Weingarten: Fear Hijacks Reasoning

Photo by Amanda Gross

Dr. Kaethe Weingarten lectures on witnessing violence and the effects of September 11, 2001.

"Fear hijacks reasoning when reasoning is so needed," said Dr. Kaethe Weingarten, professor at Harvard Medical School, Monday night to a full chapel of students, faculty and community members on the 5th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

From her observations of this current political and cultural environment she explained, "terrorism became the object of fear, and fear is the emotion that makes it difficult for us to be compassionate witnesses." She also explained that living in a culture of fear as she believes we do is unhealthy for individuals, communities and nations.

"We were all witnesses of the violence we never thought possible on 9-11," Dr. Weingarten said Monday night to a crowd of students, faculty and community members calling for everyone "to take action for the purpose of making this world safer, not scarier."

Defining a witness as someone who, "sees, hears, or learns after the act of violence," Weingarten discussed how both personal and structural violence can harm, " mind, body and spirit and affect our whole life." The effects of witnessing violence can also span a whole society in the case of 9-11 and produce what Weingarten called, "common shock," which is the name of her new book.

She introduced four different ways we can witness violence, from being engaged to un-empowered and aware to unaware. Moving across the spectrum, away from unintentional and unengaged witness, to "an intentional witness that moves to opportunities for compassionate witnessing," Weingarten encouraged the crowd that this move is not limited to individuals but also communities and nations. The greatest challenge in this move is the opportunity to become numb to violence through being an aware witness but instead we must, "move to empowered action."

Weingarten came to the crux of her speech when she began to discuss how and what effective action looks like. "Effective action may stretch us in ways beyond our own struggles," she explained and encouraged the audience to remember that, "small actions matter, they ripple out in ways we can't see." Weingarten illustrated this point with a story about her and her niece sending spare change to AID's orphans in South Africa. Her niece's entire school class sent a significant amount of money in coins. "Our absence of action, until we are certain that we are prepared, shows up in the world no different as inaction." she said. Weingarten continued with steps that as a societal level we could take to intercept the endless cycles of violence. By re-humanizing the enemy, mourning losses through memorialization, participating in dialogue, maintaining curiosity and openness about an issue and taking compassionate action, individuals and societies can begin to change the cycles created by events like 9-11.

Weingarten ended by calling us to take care of the planet and change how we deal with violence. "For most of the planet's problems most of us will only make a modest contribution but we must know this and keep going."