I have been reading some of Phillip Dick’s stories, and the Mercer box to me has an echo in the real world right now.

The concept, you may recall, is of a box that places the user in the experiential POV of a person being harassed. Marching so under a hail of stones, the visceral connection this box provides yields an intense experience of empathy for the user.

When I see the photographs of women and children – the most vulnerable among us – marching on the road from war, I get the same opportunity for heartbreak. For a connection through suffering to bring a little ego death. Transcending one’s own concerns and situation to feel with another. To feel at all.

Or not.

There are some who no doubt feel something more like contempt. It is likely this segment of persons were the target of messaging, being promulgated via the media apparatus, which itself seems to have been outwitted by its own incentive structures – intended to provide the scapegoat the working poor need, or at least seem to be provided with time and again.

First it was the tens of thousands fleeing wars started by Napoleon, in early 19th century. Then the Irish came by the scores of thousands fleeing failed policy; then those fleeing German civil war, revolutions throughout Europe, etc. etc. Each wave after the next found backlash from the nativist communities of working poor into which they migrated. Each in turn was treated as impure, unclean, inhuman – non-White: Non-American.

And here we see our stream. Meant to check your capacity for empathy.

Unfortunately, you can also bend to temptation. If you pass your empathy check, your next choice might be to get contemptuous in turn. Or more. So I try to keep this in mind.

Appreciating the humanity of these others can inspire a positive reaction.

We can haz healing!

These refugees fleeing wars started by strongmen empowered by the US Department of State and so forth; these poor, tired, huddled masses; what are we teaching to them that wasn’t also taught to our forbears so many, many years gone? When will we stop the cycle? Everyone is angry and depressed and full of a pain that seems effective at spreading so far as I can tell.  It’s always raw, so we think of it as fresh. It is not. Its effervescence is evergreen.

It’s as dead as nails in coffin lids, as soon as we say so. We can each of us help end the spread. Open your heart. Think about how you would treat someone on the road from war – given what we know about the long-term consequences of acts of misguided, ignorant contempt.