“Let them eat cake.” The phrase has been attributed to different people in different eras with different translations. There was Maria Theresa, a noblewoman of Spanish descent who may have uttered it in the mid 18th century in response to the information that the country people had no bread. There was Madame Sophie of France or Madame Victoire of France who have been attributed to the phrase a few years later referencing more of a pastry or rich type of bread as opposed to a literal cake. Or, most famously, Marie Antoinette, in her careless response to the famine afflicting the people at the star of the French revolution. Setting aside particulars, what holds true in each account is the sentiment, a naïve lady of prestige betrays her lack of empathy and utter comprehension of the times by making such a careless remark.

Cake. What does this frivolous bread have to do with COVID-19? What does an 18th century catchphrase have to do with a 21st century pandemic? What does a careless remark of the royal French elite have to do with the careless actions of regular everyday US citizens. It could be a stretch, but it’s in the sentiment.

My recent concern about cake started during my weekly visit to the local homeless soup kitchen. Now days it’s more of a jobless soup kitchen, you don’t necessarily have to be homeless to be hungry for food or hungry for interaction. Each day the kitchen prepares to-go meals (a COVID adaptation of what used to be a dine-in experience) and the homeless community shuffles in to grab and go. With a recent uptick in local cases along with a particularly concerning outbreak at a homeless camp, the kitchen has begun requiring masks for food service. On that morning a patron entered the building with a mask covering his chin, a common theme among many in the community who hadn’t yet gotten used to this mask requirement. He was politely reminded by a volunteer the face covering was required to, in fact, cover his face and that all food and beverage needed to be consumed outside. In response he swore, threw his mask on the ground, poured his coffee all over the table, picked up the mask struggled to put it on his face, and continued to administer a number of expletives until another worker arrived. This worker, who I’ll call Sam, had been around the community in the kitchen long before COVID shifted our ways of interacting and remembered the name of the patron, who we’ll call John. Sam simply looked John in the eyes and said hello. He called John by his name and asked how his day was going. In response, John’s animosity vanished. He immediately calmed and said he had a rough morning, apologized for his poor attitude, and stated, “you guys didn’t deserve that,” regarding his behavior and expletives towards the other workers. Then, without further ado, he strapped on the face mask, refilled his coffee, and walked out the door.

In a homeless soup kitchen this is a fairly mundane event, so I was surprised when I felt an unexpected sense of hope after the interaction. It took awhile for me to put a finger on it, but the hope emerged from something Sam did and more so from something John did that I really haven’t seen in a while. Both practiced empathy, and did so quite simply and casually, in such a way that it could easily have been overlooked. Empathy, this word is thrown around casually alongside sympathy and compassion, but what really does it mean and when was the last time you revisited its meaning? Merriam-Webster defines empathy as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.” Sympathy on the other hand is “an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other.” In layman’s terms, empathy attempts understanding without owning or even agreeing, whereas sympathy implies sharing mutual or parallel experiences. Or, to run with the theme, empathy is where cake eaters attempt to understand bread eaters (and vice versa), whereas sympathy is where cake eaters share feelings with fellow cake eaters (or bread with bread). While similar, these words are not the same and the difference between performing the two lies in something I believe our society is losing.

The difference is good old-fashioned human connection. Today people can move from home, to car, to coffee shop, to office, to after work happy hour, to home, without expanding their bubble of human interaction by a single person. The modern cocktail of technology and machinery is cozy and comfortable and has made it easy to communicate and to relate, at least to those who exist within out sphere of interaction. Algorithms on social media are designed to give us articles and news and relative’s posts that already promote our view of the world. Our news platforms design articles that swing to a preformed bias. Our cars and our homes and our 9 to 5 keep up isolated from spontaneous interactions. On one hand, this cocktail has promoted a great upswing in sympathy, we are gifted communication platforms to relate to and support those who we relate with. We can give confidence to the friend who lost their job at the start of COVID because we also fear for our own job security. We can tip the barista a little extra on our way to work because we remember the difficulties of working in the service industry 10 years prior. However, narrowing our scope of experience in a technological world that constantly promotes our own view, has in-turn promoted sympathetic views while hindering empathetic views. Empathy is a dying art.

Now, I could be wrong (in fact I hope I am), and if you are a bit skeptical about my claim, here’s a number. A study involving a sheet of questions centered around sympathetic and empathetic behavior performed by Professor Fritz Breithaupt at the Experimental Humanities Lab at Indiana University found that in 2009 the average young person has had a 40 percent drop in empathy from the generation before. Numbers do in fact lie, so for me the better indicator of a societal loss of empathy is personal experience. Watch the news or read the facebook comments on an article from your local newspaper. People are quick to sympathize, but quickly lose their minds when faced with opposition. Maybe it is just the loudest of the herd, but silence scares me as well.

During the COVID days of social distancing, we are all relying more heavily on technology for social interaction. While a nice way to keep in touch with members of our circle, this is no replacement for human interaction that all people inherently thirst for. Polarized views of the world based off experience are becoming further polarized on all sides of an issue. The sentiment of “let them eat Cake,” that naïve disconnect to the plight of others has taken form in Black Lives Matter protests, Trump rallies, careless tourist behavior, and even something as simple as wearing a mask. What Sam did by using a name and recognizing a human as a human instead of a human as an action, and what John did by putting his own concerns aside to wear a mask that likely damaged his desire for control in a world where he has next to none, is something I don’t see often enough. People placing beliefs and egos aside to practice standing in another’s shoes, not as an endorsement, but as a simple recognition that everyone is human.

Cake is not the economic difference of the have’s and have nots, nor is it a disparity in resources (although both these are concerning elements of social inequity that or shockingly apparent in the wake of the virus), cake transcends understanding into the field of total cluelessness at the plight or experience of others. The end of empathy. Cake is what scares me most about COVID, because its only defense is genuine human interaction, face to face, on the street, outside of your comfortable isolated social sphere. Now, in the era of social distancing, that interaction is being challenged like never before.

-k.b.

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If you’re an empathy enthusiast, or want to get more ideas on how to practice the art of empathy, check out these links. They’ll bring you to some pretty interesting thought experiments:

‘The End of Empathy’ – Invisibilia Podcast – https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/712280114/the-end-of-empathy

‘Why We Hate’ – Ted Radio Hour – https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/628546919/why-we-hate

‘Empathy and Aesthetics’ and ‘The Dark Side of Empathy’ – The Experimental Humanities Lab – https://www.experimentalhumanities.com/publications