I Melt With You
What is it? Who gets to experience it?
I’m 8 years old and spending a long weekend with my Grandma Dorothy in Moorhead, Minnesota. Mom and Dad gave me five $1 bills to last through the weekend, which I can stretch quite a ways in 1988, especially since Grandma is boarding and feeding me. Grandma is head cook at a high school. Her all-white, slightly stained uniform smells faintly of fried chicken as she drives me along to an errand at the Dilworth K-Mart. In the toy aisle, under flickering fluorescent lights, I linger, considering the cost of items like a new baseball and a translucent green water pistol. I thumb the crisp bills in the pocket of my neon orange, rorschach-patterned shorts and continue walking. The latest blue light special beckons shoppers to the automotive department while Modern English’s “I Melt With You” plays over the store’s tinny PA system. I made a pilgrimage to save this human race, never comprehending the race had long gone by.
At the check-out lane, while the teller scans Grandma’s goods—a box of Kaboom! cereal, and some Kleenex—I turn my attention to bottles of Sioux City Sarsaparilla and packs of Garbage Pail Kids cards. Setting my sights on a “fruit”-flavored bubble-gum cigar, I toss it onto the moveable belt and fish out one of my dollar bills. As Grandma gets the total from the teller, she looks at my choice of purchase, clicks her tongue and rolls her eyes before telling the cashier “Oh Miss, I’ll pay for that—cigar—there too.”
I protest. “No grandma, I’ve got money.”
She is already writing a check to the cashier though, and reminds me to “Save your money for a rainy day.”
On our way out of the strip mall parking lot, a Latino man with a deep tan is standing on the median leading out to Highway 10. He wears a short-sleeved, collared button-down shirt, with the top two buttons undone and drinks water from a plastic McDonalds cup. He holds out a cardboard sign which reads Help. No work. Please.
Something stirs in my chest and I touch the bills in my shorts pocket. “Gramma?” Her eyes briefly find mine in the rear-view mirror. “Can you pull over to that man?”
“Who? That homeless man on the corner?”
“Homeless?” I ask. The concept is completely foreign to me. I have never seen a homeless person in my tiny rural town of Lisbon, North Dakota, the only home I’ve ever known.
“Why? What do you want with him, now?” The windows of Grandma’s tan ‘82 Toyota Tercel are rolled up and her AC is on full blast, but the air inside the sedan is stifling.
“I want to give him some money.”
“Oh, I don’t know Joshie, let’s just get home and I’ll make you some supper.” Grandma pulls her sedan to the red light as cars scream past on the highway.
I start to crank down my window in the backseat and yell over to the man. “Hey mister!”
“Joshua Alan!” Grandma scolds me between clenched teeth. “Roll up your window right now, buster.” The man looks both ways and crosses over to where I have held out a couple of tightly rolled bills out to him. As he plucks them from my fingers, I can see sweat rolling down his temples. A small golden cross, hung from a simple chain, pulses as it rests against his chest. “Gracias!” he says as he retreats to the safety of the median. Grandma—a devout Catholic—guns her engine and drives me back to her home in silence.
Later, in her kitchen, as she stirs diced Velveeta and whole milk into macaroni shells, she looks at me. “That was very nice of you to give some of your money to that migrant worker, Josh, but you shouldn’t be talking to strangers. You won’t do that again, willya,” not a question; a statement.
I nod—out of deference, not out of understanding.
Grandma, Mom, Lace and me, mid-1980s
The origin of the word einfühlung is disputable. One source indicates that the word was first coined in 1858 by German philosopher Rudolf Hermann Lotze. Another source implies the word was first written by the German psychologist Theodore Lipps in his 1903 paper, Ästhetik. Psychologie des Schönen und der Kunst. A third suggests the word first appeared in print in German philosopher Robert Visher’s 1873 Ph. D. dissertation on aesthetics: Über das optische Formgefühl. Ein Beitrag zur Ästhetik.
The direct translation of einfühlung is “feeling into”, and according to Visher, represents the human capacity to enter into a piece of art or literature in an attempt to feel the emotions that the artist had worked to achieve, or to imbue a piece of art with relevant emotions.
The English translation of the word—EMPATHY—didn’t appear in print until Edward Titchener’s 1909 treatise: Experimental Psychology of the Thought Processes. Of course, the concept of “feeling into” a fellow human’s body—what we commonly mean today when we talk about empathy—has been around for as long as we’ve been walking upright; possibly longer.
Empathy could then be defined as the act of projecting oneself “into” a work of art or a neighbor’s emotional state, with the intention of understanding how it feels to be in that environment. This “feeling into” is usually accorded to bodies or environments that are more or less similar to one’s own. We find ourselves in rapt attention inside The Ballet Class thanks to Edgar Degas, moved to tears at Cio-Cio-san’s aria “Un bel dí vedremo” from Madama Butterfly, or fighting for survival alongside Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo.
