Empathy, Crisis, and Modern Society

The Need for Empathy

• Growing empathy is the first step in making things better.
• Humanity is learning to see itself in others and feel their pain.
• A change in mindset and empathy, rather than scientific advancement, will improve things.

Cosmic Interconnections

• Various crises are interconnected.
• The environmental crisis is linked to humanity's spiritual crisis.
• The Great Chain of Being connects everyone.
• Empathy is needed as a solution to problems that science cannot solve

Survival as Metaphor

• The term "survival" helps in understanding the prevalent anxiety and alertness caused by global ecological and economic crises.

The Naked Life

• Modern society only believes in "naked life".
• Italians are willing to sacrifice everything to avoid illness.
• The fear of losing the "naked life" separates people.

Metaphors of War and Catastrophe

• What separates the fear of terrorism from the fear of viruses?
• What separates of the war on terror from the war on drugs?
• Regarding everything as war and catastrophe causes life to appear as a struggle for existence, making it difficult to care for others.

Emotional States vs. Stations of Virtue

• Emotional states (ahwal) are temporary.
• Stations of virtue (maqamat) are more permanent.
• Examples of stations of virtue include prayer, patience, honesty, gratitude, charity, kindness, forgiveness, and resilience.
• Virtue should define one's path, not emotions.

Hedonia and Eudaimonia

• Hedonia is the pursuit of happiness through pleasure.
• Eudaimonia is the pursuit of human flourishing through meaning.

Smiths and the Meaning Crisis

• Modern developments have led to a crisis of meaning and disenchantment.
• Modern knowledge leads to disenchantment.
• All aspects of modern knowledge make life feel small and insignificant

Evidence of Insignificance

• Astronomy shows Earth as a speck in a vast universe.
• Geology shows human civilization as a short interlude between ice ages.
• Biology shows humans evolving from matter to survive.
• Psychology reduces the self to heredity and environment.
• History presents progress as an illusion.
• Sociology suggests rationality leads to the "iron cage".
• Philosophy views life as meaningless and absurd.

Four Pillars of Meaning

• Belonging is connecting to a larger community through relationships.
• Purpose involves having long-term goals to achieve.
• Storytelling involves building meaning through personal narratives and reflections.
• Transcendence is connecting to something bigger than oneself, like spirituality or nature.

Storytelling

• It's the story that you tell yourself about yourself.
• Redemptive stories turn bad experience into positive outcomes
• Contamination stories turn good beginnings into negative endings
• People need a mental map/cosmology to make sense of life.

Cultures of Meaning

• Post-industrial societies are shifting from materialist values to post-materialist values like self-expression and meaning.
• Cultures of meaning can be either positive or negative, such as gangs

The Homeless Mind

• Modernity has been liberating, but it has come at a high cost.
• Modern trends have left individuals alienated and threatened by meaninglessness.
• The religious crisis in modern society has led to social homelessness becoming metaphysical, as it has become homelessness in the cosmos

Civilization and Its Discontents

• Civilization forces individuals to renounce pleasure and aggression.
• Religion and religious ideas help individuals achieve this by taming human instinctual expression

Conditions of Belonging

• The first condition is being in relationships of mutual care.
• People need to feel loved and valued by others
• When others treat you like you matter, you believe it
• The second condition is having frequent pleasant interactions with others
• Everyday interactions must happen regularly and be non-negative
• Interactions can be joyful or neutral, but never negative
• See Putnam's Bowling Alone, which alludes to the privatization of leisure time

Durkheim and Anomie

• Anomie is a state of normlessness or purposelessness.
• Suicide rates are connected to social integration in two ways: too little social connection and too much social integration/ loss of individual choice
• According to Smith, wealthier countries have higher education, more individualism, fewer children, less religion, less meaningful lives, and higher suicide rates
• Poorer countries have less individualism, more children, more religion, more meaningful lives, and lower suicide rates
• Religiosity provides meaning.

Religiosity and Provision of Meaning

• Religious beliefs and practices create a sense of purpose, belonging, and coherence in life.
• Religiosity often offers a structured narrative, rituals, and community that help individuals transcend and connect to something greater.

Migration and Diasporas

• Migration refers to the movement of people from one place to another, and includes emigration as well as immigration.
• A migrant is someone who moves from one region to another within a country or between countries. They can be either authorized or unauthorized.
• A refugee is someone who is forced to move from their home because of conflict, political, economic, or environmental disruption.
• Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are forced to leave their homes because of disruption, but remain within their country's borders.
• An asylum-seeker seeks permanent residence in another country out of fear for their personal safety if they were to return home

Causes of Migration

• Push factors are problems and pressures that cause people to leave their region.
• Pull factors are opportunities that draw people to a new region or state.

2015 Migration Crisis

• The 2015 European migrant crisis saw an increase in refugees and migrants into Europe, mainly from the Middle East.
• An estimated 1.3 million people requested asylum on the continent.
• Most were from Syria, but also included people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Eritrea, and the Balkans.

Diasporic Studies

• The globalized world is shaped by international migration, posing challenges to nation-states and civil societies.
• International migration creates opportunities and new perspectives.
• Identity is no longer linked to physical space and territory.
• Concepts of home and homeland stay important despite mobility.

Diaspora vs. Exile

• Diaspora differs from exile, which is more individualistic.
• Diaspora involves "dwelling, maintaining community, having collective homes away from home" (308).
• Diaspora cultures mediate the experiences of separation and entanglement, of living here and remembering/desiring another place" (311).

