Research suggests that this kind of education is possible. One set of studies even found that people who attended social psychology lectures about the causes of bystander behavior were less susceptible to those influences.
But of course, not even this form of education is a guarantee against becoming a bystander. We’re always subject to the complicated interaction between our personal disposition and the demands of circumstance. And we may never know how we’ll act until we find ourselves in a crisis.
To illustrate this point, Samuel Oliner tells the story of a Polish bricklayer who was interviewed for The Altruistic Personality. During World War II, a Jewish man who had escaped from a concentration camp came to the bricklayer and pleaded for help. The bricklayer turned him away, saying he didn’t want to put his own family at risk. “So is he evil?” asks Oliner. “I wouldn’t say he’s evil. He couldn’t act quickly enough, I suppose, to say, ‘Hide in my kiln,’ or ‘Hide in my barn.’ He didn’t think that way.”
“If I was the bricklayer and you came to me, and the Nazis were behind you and the Gestapo was chasing you—would I be willing to help? Would I be willing to risk my family? I don’t know. I don’t know if I would be.”
THE COST OF APATHY: AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT REICH
Jason Marsh
THE WEALTHIEST 1 PERCENT of Americans now make 70 times more in after-tax income than the bottom one-fifth of households. Since 2002, the average inflation-adjusted income of the wealthiest 1 percent has risen 42 percent, while the income of the bottom 90 percent of households has risen about 4.7 percent.
Robert Reich has been one of the most prominent critics of these growing inequities. Reich, who is now a professor of public policy at the University of California Berkeley, has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, where he implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act and led a national fight against sweatshops in the United States and illegal child labor around the world. He has also written 11 books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, and most recently, Supercapitalism.
Reich’s writings and lectures stand apart from those of other critics who focus on inequality. He doesn’t settle for easy condemnations of outsourcing or offshoring, nor does he think such effects of globalization can be easily undone. At the same time, he rejects the idea that these changes need result in greater disparities of wealth.
Instead, Reich attributes rising inequality not only to structural economic changes but to how Americans, and their policy makers, have failed to meet the social challenges posed by the new economy. While others point fingers at the government or big corporations, Reich also holds a mirror up to American society.
To Reich, rising inequality is intertwined with a breakdown of Americans’ social contract—the norms, mores, and values that dictate their mutual commitments and responsibilities to one another. In this fall 2004 interview with Greater Good, Reich explored the political implications of our emotions and values.
GREATER GOOD: What does empathy have to do with inequality?
ROBERT REICH: Any society depends upon empathy in order for people to be able to answer the question, What do we owe one another as members of the same society?
Indeed, without empathy, the very meaning of a society is up for grabs. Margaret Thatcher famously declared that there was no such thing as a society. There might be a nation, for strictly political purposes, there might be a culture, in terms of tradition, but a society, she felt, was a construct without meaning. I disagree. I think that we have all sorts of societies. Some of them are very tight: clubs, religious affiliations, friendships, neighborhoods. Some are much larger, extending outward in concentric circles from us as individuals. And we are bound by feelings of empathy and affiliation. Those feelings inspire us to come to the aid of those within these concentric circles.
G G: It’s easy to point to indicators of rising inequality. What do you see as the indicators of dwindling empathy?
R R: Rising inequality itself is an indicator of a breakdown in the social contract. It means that for a variety of reasons, those who have resources—and political power—are not taking steps to ensure that large numbers of others in the same society have opportunities to better themselves and have the resources they need to become full-fledged members of that society. Wide inequality suggests that we may not be living in the same society any longer. In fact, it could be argued that we’re drifting into separate societies: one very rich, one very poor, and one a middle class that’s increasingly anxious and frustrated.
G G: How did this happen? Is it a new phenomenon?
R R: It’s happened before in the United States in the 1880s and 1890s, the so-called Gilded Age. Inequality of wealth and opportunity were extreme. In happened again in the 1920s—not quite to the same degree as the 1880s and 1890s, but inequality was very wide in the ’20s. It is happening now for a third time. Now we can have an interesting debate about cause and effect—that is, is inequality the effect of dwindling empathy and a reduction in social solidarity? Or is inequality somehow causing it, to the extent that people who are very wealthy no longer come in contact with people who are poor and no longer feel the empathy that comes from contact? It’s probably both.
G G: So what are some of the broader factors contributing to widening inequality today?
R R: Well, technology and globalization are the two major structural causes. The more technologically sophisticated our economy becomes, and the more globalized, those people who are well educated can take advantage of technology and globalization to do continuously better. Those who are not well educated and lack social connections find that technology and globalization reduce their economic security, replace their jobs, and condemn them to a fairly menial existence.
G G: If we’re not part of that group, why should we care about inequality?
R R: In very narrow, selfish terms, we might care because those of us who are well positioned might not want to bring up our children in a society that is sharply divided between rich and poor. That kind of society has a very difficult time coming to decisions, because the winners and the losers are so clearly differentiated. Democracy itself can be undermined. Violence, crime, and demagoguery can result. The experience of living in a country with a lot of disparities of wealth, income, and opportunity may be unpleasant. And that society as a democracy may be increasingly dysfunctional.
G G: With changes in wealth resulting from broad technological shifts and globalization, what can people do on a local or individual level to address growing inequality?
R R: Many things. There are many public policies at the federal, state, and local levels that can reduce inequality without necessarily reducing the benefits of technology and globalization. I teach an entire course about these policy areas. They range from improved education, job training, and early-childhood education all the way through the earned income tax credit, minimum wage, macroeconomic policies, and many others. There’s no magic bullet. But it is important that the United State becomes more aware of what is happening and why widening inequality poses a danger. We don’t have to be economic determinists and throw up our hands and assume it’s inevitable. There are steps that can be taken.