Empathetic Imagination

tl;dr: Musings on the phrase empathetic imagination and how it applies to movies, politics, and web development.

I heard a phrase recently that has stuck with me: "empathetic imagination."

Movies and Empathetic Storytelling

This was on a movie podcast, which might not seem like the most obvious spot for a line about empathy that stuck out to me like this. But this podcast, named tongue in cheek The Only Podcast About Movies, is primarily approaching movies from the question of what the movie wants to say about the world. Storytelling is powerful, with movies being one of our greatest mediums at the moment, and one particular way it is powerful is in building empathy for stories that are different than yours.

This is the main reason why I do appreciate good TV and movies so much. I am also interested in technical excellence in directing or acting or effects or any number of other elements of a movie. But primarily, I am interested in movies that tell a good story about people who are different than me in some way learning and growing. I want a movie to help me imagine the world being a little bit different.

It's also, to jump to a different medium, whey I always play videogames with female characters and with non-human characters when given the choice. I'm a human male in real life and the majority of stories are about people like me. It's a little bit boring to do that all the time. If I have a chance to try to see the world in a slightly different way, I want to take it. I'm very confused by certain elements of gamer culture that opposes the very existence of female characters.

Empathy and Politics

The context for the empathetic imagination comment was after the US election, and one of the hosts was lamenting the lack of empathetic imagination that made the result possible. He found it extremely discouraging that so few people could imagine how their voting choices would hurt the most vulnerable around them. I think that's an important insight.

Carol Off, in her book At A Loss For Words, tells a story about speaking to a member of one of Canada's "freedom convoys." Off asked what "freedom" meant to this convoy member, who replied something about individual choices to do whatever she wanted. Off asked her about a common phrase, that "my freedom ends where your freedom begins" and the convoy member had no idea what to do with that. She couldn't understand the concept. Off goes on throughout the book about this fundamental clash through history and the present between those who see the goal as their freedom to hurt and rule over whoever they want, and those who see the goal as an equitable freedom inclusive of everyone.

That's a lack of empathetic imagination, a total inability to comprehend that other humans exist and your actions will impact them.

The peak time of COVID may have been an ultimate example of this. There was a brief window where it seemed like everyone was on the same page that we need to look after each other because a virus is fundamentally a social problem, especially one that spreads at a rate faster than one new infection per current infection as COVID does (much less so when a significant portion of the population is vaccinated). Then the backlash began, where a significant portion of the population made it clear that they were tired of caring about other people. They talked openly about sacrificing the elderly, disabled, and children for the sake of their "freedom" to go to a crowded bar or whatever else they wanted to do.

Just what is the right political approach to "freedoms" can be complicated. We don't want a government enforcing tyranny on individuals. But we do want a government that can help remind individuals that we aren't just individuals - that whether we like it or not, we are in this world and this political entity together. And most importantly, we want a government that is able to understand that one group exercising its freedom may be a taking away of freedom from others. It is never as simple as "freedom" for everyone vs "tyranny" for everyone. But I do think a fundamental requirement for a functional society is some empathetic imagination, letting us wrestle with some of those complicated moments while maintaining understanding of what it will mean to others, particularly those most marginalized. That fundamental requirement is currently lacking.

Accessible Web Dev

One more tangent is to tie this idea into my day job, building websites.

My previous job was for a small company where I was primarily building small websites and CRM systems for non-profits. It's important work, I'm glad somebody is doing it, and I still recommend the people there when I encounter someone that could use those services. But there is something inherent to that style of work, constantly bouncing between doing similar jobs for multiple clients as fast as possible in order to not lose money, that gets tiring. A chunk of that may be that there is no time to get deep on technical challenges, but even more I realized after starting my current job: there isn't any time for empathetic imagination. It's all about getting through the checklist as fast as possible. That includes when it comes to accessibility, which usually had a bare minimum checklist to clear with some automated tools.

One of the first big non-technical things I learned in my current job was working with a blind student consultant, who was able to walk some of us sighted staff through her experiences. Instead of "does this test fail" my question became a lot more of "how does her experience compare to a sighted experience? Is there more we can do to make that equal?" That's a radically different way of thinking.

Blind users may be the biggest focus of website accessibility; since websites are primarily visible, that's the group most consistently left out if the site is not built well. But that's not the only group to consider. What if you're deaf and encounter a video with sound? What if you're colour-blind, or have low vision? What if you're brand new to the subject of the site with no knowledge of the jargon, vs those who know exactly what they're looking for?

I write about some of those more on my tech blog and won't repeat it all here, but I did want to tie it into the idea of empathetic imagination. I am routinely needing to imagine the experiences of others. It makes me a better developer, and I think it makes me a better person.