The Empathy Exams

La Plata Perdida

This first portion of this essay is told entirely in second person, coming across as a series of commands for the reader. Jamison begins by providing directions on how to get to the silver mines of Potosí. She notes its similarities and differences to other towns in Bolivia before beginning a tour of the silver mine. As they travel to the mine in their gear, Jamison notes decapitated goat heads can be found in the market.

At the market, the tourists are invited to purchase presents for the miners, like sticks of dynamite and soda. Six million men have worked in the mine, and the group passes by an entryway where the miners sleep, eat, and defecate between shifts. The tour guide speaks about the president, who has not made anything better despite promises to improve mining conditions. As they pass by miners, the group gives out gifts. They walk beneath a statue of Tío, a depiction of the devil many of the miners, although Catholic, worship while in the mines. Most of them are dead by 40 because of breathing in the dust they create while stripping silver from the mine. As the tour group emerges, Jamison reflects on the relief of sunshine and the shock at seeing herself covered in black dust, looking not unlike the miners.

Sublime, Revised

Jamison watches the television show Intervention, which centers on the lives of people with addictions. After briefly outlining different profiles, she settles on Andrea, who has an alcohol addiction. Jamison comments on how video editing allows the viewer to take a clinical perspective of the people featured in the show and removes the “monotony” of addiction by speeding up the process. She highlights the differences between Andrea when she is sober and when she drinks and tells the background experiences contributing to her alcoholism. Jamison notes the viewer is more forgiving when introduced to Andrea’s trauma, a sexual assault at the age of 14, and it acts as the tipping point for her addiction. The television producers assert the people with addictions do not know that they will be participating in an intervention, adding to the tension.

Near the end of the essay, Jamison discusses Edmund Burke’s negative pain hypothesis, which explains that having the freedom to turn away from a fear gives the viewer a positive reaction. She then highlights how the show Intervention plays into this sensation by providing the viewer a chance to see addiction and its ramifications without having to experience it themselves. She describes the format of the end of the show, in which trained Interventionists plan a confrontation with a person with an addiction. They claim this is a lifechanging experience and will only happen once, but for the viewer it is able to happen whenever they watch the show—a new intervention with a different person who has an addiction. It creates a cycle of hurt and healing that is easily reviewed and repeated.

Indigenous to the Hood

Jamison returns to the second person as she describes the Gang Tour, which is run by a man named Alfred who guides the group on a bus tour of the gang-riddled parts of Los Angeles. Along with the tour are three previous gang members who, because of their prison records, struggle to find employment. The tour guides use dark humor to accent the visuals they drive past and to help the tourists feel at ease. Jamison notes the presence of people from Missouri and Australia as they begin to drive through the streets. The tourists learn sobering facts and hear anecdotes from the past gang members.

When they arrive at the LA County jail, the reader learns of the abhorrent conditions the prisoners experience from first-hand anecdotes of the tour guides. The tour reaches the suburb of Watts, which is run by the Crips gang. Jamison reveals that while geographically they are less than 20 miles away from where she grew up, the people here live lives completely different than her own. Watts carries the marks of violence, riots, and protests, which Jamison compares to her own youth and how little she remembers of Rodney King, who was beaten to death by police officers.

As the group crosses the LA River, Jamison is taught about graffiti by Alfred, who points out the different types of graffiti as well as the legal consequences of creating it. The tour itself ends at a graffitied Sugar Skull, where the tourists take pictures. Some of them pose with hand signs, while others feel too awkward to pose. Jamison’s renewed understanding of violence, as well as of this part of Los Angeles, is from the perspective of someone who has only observed it second hand. She wonders if the leader of the church group will make a sermon about this experience and reflects on how the tour guides have managed to step away from violence though many of their peers do not. Jamison notes the discomfort of the tour is the point of it, and having experienced the discomfort she will be able to face her own privilege with renewed effort in the future.