In a series of modern articles 1,2 neuroscientist Jean Decety and psychologist Jason M. Cowell define empathy in three separate strands:
Affective Sharing which reflects the natural capacity to become affectively aroused by others’ emotions. It occurs when you feel what another is feeling (or what you imagine another is feeling).
Empathic Concern, which corresponds to the motivation of caring for another’s welfare.
Perspective Taking, which is the ability to consciously put oneself into the mind of another individual and imagine what that person is thinking or feeling
I’m in seventh grade at Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton middle school, living with my 10-year-old sister Lace and Mom, while she continues her undergrad education at Moorhead State University.
My other sister, Lara, has stopped by after her duty day with the 119th Wing North Dakota Air Force National Guard to make dinner for Lace and me. In her starched camouflage uniform across the folding table, she flips through People magazine while I scrunch my nose at the Pythagorean Theorem. In the next room of this cramped second-floor apartment which we’re renting from a Minnesota Highway Patrolman, Lace is practicing a simple melody on her flute.
Without looking up from her magazine, Lara asks how I’m fitting in at the new school. There’s a nine-year gap between us, but, to her credit, she does her best to talk to me like I’m an adult. “Junior high was the worst years of my life. Have you made any friends yet?”
I shrug. I’ve only been in Dilworth a few weeks, but I’ve made fast friends with Charles Poncé. Charles had noticed me eating alone one day and asked if he could join. (Like me,) Charles doesn’t appear to have very many friends, which is perhaps why I found it easy to let my walls down around him. Charles is six inches taller than most of my classmates, with hair that resembles a copper Chore Boy pad. He doesn’t wear Guess or Gibaud jeans purchased on weekend trips to the Mall of America. Like mine, his family shops for school clothes at the Dakota Boys Ranch thrift store, Wal-Mart, or—for special occasions—on the clearance rack at Herberger’s.
“Well, there’s one kid named Charles who lives just down the street.”
“Oh that’s nice, what’s he like?”
Charles Poncé (center) and me (right), last day of 7th grade
I shrug again and gaze up from my trigonometry. I look over Lara’s shoulder—eye contact is not my strong suit. Her hair had been wrapped in a tight bun for duty, but she’s let it down and it hangs in chocolate ringlets on her shoulders and frames her golden-brown eyes. In high school she was a star basketball and volleyball player, a cheerleader, a thespian, a lifeguard, popular and gregarious. I have none of those attributes. I pause and push my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “He gets bullied—”
Lara looks up from her magazine and nervously chuckles, “What? Why?”
Tears start to roll down my cheeks. I don’t know whether it’s adolescent hormones, or the melodrama of middle school, or the stress of being physically separated from our dad, who I’ve never been apart from for more than a few days at a time, but who was living a five-hour-long drive away, in Dickinson. “The kids make fun of him because he’s got a big nose.” I run to my room and slam the door, collapsing into a heap of tears under the covers.
In psychologist Paul Bloom’s 2016 book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, he argues that individuals—and nations—are often guided by honest, but misdirected emotions: “I have argued…that certain features of empathy make it a poor guide to social policy. Empathy is biased; we are more prone to feel empathy for attractive people and for those who look like us or share our ethnic or national background. And empathy is narrow; it connects us to particular individuals, real or imagined, but is insensitive to numerical differences and statistical data.”
I’m 14, and our family is reunited under one roof; my seventh roof and fifth time adjusting to a new town. Halfway through my eighth-grade year, we moved, and the summer of 1994 is my first time attending the North Dakota State Fair. In the Minot Daily News, which I deliver each morning, I read that I can get free admission if I work at the fair. Lace and I both apply and get hired. I’m a lemonade stand attendant, making $4.25 an hour. It’s easy money and I’m paid in cash at the end of each shift—far different from the once-monthly paycheck I collect from the Minot Daily.
I haul hefty boxes of lemons. I sort and rinse them, fingers sometimes poking through soft bottoms of ones which have rotted black and white. I cut the lemons, often slicing nicks into my fingers, and feel the acidic bite of the juice as I squeeze them into cheap plastic cups for hours and hours. In the open-oven heat of the lemonade stand, barely big enough for two adolescent attendants to work side-by-side, I add simple syrup and ice, before filling the cups up with water.
Usage of various words 1900-present
In the evenings, after washed up rock stars like Eddie Money (who hadn’t had a hit since 1988) play the mainstage, the midway takes on a brooding gloom. The daytime crowd of friendly young families and elderly couples give way to the low, sour smell of booze and cheap perfume as a raucous mob of college students, tattooed carneys, and airmen stationed at the base spill out of the grandstand. Lemonade sales slow to a crawl at night, as the sneering fairgoers seek out stronger beverages.
