Empathy Deceives

Here is a poem I wrote about a philosophical thought I had about empathy:

Bleeding alone
No one can truly feel you
Empathy deceives
Seducing us with false comfort
Our suffering is parallel
But will never be equal
From our conception
To our requiem

Bleed alone
Bleed with none
Our rivers of pain
Cannot run the same
Look me in these eyes
I can only sympathize
Accept the reality

Dying alone
Your fate is your own
We are equalized
With an equaled passing
It is our natural desire
To find our resemblance
It is our need to believe
That together we bleed

Handmaid's Tale Journal Chap.30-33

"You know what they were complaining about the most? Inability to feel. Men were turning off on sex, even."

   In our society, men strive to have sex because of the feelings they get from the experience. It feels good, like a nice, cold piña colada on a warm beach. If you took away the feelings of sex, there would be a great loss of incentive to do it. People would not want to have sex for the sake of it anymore. They would only do it if they had to. 

They would be disappointed like this gray man in a gray suit. The color gray is so... disappointing!

In the Handmaid's Tale, the society has become desensitized to sex. The men are turning down on sex as much as they can, because they only see it as a way to maintain their status in their society or government. If they need to stay in a position or move to a higher status, they use sex as a tool. They don't see it as a means to obtain pleasure or connect with the one they love. Feelings such as love have become eradicated in this culture and sex is meaningless. This eventually emotionally neuters the whole society of men.

Sex is not the only thing that people have become emotionally neutered to in this society. They also find an inability to feel during the particicutions and the picking off on peers. People are being ripped apart right in front of their eyes and they still look on and do nothing. It happens so often that it becomes routine and, in a sense, they become numb to the experience. Like for example, the gladiators of ancient times. The people of Rome saw lions eating people alive. It was literally murder, yet they didn't do anything to stop it. It is because it happened so often that people stopped thinking about what was wrong and what was right and they just looked on cheering with a hollow mind. 

Everything wrong that is happening around the people in this society have just become regular. The only feeling people really have is now just numbness. This suggests that people have just stopped trying to do anything to change their bad situation. 

Handmaid's Tale Journal Chap.34-37

"Love, said Aunt Lydia with distaste. Don't let me catch you at it... Wagging her finger at us. Love is not the point."

     In dystopias, love is like a disease to the government because it inspires two people to form an individualistic relationship independent of the government. To the government, this is a loss of control. They can't tolerate any loss of control because they're a totalitarian government. Total control is their goal. So, they do everything they can in order to stop something such as love from detracting from their control over the population.

    But this is not the only reason Aunt Lydia doesn't want Offred chasing love. In a society where men have become desensitized to sex itself, one of the most sensual experiences lovers can have, the room for emotions in every man's heart is mostly just empty. There may be some emotions left, but those might just be the basic "I want to talk with a cute girl" type of emotions. The real feelings in a relationship such as passion, pleasure, and happiness have all been pretty much eradicated. So what then is the point of a relationship like love in this society? If all the feelings in love have become extinguished, there is really no point in chasing love unless you want to face great sadness.

However, the fact that Offred is even attempting to chase love is still intriguing. Even after love has been eradicated in this society, there are still people chasing it. It suggests that maybe love really is an indestructible concept. It can carry on through the darkest hours of mankind, like in this dystopia, and still be alive at the end of the day. It leaves the glimmering hope that even if you took away every principle for liking love, it is a concept that will still survive.