Diasporic Consciousness

• Diaspora consciousness involves feeling differently and having an attachment to another place and a different vision of modernity.
• Constitutive suffering co-exists with skills of survival.
• It is constituted both negatively through experiences of discrimination, racial and economic marginalization, and positively, through attachment to world historical cultural and political forces.

Conceptualizing Diaspora

• The first way to conceptualize diaspora is influenced by the Jewish experience and involves groups dispersed from their origin to different locations.
• Groups are affected by alienation in a new environment, scattered individuals hope for a return to a homeland, which becomes idealized.
• The return becomes a sustaining myth (provides meaning), characterized by feelings of loss, nostalgia, alienation, and marginality
• The second way: return is no longer focused on place but on a status of dignity.
• Individuals within the diaspora are bound by a shared history of dispossession and fight for equality.
• Identities a constantly negotiated; diasporic people are agents in cultural exchanges and are in-between hybridity and third space. "

Myanmar/Burma: Pre-Colonial Period

• Burma was made up of many kingdoms with different ethnic and religious factions.
• The Bamar kingdom defeated Arakan (Rakhine) in 1785.
• In 1799, 35,000 people moved from Arakan to British Bengal, and British began to call Arakan Muslims as Rohingya

Myanmar/Burma: Colonial Period

• In 1832, the British colonized Burma, with policies favoring minorities against the Buddhist majority.
• In 1945, the Rohingya supported Britain and the Buddhist majority supported Japan.
• Ethnic division and intercommunal violence increased

Myanmar/Burma: Postcolonial Period and Key Events

• Burma gained independence between 1948 and 1960s, and citizens recognized the Rohingya as citizens with full rights.
• In 1962, the military took power and eroded minority rights.
• From 1978-1982, mass arrests and new citizenship laws stripped the Rohingya of their legal status
• In the 1980's, pro-Democracy protests were crushed, Rohingya lost access to ID cards, and state discrimination intensified
• In the 2010s under Aung San Suu Kyi, brief democratic reforms caused violence against the Rohingya to escalate
• In 2017, the Military launched a brutal crackdown,killing thousands and forcing over 700,000 to flee to Bangladesh.
• In 2021, democratic experiments ended and authoritarian rule resumed.

Rohingya Background

• The Rohingya are an ethnic group of Muslims in Burma/Myanmar.
• They primarily lived in Rakhine state in western Burma/Myanmar.
• Myanmar revoked Rohingya citizenship in 1982, making them stateless.
• Myanmar regards Rohingyas as illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya

• The Rohingya, an Muslim minority in Myanmar, have experienced exclusionary citizenship laws for decades.
• Myanmar revoked citizenship for Rohingyas in 1982 making them stateless
• Myanmar sees Rohingyas as illegal migrants from Bangladesh.
• The Myanmar government launched a military campaign in 2017 that forced 700,000 Rohingya to flee
• Rights groups believe that the government committed Genocide against the Rohingya, but officials deny these allegations.
• The US and other countries have helped/sent aid to Rohingya refugees neighboring countries like Bangladesh

UNHCR

• The UN Refugee Agency works to ensure everyone has the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge if they have fled violence, persecution or war.
• Resettlement is an option for refugees if their life, safety and health are at risk in their home country

International Organization for Migration (IOM)

• The IOM is committed to ensure humane and orderly migration benefits migrants and society.
• The IOM helps people in emergency situations, develops strength for those on the move.

Resilience

• Resilience is determined by nature and nurture
• Predictors of resilience include; purpose, moral compass towards altruism, social support and transcendent sources of meaning
• Pillars of meaning help people recover from trauma

PTSD and Post-Traumatic Growth

• PTSD and post-traumatic growth are not mutually exclusive.
• Half to two-thirds of trauma survivors report post-traumatic growth, a small percentage suffer from PTSD.
• The Survivor mission is the drive to help others who have suffered similarly.
• Helping others leads to more optimism and peace in their life.

International Students Overcoming War (ISOW)

• A unique Laurier University program where students, staff and faculty enable studends from war conflict countries to study in safely and security in Canada

Rahima (Khushi) Akter

• She is from the Kutupalong refugee camp.
• She hid her Rohingya identity to get into a private university in bangladesh
• Khushi translates to happiness
• Her parents were helped from labor and violent attacks from Buddhist mobs in Myanmar during the early 1990s

Nature and Mysticism

• There is unity and harmony in nature
• Spending time in nature leads to a loss of self/ego death
• People realize that they are the universe, thus they are part of something greater and that gives them happiness

Paradox of Transcendence

• Transcendence makes individuals "feel insignificant yet connected to something massive and meaningful"
• Feelings of connectedness and timelessness come from reaching transcendence
• Sense of infinity

Migration as Metaphor for Metaphysical Return

• Physical migration is a deeper journey to return to a truth, origin, or self.
• Symbolizes soul's longing for home.

Doctrine of Hijra (Migration)

• Stories of the migrations of Prophets
• Hijra is a permanent relocation
• Muhajir is one who makes the hijra
• Connotations of being strange, but also of purification, piety and redemption.
• Life on earth is a sojourn, and we are all sojourners

Globalization and Human Ethics

• There is a higher moral awareness that transcends borders and embodies compassion, justice and shared responsibility

Hajj as a Physical and Spiritual Journey

• Migration is a spiritual journey to communicate between humans and the divine
• Hajj is required of all muslims at least once in their life and one of the five pillars of islam