During my lunch breaks, I cool down by walking through the (aptly nicknamed) “Commercial” Buildings. Some of the tables there have no end of attendees lining up to shell out cash: the Beanie Baby booth, the new George Forman Grill, the free Zima samples (21+ Only!). The vast majority of tables, though, are staffed by bored salespeople hawking over-priced kitchen knives, spas, or driveway sealants. These are the booths I am drawn to. I never engage in conversation with these salespeople, and they don’t take me seriously either—a geeky, skinny juvenile in an oversized red apron, reeking of lemons. I approach each table, say a sidelong Hi and pocket a business card. Some workers smile at me, some regard me with skepticism, but table after table, Commercial Building after Commercial Building, throughout the duration of the fair, I visit the downtrodden sales associates and snatch a card. I don’t know why, apart from I feel sorry for them; I want them to feel seen.
By the end of that summer, I’ve got hundreds of business cards, collected into a neat stack on top of my dresser.
ND State Fair splendor, 1994
“Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands” from Elliott Smith’s 1998 album XO
Yes everybody cares about you
Yeah, and whether or not you want them to
It's a chemical embrace that kicks you in the head
To a pure synthetic sympathy that infuriates you totally
And a quiet lie that makes you want to scream and shout
Some research has shown that we may indeed be primed for empathy. In one study3 researchers gave participants five $1 bills to donate however they wanted (or keep). Before the donation, participants were broken into two groups and asked a series of questions. Group x was asked questions that might evoke a feeling response, such as “When you hear the word ‘baby’ how do you feel? Use one word to describe your dominant feeling.” Group y was given instructions to “work carefully and deliberatively to calculate the answer” to questions like “If an object travels 5 feet per minute, how far will it travel in 360 seconds?” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Group x (feeling questions) gave “significantly more”: $2.34 on average. Group y, who had to field the calculation questions first only gave: $1.19 on average.
Transcript from Joe Rogan Experience episode #2281 (Feb 28, 2025)
ELON MUSK
Like, there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself. So, we've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it's like, I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide.
ROGAN
Also don't let someone use your empathy against you so they can completely control your state and then do an insanely bad job of managing it and never get removed.
MUSK
The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The, like, empathy exploit. They're exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. So, I think, you know, empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.
ROGAN
Right, understand when empathy has been actually used as a tool.
MUSK
Yes, like, it's weaponized empathy is the issue.
ROGAN
Totally
“We have the most empathy for people we are close to [geographically, culturally]. But we also have the ability to empathize with people who have suffered in similar ways. If you see footage of the [January 2025] Los Angeles fires and you have experienced any kind of loss or displacement, that will resonate, because we are all vulnerable to those types of experiences. We say, I’ve walked those streets. However, if the fires are happening in Pakistan or somewhere we haven’t been, it can be easy to turn away.
“One of the biggest challenges to empathy today is people are losing the ability to really see other humans as people that are experiencing pain and suffering, who are not like them. One of the biggest challenges in any industry is: the less we identify with people, the greater opportunity is to learn about them and open that curiosity about them…using emojis to “convey” emotion, or texting rather than talking [is dehumanizing]…the human face is a roadmap: by making facial expressions, you are alerting other people about something. Reading facial expressions correctly is vital. If we’re always looking at our phones, and not looking at other people, we are missing so many emotions. It is very hard to know what people are experiencing if we just read it over text.”4
Ben Garrett’s Twitter bio describes him as a “Christian husband and father. Pastor at Refuge Church in Ogden, UT.” and, importantly, “Co-Host of @HauntedCosmos_” (with 48,000 subscribers) on Youtube, a channel dedicated to “Investigating a world that's not just stuff.” The two most popular videos on the channel are a 94-minute discussion on “Giants of the Bible” and a video demonizing ayahuasca, called “DMT and the Serpent Gods: Your DARE officer was right!”
“Now it happened, the day after, that Jesus went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him, and a large crowd. And when He came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother; and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, He had [empathy] and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ Then He came and touched the open coffin, and those who carried him stood still. And He said, ‘Young man, I say to you, arise.’ So he who was dead sat up and began to speak. And He presented him to his mother” (Luke 7:11–15).
Gen Z has experienced their first peek behind the curtain at genocidal atrocities, with the Israeli military’s ongoing destruction of Gaza. Vertical video of dead Palestinian babies was broadcast for months on social media platforms like TikTok—where a stupefying 45%(!) of Gen Z get their news (compared to 0.5% of that generation who get their news from local online or print news organizations)5.
In her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, journalist Samantha Power documents the many times since the dawn of the 20th century that U.S. presidents have balked at preventing genocide: “No sitting U.S. president has ever made genocide prevention a priority, and no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence.”
For illustration purposes, a few recent genocidal—erm—highlights?
Nazi Germany 1938-45 — approximately 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis. To put that into context for people of my generation and culture to understand better, that is the equivalent of 2,000 9/11s. That’s one 9/11 every day for five years, five months, and three weeks.
