Thoughts from Kathleeen Barry as the rescue of the Chilean minders unfolded...

I am watching as the seventeenth of thirty-three Chilean miners has just emerged from a half mile under the earth. I know that I am with millions all over the world who, with all of Chile,  anxiously wait until the very last one and their rescuers is out of that mine. I look at the faces of waiting loved ones and think about what they have endured, of how they must feel at this moment while I image what each miner is feeling as he comes to the surface. I think about unfair labor standards and mine companies disregard for miners' safety that led to earlier deaths in this and other mines.  

How can we not be glued to the rescue of human beings! These are moments when we transcend nationality, race and gender. It's as if we make ourselves one with lives we had thought were lost until they responded to earlier rescue efforts. As human beings, except for those sociopaths who put greed above humanity, we value human life above all else. This rescue effort that has brought in resources from around the world is evidence of how far we will go to keep human life from being lost.

For the waiting world, this is how our empathy has been engaged. Empathy, that feeling for what others are feeling and experiencing, putting oneself in the place of the others – the miners under the earth, their families above – literally puts us there with the others.  

We do not choose to be empathetic – it is so hardwired into us as humans that when others' lives are at risk, if we do not respond as we are doing to the Chilean miners, it is because something has turned off our empathy. Those states and the US who send their soldiers to join US forces in US wars of aggression – in Iraq,  in Afghanistan – nationalism, patriotism and military propaganda become powerful social forces that try to turn off empathy for those families and villages wiped out by bombs, drones and combat soldiers. In America they become known as "collateral damage" and the rest of the world as "innocent lives" or merely "civilian casualties.

Of course many of us are concerned with the loss of civilian lives in war. But the language of war, since almost forever, has coupled that loss with the belief that war is inevitable, and unavoidable. If entire populations had not been manipulated to accept killing in war, making war would become impossible.  Human empathy would rise to the surface again and that collateral damage would be so intolerable we would not allow leaders to take or stay in office who would take us into war. That is why our leaders lie to us – Iraq has weapons of mass destruction aimed at the US, or earlier – US ships where attacked by Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin.  

But there is a deeper force that captures our empathy and holds it hostage for war – the acceptance that many of those fighting in combat will inevitably if regrettably be killed. It cannot be helped, and they go into combat knowing they may be sacrificing their lives. For that we call them heroes. If they are not willing to make that "sacrifice", they are found to not measure up to societies' standards for manhood. In Unmaking War, Remaking Men I show how we make human expendability for war a standard of manhood. 

I have asked: "How in the madness of war do so many human beings throughout the world—who share an unconditional love of life, who are connected to each other through the life force that urges us away from death to spontaneously want to save another’s life and to protect one’s own—come to accept war as inevitable? How do we sustain as valid a belief in the distinction between “innocent,” civilian, or noncombatants’ lives and the lives of those in combat? Who are we to determine who can and who cannot be killed as if the power of the state supersedes the value of human life, of every human life? How do we hold in our hearts, against our shared human consciousness, the conviction that men will be killed in combat and that it must be that way?”

These questions begin our road to recovery of our empathy for all human beings. Having our empathy blocked to justify killing in war, to validate war itself, dehumanizes all of us. Making men expendable for combat sustains their domination over lesser, not masculine lives and abets violence against women. Reclaiming our empathy is, I believe, the force that will make the world turn away from war.  It is our route back to sanity.

This is an extended version of a blog posted on Kathleen's site http://www.kathleenbarry.net/blog/43/43/