Australia woke on 26 January to the news that David Morrison had been named Australian of the Year. One of the most striking features he displayed, both in winning the award and in his acceptance speech, was empathy — the ability to enter the world of others. Though a man, Morrison shot to prominence by condemning sexism and sexual violence in the military — including as an instrument of warfare.
In his speech, he began by noting the undoubted fact that Australia Day, by its nature, is not regarded with unalloyed pleasure by Aboriginal Australians, for whom 26 January speaks to a history of genocide, dispossession and ongoing discrimination.
His stance on diversity, on combatting discrimination of all kinds, pulled no punches in enumerating the types of discrimination which still exist in Australia and the self-interested reason why we should care — excluding some from society impoverishes us all, by depriving society of the benefits which each individual can bring to it.
Sadly, the empathy he displayed is a quality in vanishingly short supply in public discourse. This is not only an Australian problem, and cannot be divorced from the rise of the human rights movement.
One of the great contributions of Western philosophy to human thought has been the emergence of the individual as a focus for concern. I am not merely a member of a group, a plaything of kings or emperors, but an individual with thoughts, feelings and an interior life all my own.
Descartes' cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) is shorthand for the idea that this interior life itself is the basis for how we approach the world and, from our point of view at least, the very warrant for the existence of the world. The individual is important, has rights.
The trouble is that unless we can put the individual on a broader canvass, our world view is incomplete. I am important, but unless you are recognised as being just as important as I, then you are just a plaything for me — disposable at will. My rights are bounded by your rights, your value as a person.
The 20th century Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas noted that the I think of Descartes totalises — it reduces everything: God, other people, to a subset of I. We are only opened to the world beyond us if we are able to accept others on their own terms, without reducing them to what we want them to be.
This is Morrison's point, too: While the collective cannot be allowed to destroy the individual, the whole is, at the very least, the sum of its very diverse parts. If we include everyone, on their own terms, then everyone's gifts can come to the fore and enrich the whole.
All of this may sound obvious to the point of being trite. We do, however, need constant reminding of the importance of other people's points of view. Levinas spoke in the aftermath of the Shoah, the massacre of over six million Jews by Hitler.
And yet still reductive thinking about other people will not die. Indeed, it seems to be hardwired into modern humanity. Aboriginal people are still often told to 'get over' over two centuries of hurt, even though (as this brilliant but searing cartoon points out) people do not say this to those commemorated on ANZAC Day or their families.
At least some of this desire to reduce and control the Other and their approach to the world is surely born of fear. The response to the refugee crisis in Europe and (somewhat less understandably) the United States as well as Australia's own policies in this area are sold on the basis of a dreaded tidal wave of unfamiliar humanity coming to take away people's way of life and security.
The hopes and fears of individuals facing intolerable circumstances are thus mulched into a grey tsunami of fear and indifference.
And it works. Politicians who would bar the gates, turn back the boats and pull up the drawbridge are on the rise in many countries which have previously prided themselves on tolerance and diversity.
And yet, if empathy fails, then the society which they claim to be protecting is also in danger. The rights of the individual only hold their magic as long as everybody acknowledges them.
If we undermine them then not only do we create an impoverished society but we also force those we exclude to create their own systems and support groups which will, themselves, likely be based on hostility, fear and the experience of exclusion.
As the Australian of the Year himself put it, 'The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.'
Justin Glyn SJ is studying for the priesthood. Previously he practised law in South Africa and New Zealand and has a PhD in administrative and international law.