Ukraine 1932-33 — up to 5 million Ukrainians killed by the Soviet Union.
Bangladesh 1971 — up to 3 million Bengalis killed by Pakistan Armed Forces. This is the equivalent of 1,250 Pearl Harbors. One Pearl Harbor every day for three years and five months.
Cambodia 1975-79 — up to 2 million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge.
Armenia 1915-16 — up to 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Young Turks.
Rwanda 1994 — up to 800,000 Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa killed by Hutu militias.
Darfur, Sudan 2003-05 — up to 500,000 non-Arab Darfuris killed by Sudanese government and militias.
Congo 1996-97 — up to 233,000 Rwandan, Congolese, and Burundian Hutus killed by Rwanda-backed forces.
Gaza 2023-present — up to 150,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces.
West Darfur, Sudan 2023-present — up to 30,000 Masalit civilians and non-Arab Darfuris killed by the Rapid Support Forces of Sudan.
Bosnia 1992-95 — up to 62,000 Bosniak muslims killed by Bosnian-Serb forces.
Ukraine (again) 2014-present — up to 50,000 Ukrainians killed by the Russian military.
Myanmar 2016-present — up to 43,000 Muslim Rohingya people killed by the Myanmar military. This number is equivalent to 35 Titanic disasters. One every day for over a month.
As Mother Teresa put it, “If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” Each TikTok of a dead Palestinian toddler put a single face to the travesty—humanized the genocide in a way that a spreadsheet cannot.
I have regular nightmares: I’m in Basrah, hiding out in a sandy, abandoned tenement. In the dream, I’m trying to rest, but the sound of approaching jets and mortarfire wake me. I sit up, frantic, sweat dripping from the intense desert heat, as I try to get my bearings and run for the tenement exit, an ungodly explosion rips the sky above me and I’m buried in rubble.
From March to June of 2005, I’m whippin shitties in the Persian Gulf, along with 5,000 co-workers aboard the USS Carl Vinson. During those three months, 4,019 Iraqi civilians are killed in combat operations. 3,407 of these are killed by US-led coalition forces.6 During that same period, 212 U.S. service members are killed there. Unlike many of my Operation Iraqi Freedom(!) brothers and sisters, I don’t personally have “boots on the ground.” I am not pulling the trigger of an M16. During my six year enlistment, I only touch a gun once, during bootcamp (or Recruit Training Command, as it’s officially called).
I am a nuclear reactor operator on the Vinson, an aircraft carrier. I control the fuel rods in the reactor core, which in turn produces steam for various purposes: to power the ship’s propulsion, to feed turbines that power the ship’s electrical grid, and critically, to trigger the carrier’s catapult system, which launches the F16 “Vipers” that we are constantly—and I mean at all hours of the day and night—sending north into Iraq. These F16s are loaded with a lethal assortment of air-to-air, air-to-surface, and anti-ship missiles, cluster bombs, laser-guided bombs, anti-personnel mines, and a 500-round 20mm rotary cannon. I try to avoid walking past these F16s whenever possible, for a couple of reasons. For one, the aircraft mechanics, ordnancemen, and pilots all know that we “nukes” (as we’re called) are textbook smart and common-sense dumb. They figure that one of us may well pull out a Leatherman tool and start tapping on a warhead just to see what kind of sound it makes. Secondly, I avoid the bomb-heavy F16s because I don’t want the reminder that they are going to return much lighter, and while some “bad guys” may now be deceased, there is always some collateral damage.
When I joined the Navy in the summer of 2000, Bill Clinton was a lame duck, it looked like Al Gore would be our next president, and America was not embroiled in any war. That October, al-Qaeda loaded a boat with explosives and pulled alongside a Navy destroyer, the USS Cole, which was in harbor at Yemen. The subsequent blast killed 17 sailors and wounded dozens more. In November, George W Bush won a highly contentious presidential election that turned on just 537 votes in the swing state of Florida. The following September, while I was in Navy Nuclear Power School in South Carolina, I watched in horror as the twin towers fell in Lower Manhattan. I signed up out of a sense of service to my country and for the promised Montgomery GI Bill, but suddenly, I was thrust into a raw and terrible new reality.
There was a wave of military enlistments following 9/11, and it was easy for me to tell who signed up before from who enlisted after that September day. Those like me, who entered service prior to 9/11 seemed more easy-going, serious about their duties and the direction of their career, even reserved. Those who came after were like rabid dogs. They were indignant, they wanted blood. They frequently referred to Iraqis and Arabs with racist nicknames. In our shared berthing compartment, they would watch nothing but war films: Platoon or Pearl Harbor. I’d pop in some foam earplugs to block out the sound of F16s landing on the flight deck above me and the boneheads cheering along to Gladiator in the next room, and I’d try to sleep, or read my Tolstoy.
The nightmares continue to haunt me.
