they study. In German, verstehen is a verb meaning "to understand."

In the social sciences, it means "an empathetic understanding" - to attempt to understand people with respect to their situations and their circumstances.

Empathetic understanding is the least we can offer both the people we interact with and the ones we don't.

Regardless of what we go through, it's important we take time to explore our social world - to think about what happens around us and the effects those actions can have in our lives and the lives of those around us.

I can't urge everyone to be active in helping others. I don't believe that everyone has the heart or the will to reach out to everyone they meet - it's time consuming and nearly impossible.

But I can urge everyone to stop for a bit and think about the social world that exists around us.

Take a minute after a final exam, five minutes during an intense paper-writing session or maybe 10 minutes during the long-awaited summer vacation to just look at the people around us and at least think about what they must be going through.

It won't put food on anybody's plate or give them a place to sleep, but if we all start thinking about our social world empathetically, we may be able to do something before it's too late.


Originally published in The Daily Reveille...