And now for the best part of the book. What we need to remember, the philosopher says, is that the best way
to reach a Neighbour is not that of empathy, of trying to understand them, but a disrespectful laughter which makes fun both of them and of us in our mutual lack of (self-)understanding.
I really love this. We need to treat each other as human beings. That’s the most important thing to remember. “Let’s build a wall of solicitous solemnity around people we insist on seeing as existing on a different moral plane from us” is no better than “let’s build a wall on the border.” Whether you barricade yourself from an immigrant with the walls of a refugee camp or with a bastion of your own need to treat him as a puppy at a stray dog shelter, the result is the same: fear, incomprehension, and disappointment.
It is only when you begin to see immigrants as human beings that you discover that
they are more or less like us —impatient, violent, demanding—plus, usually, part of a culture that cannot accept many of the features we perceive as self-evident. One should therefore cut the link against the double blackmail between refugees and humanitarian empathy, in which we ground our help to refugees in our compassion for their suffering.
Don’t expect suffering to do any good or elevate anybody in any way:
We tend to forget that there is nothing redemptive in suffering: being a victim at the bottom of the social ladder does not make you some kind of privileged voice of morality and justice.
There is more. . .
Clarissa's Blog 