According to Asha Rangappa, former FBI Special Agent, assistant dean and senior lecturer at Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs: “Enemy combatants [under the George W Bush-era Department of Justice]…who were captured abroad, who never stepped foot on American soil had the ability to petition for a writ of habeus corpus, due process rights, the ability to contest their enemy combatant status, and were protected by the Geneva Conventions. What we’re seeing now [the forced removal of individuals to CECOT in El Salvador], is people who have been in the US for a decade [who] aren’t being afforded those same rights.”7
Infamous 2003 photo of a prisoner at CIA “black site” Abu Ghraib
September, 2024: it’s an election year, and a particularly interesting one at that. The Republican candidate nearly took a bullet in the temple. The Democratic president literally shit his adult diaper onstage during his one and only debate, and was subsequently forced out of the race. His replacement had “very little time to make her case to the American people” as we were repeatedly told on cable news. Egg prices were soaring—never a good sign for the party in power. The Republican candidate claimed at another debate that Caribbean-born immigrants were eating Golden Retrievers and Maine Coons in a small Ohio town.
It’s a Friday and I’m walking home from the bus stop. A few gilded leaves crunch underfoot, but the plentiful Slippery Elm and Bitternut Hickories still have most of their leaves: green and mottled yellow. The tall, lovely Sugar Maple two doors down from us is blooming blood red. Evergreen Arborvitaes dot the block.
A shiny blue pickup glides alongside and parks up ahead of me. Its driver, a man in his early sixties, with silvery hair walks around the cab and swings the passenger door. He pulls out a Pizza Hut box and a twelve-pack of Diet Mountain Dew. As I observe him, a big smile crosses his lips while he bumps the door closed with his behind.
Nostalgia hits me like a bolt from the sky. It’s another Friday evening, but this one is 1991 in Dickinson. It’s payday for Dad, who for a great treat, takes the family out to Pizza Hut. Lace and I are voracious elementary school readers, so we’ve each earned a free personal pan pizza through our school’s Book-It program. The buttery crust, the melting cheese, the spicy pepperoni combine to set the tone for a weekend of jumping on the neighbor’s trampoline, playing Super Nintendo, and rollerblading. If we’re good, Mom will let us stay awake long enough to watch the first half of Saturday Night Live—the Chris Farley years.
I’m smiling now too, as I watch the man cross from his pickup to his simple, well-maintained home. And then I see it. A lawn sign for a politician I am diametrically opposed to. My smile instantly turns to a frown and my brain begins an internal dialogue with this man, this neighbor. I’m silently screaming obscenities at him. Any empathy I might have gained from observing him vaporizes in that moment. I feel a sudden urge to run up to him and knock his stupid pizza out of his hands.
I do nothing of the sort. Instead, I spend my weekend listening to political podcasts that reinforce my point of view.
Research has indicated that liberals in the U.S. have higher general levels of empathy than conservatives.
Surveying the contemporary research literature reveals a general consensus that liberals tend to be more egalitarian, less authoritarian, more tolerant of out-groups, less concerned with in-group unity, and look less favorably upon hierarchical social structures than conservatives. The more egalitarian and less hierarchical bent of liberals tends to make them look more favorably upon policies aimed at eliminating wealth inequality and providing for the poor (e.g., welfare programs), as well as those seeking to provide all citizens with free access to healthcare and higher education. Finally, conservatives tend to place more of an emphasis on protecting citizens from aggression by either fellow citizens or foreigners. This helps explain why conservatives tend to have more favorable attitudes towards military spending and harsher punishment of convicted criminals than liberals.8
At my future father-in-law’s home in Arizona, over a game of Progressive Rummy, Mike tells me: “I’ve really enjoyed reading the blog posts on your website.” It’s mostly unedited poetry and 20 years of diary entries—sans context. I thank him for reading as I shuffle and deal the cards. “You’re very observant,” he says, discarding a Jack of Hearts.
“You wouldn’t think so by looking at the score,” I joke—it’s true though, I’m bringing in the rear with 110 points to his 22. I never know how to respond to compliments, so my natural instinct is to first deflect, and then to crouch into a defensive posture in the corner. As I take a sip of Pacifico, I wonder where Mike is going with this.
But he leaves it there. Just two simple statements, boiled down to: I enjoy your writing, and you are observant.
While I’m finishing a long run with Leah the next day, Mike’s observations are still rattling around inside my brain. In all the writing classes I’ve taken, one theme stands out: to write, first observe. Because we are living in this foul year of our slob, 2025, and because I’ve been living and breathing this acrimonious political milieu for weeks, I’ve been feeling ill. I’m sleeping poorly, drinking more than usual, in a perpetual foul mood, exhausted.
