A Failure Of Empathy: The casual cruelty of Barbara Sumner-Burstyn's Facebook posting about the death of Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker offered swift corroboration of Dr Bruce Perry's claim that social media are diminishing our capacity for empathy.
ARE SOCIAL MEDIA making us crueller? Dr Bruce Perry, an
American neuroscientist currently touring New Zealand, argues that the
explosive growth of communications technology is diminishing our capacity for
empathy. By undermining face-to-face relationships and weakening the intimate
and ethical bonds that hold communities together, claims Dr Perry, social media
are changing the way our brains work.
A challenging thesis, but Dr Perry’s disturbing ideas
received almost instant corroboration. In an extraordinary outburst on Facebook,
the New Zealand film-maker, Barbara Sumner-Burstyn, delivered the following,
scathing, ‘testimonial’ to Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker, the young New Zealand
soldier killed in action in Afghanistan on 19 August:
“Oh, so fallen soldier Jacinda Baker liked boxing and baking
– did they forget she also liked invading countries we are not at war with,
killing innocent people and had no moral compass. She 100 per cent does not
deserve our respect for her flawed choices. We are not at war. We are helping
America invade another country for their oil. No more than that.”
It is difficult to know where to begin with this thoroughly
obnoxious piece of writing. Perhaps with Ms Sumner-Burstyn’s simple errors of
fact.
Lance Corporal Baker did not invade Afghanistan, she was
posted there as a serving member of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) which
was in Afghanistan at the behest of the New Zealand Government, which had
agreed to supply the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) with a
Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamiyan province. The ISAF is in Afghanistan
by virtue of a UN Security Council resolution authorising UN member states to
aid the creation of an effective and democratic Afghan government.
Lance Corporal Baker, far from “killing innocent people” was
a medic – duty bound to assist all those wounded in combat or injured by enemy
munitions – regardless of status or nationality. When she was killed, Lance
Corporal Baker was escorting an injured comrade to medical assistance. It is
extremely difficult to reconcile these facts with Ms Sumner-Burstyn’s charge
that Lance Corporal Baker “had no moral compass”.
Ms Sumner-Burstyn’s final claim: “We are helping America
invade another country for their oil” is similarly false. Afghanistan possesses
no oil fields worth expending US blood and treasure to secure. The Americans
are there for only one reason. Because the Taliban Government of Afghanistan had
offered safe haven to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida: the terrorists ultimately
responsible for the murderous attacks of 11 September 2001.
Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker
Natural reticence, not to mention fear of instant
retaliation, would almost certainly have prevented Ms Sumner-Burstyn from
uttering such false and hurtful accusations in front of people who did not
share completely her opinions on the Afghanistan conflict. The classical
injunction De mortuis nil nisi bonum – Of the dead speak only good – invokes a simpler world in
which people confronted one another face-to-face. By placing a
computer screen between herself and the family, friends and comrades of Lance
Corporal Baker, Ms Sumner-Burstyn lost the inhibitive effect of close human
proximity. Without its protection she had nothing to shield her from the full
emotional and practical consequences of her actions.
These followed with terrifying speed and intensity. Ms
Sumner-Burstyn’s comments appeared on her Facebook Page on Friday, by Saturday
a new Facebook Page – Sumner Burstyn Give
Back Your NZ Passport! – had attracted more than 15,000 followers. By
Sunday that number had grown to 20,000.
Reading the comments posted on this new page, Dr Perry would
no doubt suffer an embarrassment of evidential riches for his
diminishing-empathy thesis. If Ms Sumner-Burstyn’s comments were ignorant and insensitive,
the response was nothing short of homicidal. The reactive firestorm’s flames
leaped across the Pacific Ocean to Canada – where Ms Sumner-Burstyn is working
– and she hurriedly took down her Facebook Page and changed her e-mail address.
Too late. On the Internet everything is recoverable –
including screen-shots of Ms Sumner-Burstyn’s original comments. By Sunday, family
members had been driven from their homes by the public fury. Threatened with
rape and murder, Ms Sumner-Burstyn fears to return to New Zealand.
A recent photograph of Ms Sumner-Burstyn shows a middle-aged
woman posed in front of a large book-case filled with academic literature.
Studying her face, and reading about her many awards for documentary film-making
– many of them on “progressive” themes – it is difficult to fathom how Ms
Sumner-Burstyn could be capable of such casual cruelty. As a clearly gifted
artist and feminist, it is extraordinary that she was so utterly unable to
empathise with Lance Corporal Baker – the first female member of the NZDF to
lose her life on active service.
By the same token, it is profoundly depressing to read the
spittle-flecked responses of her detractors.
Lance Corporal Baker lost her life on a mission to re-build
and heal a damaged province in a ravaged land. Her empathy merited a much more
generous memorial.
This essay was
originally published in The Press of
Tuesday, 28 August 2012.