For weeks, I’ve been observing good, hard working people lose their jobs, a precipitous drop in the stock market, US citizens disappeared to a foreign gulag. I’m not only observing all this, I am feeling into the recent retiree who just lost $100,000 in his 401(k), the career military leaders—admirals and generals—who have lost their jobs because they are Black or female, the gay makeup artist—now rotting in a maximum-security prison on foreign soil—whose only crime seems to be that he had a tattoo.
How can you write if you don’t first observe? How can you observe without feeling?
Painted into the back of a St Paul bus stop. The message has since been removed.
1 Decety, Jean, & Cowell, Jason (2014). “Friends or foes: Is empathy necessary for moral behavior?” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(5), 525-537.
2 Decety, Jean, & Cowell, Jason (2015). “Empathy, justice, and moral behavior.” AJOB Neuroscience, 6(3), 3-14.
3 Small, D. A., Loewenstein, G., Slovic, P. (2007). “Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 102: 143–153.
4 Riess, Helen, MD. “Episode 60: The Science of Empathy” Empathy Unbound: Embrace Your Superpower podcast, hosted by Andrew Phipps. February 24, 2025.
5 New York Times-Siena College Poll of the National Likely Electorate. October 8, 2024.
6 Hsiao-Rei Hicks, M., Dardagan, H., Guerrero Serdán, G., Bagnall, P., Sloboda, J., Spagat, M. (2011). “Violent Deaths of Iraqi Civilians, 2003-2008: Analysis by Perpetrator, Weapon, Time, and Location.” Public Library of Science: Medicine, 8(2)
7 Rangappa, Asha. “The Emergency is Here” The Ezra Klein Show podcast. April 17, 2025.
8 Morris, Stephen G. (2020). “Empathy and the Liberal-Conservative Political Divide in the US.” Journal of Social and Political Psychology,8(1): 08-24
On This Day: 4/18/05
4/18/2005
Somewhere in the Persian Gulf—
We arrived in the Gulf on 3/18/05, and I’m hearing rumors we’ll potentially be here until mid-June. Baseball season started earlier this month, and I’ve been trying to keep track of the Minnesota Twins, but it’s impossible with the lack of news—sports or otherwise—here^.
I’m making some money now. Regular base pay, plus sea pay, plus while we’re in the Gulf (a “zone of combat” according to the IRS), our pay is exempt from taxes. Since I don’t have anything to spend my money on, I’ve got more cash in my account than I’ve ever had. I ordered a new guitar to be sent to Lara’s place in Norfolk. It’s a beautiful jet black Epiphone Casino. Can’t wait to see and play it. I also ordered a laptop, and a book on how to use ProTools [audio recording software], so I can finally get my home studio off the ground.
On April 12th, the USS Carl Vinson anchored off the coast of the Kingdom of Bahrain. I admit that I knew nothing of Bahrain before joining the Navy, and now that we were here, in the current climate of aggression towards Iraq and Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, etc. I didn’t feel super safe venturing off the ship. Nonetheless, with a handful of shipmates, I got on one of the liberty boats, destined for shore. As we motored towards the pier—a fifteen minute-long ride—I noticed that each liberty boat was flanked by a US Navy patrol boat with a 50-caliber gun mounted in the bow.
Once we got to the pier, they shepherded us into large vans which drove us through the city of Al Manāmah towards the base. The ride was short, but we got to see an uninspiring portion of the island: many squat, angry-looking buildings with broken windows. The van lumbered along cracked pavement until we pulled into an alleyway, surrounded on both sides by tall brick walls topped with barbed-wire. In a moment, I imagined all manner of ridiculous things—masked men armed with AK-47s, forcing the ship’s company into a nondescript basement where we’d be held hostage for weeks, until our eventual execution by beheading in front of rolling video cameras. We’d make the front page of the New York Times: MAJOR ESCALATION IN WAR AS U.S. SAILORS EXECUTED. Instead, on the other side of the fence was our base, Naval Support Activity Bahrain. I walked around inside the base, absolutely safe, eating KFC, bowling, and drinking Budweiser. I bought a few items at the commissary, and generally had a pleasant, if boring time there.
Two weeks before we went to Bahrain, the band that I play bass in—Klickitat County—performed at a rare morale-boosting event called a “Steel Beach Picnic”. We had to prove our worth, however, by performing for the judges. Jack Brett, James Rascoe, and I hauled our instruments to a small classroom on the ship, where we played the blues standard “Key to the Highway,” “Two of Us” by the Beatles, and our medley of “Rocky Top/Under the Double Eagle/Take Me Home, Country Roads/Lookin’ Out My Back Door.” Chief Petty Officer Joseph, of the ship’s Safety Department, who was one of the judges, seemed to like our sound, proclaiming “You’ll need to rehearse once—maybe twice—before the picnic.”
A hangar bay, where our band rehearsed for hours, once
The next day, the three of us, along with our drummer Derrick Cribbs, practiced in a corner of the hangar bay for close to three hours. It was quite an experience! So many sailors passing by stopped to listen—smiling, tapping a foot, singing along when they knew the lyrics, applauding us when we finished rehearsing a song. It’s rare to see people enjoying themselves out here. The work is non-stop, the fear is non-stop, the loud launching of jets at all hours of the day and night. We’ve been out here for months and people look worn out:
The 18-year-old Aircraft Ordnanceman in his red shirt and helmet, responsible for loading lethal bombs onto F-16s
The grizzled Senior Chief, who has been doing this work for twenty years and whose third marriage is on the rocks
The 24-year old LTJG [Lieutenant, Junior-Grade], who due solely to the fact that she is a female on a ship that is 85% male, is leered at all day, every day, and only emerges from her berthing to stand watch or to dine in the Wardroom
The next day, we rehearsed again for the Picnic Magistrates, who, nodding gravely and agreeing that we were progressing well, assured us that with only a few more rehearsals, we would be ready for the big day. The whole routine was pretty laughable, as we’ve been playing together as a band for nearly three years at this point, including shows in Seattle, Tacoma, and open mic nights in Bremerton, etc. but I get it.
Klickitat County performing at the USS Carl Vinson Steel Beach Picnic, 2005. (l to r: Derrick Cribbs, Yours Truly, Jack Brett, and James Rascoe)
The day of the picnic was hot, with a hazy blue sky and calm waters. All the jets had been moved from the flight deck to the hangar bay and a small stage was built for the performers. Big charcoal grills were located across the flight deck and hamburgers, hot dogs, and cold soda-pops were freely available. They actually let us dress in our “civvies” if we wanted to, so sailors in t-shirts and shorts gathered in groups, or lined up for food. We were able to pack four full songs into our fifteen-minute allotment of stage time. I was thrilled to see many of our Reactor Department buddies out there, enjoying our set, though they were melting in the hot middle eastern sun. Many acts followed, from R&B groups, to singer-songwriter types, but the final song of the day was an old-school rap, performed by Chief Joseph, which had the crowd smiling and laughing.
Hearing rumors about liberty ports coming up in Greece and Italy, but who knows. For now, it’s back to our day job of navigating back and forth in the Gulf, launching F16s at Iraq. God help us (and the innocent Iraqis in our path).
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Elsewhere on 4/18/2005:
*Black smoke emerged from the Vatican, signaling that the papal conclave had yet to choose a successor to the recently deceased Pope John Paul II.
*In Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, a 24-year-old man was arrested in the stabbing death of his housemate, another 24-year-old man
*A US civilian aid worker and several Marines were killed in a car bomb in Baghdad
^The Twins lost 2-1 at Cleveland, in the most “Twins” way imaginable: after loading the bases in the bottom of the eighth, Twins reliever JC Romero hit Cleveland slugger Travis Hafner in the elbow with a pitch, thus walking in the winning run. (from The Fargo Forum, 4/18/2005, accessed online 4/13/2025)
Evolution of a Coffee Snob
1996, Minot
I’m sixteen, at Ryan’s Family Diner, where coffee costs fifty-nine cents (including unlimited refills). It’s after ten on a Friday and I’ve just come from the Fitz of Depression concert at Minot’s Collective Cultural Centre. A smoldering Djarum Black rests between my fingers. The butt matches my painted fingernails. My hair is bleached the color of the snow that’s piled on the windowsills of the diner. I stir two sugar packets and one room-temperature Land-o-Lakes creamer cup into a mug. The coffee slowly fades from mud to cardboard. The chintzy clink of a teaspoon along the ceramic walls of the cup blends with the clattering of plates that busboys load into plastic tubs. I lift the steaming brew to my lips and sip. I can feel the stares of the squares surrounding me as I scribble onto a napkin what I’m sure is a masterpiece:
Heathenistic hell flames!
burn at me! lap at me!
lift me and digest me once more
squeeze my juicy, rotten fruit, oh lord!
Ryan’s Family Diner, Minot, ND RIP
1998, San Diego
I’m visiting Lara after high school graduation. She’s at work when I decide to explore the city. First order of business is to find a coffee shop—one she recommended, called Starbucks. I order a grande (that’s what they call a medium) drip coffee and am thrilled to discover shakers of cinnamon, chocolate, and vanilla powder near the trash bins. There’s a park out front of the Starbucks where an ambulance is loading a dead vagrant onto a gurney. I stare for a while and then tote my coffee around the neighborhood, in search of a record store I found in the yellow pages. I purchase ska band Hepcat’s “Scientific” and pop the cassette into my Walkman as I bop among palm trees. I walk close to ten miles, stopping off to get my tongue and eyebrow pierced on a whim. Later that day, I tell Lara what I did all day and her eyes fly open. “What the hell, dude? Mom’s gonna kill me!”
Lara and me in San Diego, 1998
2005, Persian Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz
I roll out of my rack just before twenty-two hundred hours, pull on my poopy suit and stumble down the p-way to the aft galley. I approach the coffee canteen and fill up a styrofoam cup with lukewarm sludge, before climbing down the ladder to the bowels of the ship—the Reactor Compartment. I relieve the mid-watch, settling onto the operator’s chair. I run my gaze across the board. Dozens of dials, meters, LEDs, warning lights, buttons, and triggers stare back at me. I pray to god that nothing out-of-the-ordinary will happen over the next six hours and take a long stinky pull from my cup. Having taken my hourly logs, I flip to the last page in my clipboard, where I’m writing what I’m sure is a masterpiece:
Blue sky, blueberry,
Blue sea,
bluer than Robert Johnson
2007, Brisbane
I wake up at a bed and breakfast outside Brisbane on Lacey & Adam’s wedding day. Breakfast is served outdoors on a sunny patio, in the shade of sweet viburnum. We have warm bialy rolls with Vegemite, orange wedges, and a French press. I pour myself a small cup and taste coffee like I’ve never tasted coffee before. I catch flavors of blackberry, pine nuts, and somehow, honeysuckle. When I get back home, I throw out my Mr. Coffee and never look back.
2014, Edgewater
The best part of my day is early morning. I bike down to Coffee Studio on Clark and Olive. They make the best coffee in the city, I’m sure to tell anyone who asks. I order a single-origin pour-over and a red velvet donut. I sit on the sidewalk and watch the buses and cars stalled bumper-to-bumper. It’s early September and there’s a crispy chill in the air, though it will heat up by midday. It takes five minutes before the barista—Clarice, a clarinetist—calls my name. The oversized mug is filled all the way to the top and the deep brown liquid has a sheen on the surface. Lacy ribbons of steam rise up out of the mug. I slowly bring the coffee to my lips and sip. This moment makes the rest of my day, processing timesheets at the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation Services, feel a little easier. I pull out my notebook and compose what I feel is my masterpiece:
The entire goddamned globe is always
within arm's reach, now.
Our once-beautiful faces
seared in a pale blue light--
dead dahlias drooping in a stiff autumn breeze
2021, Horner Park
I wake up at five every day, even on weekends. This is my golden hour; the one hour I have to myself before I start getting the inevitable early morning trouble-calls from work. I light the kettle, pour precisely eighteen grams of coffee beans into my burr grinder and press the button. The fresh grounds are of perfect consistency, like dried beach sand. I pop an unbleached circular paper filter on to the end of my aeropress, pour in the grounds, and once the water temperature reaches two-hundred degrees, I bloom the grounds. Steam rises up and I catch the first whiff: rose petals, dark chocolate, mown grass. I pour in the remaining eight ounces of water, stir for thirty seconds and slowly press the plunger into my favorite mug. I take a luxurious sip and gaze out my living room window, past the reflection of my hair, which is turning white naturally now, to see the sun shimmering through the honey locust branches. I open my laptop to a new email. Floating atop the dozens and dozens of rejection letters, I can barely believe the text: “I am delighted to inform you that your poem has been chosen for publication…”
Last Letter Home
A poem, discovered in an unlikely place.
In 2022, I received an ancient record from my supervisor, Mike. “This is a personal favor for a friend,” he said. I held the yellowed wax and paper disc by the edges and read the name on the label: SEAMAN GEORGE S—
I looked at Mike with fascination. What is this?
“It’s a letter, on record, from this young sailor to his family, before he shipped out in the Pacific theater during World War II. He never made it home.” Mike paused and looked at me. “Most of his family is gone now too, but this friend of mine is a relative and he’d love to hear it.”
As a Navy veteran myself, and in my current capacity as an audio engineer, I was eager to take this project on. The process of transcription was an arduous one. The record was so old and warped that it was very difficult to discern what was said. I digitized it and then set about “cleaning” the audio through various audio restoration software. The result was good, but it was no magic wand. It was still very difficult to hear what SN George S— had to say.
[Actual audio from this digitization of the record]
So I set about creating a transcript of what I could make out. If the family of our sailor was unable to hear all of the words, at least I could make my best effort at writing what I heard. Again, this was a painstaking process of listening, rewinding, scrubbing the audio. As I slowly re-created the transcript, I started to see, in the repetition, in the slow choosing of words, a kind of poetry emerging. Not that this sailor was a poet (for all I know he may have been), but the way this 70-year-old audio was conducting through my ears, to my brain, and out my pen, was a transliterative process of sorts.
Finally, after weeks of cobbling together the cleanest version of the audio and my transcript to deliver to Mike, I started forming a poem from the record. Utilizing the repetition of the transcription, utilizing the space and the thought and the imagination that I needed to access what was being said, this piece began to emerge.
I call it Last Letter Home, and it was published in North Dakota Quarterly Volume 90 Issue 3/4.
[My reading of the poem, if you prefer]
