IN THE AGE OF GROWING POLARIZATION, THE SONG "UNDER PRESSURE" IS A PERFECT ANTHEM FOR EMPATHY

Image credit: Kelly Sikkema 

If you, like me, live in the United States, you run into political and cultural polarization in every corner. Polarization has become especially hard to avoid as we are getting close to the presidential election. But polarization is certainly not unique to the United States. We can probably argue that, as the world is getting more globalized, it is also becoming more polarized, with rifts within and between some countries growing over time.

Polarization is the opposite of connection, and connection has been an important theme running through my scholarship and writing over the last few years. I have been thinking a lot about the critical need to emphasize connection as people are dealing with problems in today's world. Back in 2020, when I was finishing my book Media Is Us: Understanding Communication and Moving Beyond Blame, I found a song that seemed to encapsulate, albeit cryptically, my thoughts about polarization and connection, and about such related themes as the human condition, empathy, and self-awareness. I am talking about "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie.* (You can find lyrics here.)

My goal here is not to argue that my interpretation of the song is correct. We will probably never know exactly what Queen and Bowie meant. And maybe it's even not that important what they consciously meant. As some might say, real masterpieces happen when artists allow something greater than an individual speak through them. So, my goal here is merely to explain why I think that, in the age of growing polarization, "Under Pressure" is a perfect anthem for empathy.

First and foremost, the song talks about pressure that all people have to live with. It is a pressure that no one asks for. This pressure is simply a function of being human. Everybody has to deal with it, no matter how powerful or powerless they seem, although this pressure takes different forms for different people.

I talk about this pressure in my scholarship when I describe powerlessness that all human beings experience. For example, I write: "We are born into society governed by unspoken rules and by ideas that we do not fully comprehend. On top of that, we constantly have to deal with the limitations of our bodies, with forces and laws of nature indifferent towards our feelings."

This pressure sometimes manifests itself as an intense feeling of existential horror. If we think too much about what it means to be human, we might discover the deeply unsettling strangeness of life itself. What am I, really? Why am I here? What's the point? 

Another form of existential pressure is the need to make choices, to decide what's right and what's wrong. We can, of course, try the strategy proposed by the ancient skeptics and suspend all our judgment; but, as their critics pointed out, this would mean doing nothing, not living a life and not dealing with its problems. And, as the singer laments, you cannot pretend to be blind, you cannot spend your life sitting on the fence. It just does not work. Many people who choose to deal with pressing social problems come to this exact conclusion. 

As the song develops, the theme of pressure is intensifying. But the singer also reminds us that there is a glimpse of a better tomorrow, and this hope gives us wings, gets us higher... while the pressure keeps pulling us down. What kind of hope can we count on in this maddening game? If pressure was the main topic, this song would be dark and hopeless. But there is another key theme: love.

First, love itself appears hopeless. Can it really solve our problems? I get this doubt, I get it so well. How can I love someone whose worldviews are alien to mine? Whose choices, it seems, I would never replicate? When love is mentioned for the first time, it is described as something that the singer has to keep coming up with. The definition of "come up with" is "produce something, especially when pressured or challenged," which brings us back to the theme of pressure. We might want to try using love, as opposed to violence, in response to life's challenges, but this strategy does not necessarily produce immediate results. And we are not all Kings and Gandhis. Not surprisingly, our attempts at loving our enemies often seem to be doomed. Love we want to offer keeps getting torn and shredded.

Here, the song throws us back to one of the most existential questions. Why? The singer repeats it three times, the last one turning into a cry that signals desperation. But in response to this desperate plea for meaning, the other voice answers, firm in its certainty: "Love." The answer is simply love. I am not a religious person, but I believe that love must be our faith. I believe that, when conflicts keep escalating as each side responds with violence to violence, there will be no end to suffering unless we wholeheartedly believe that love is the answer and act upon this belief. Love will save us in our darkest hour, when we are breaking under pressure and going insane from sadness and grief.

Rolling on this juxtaposition of pressure and love, the song reaches its crescendo. At the time when the fate of the whole of humanity might be at stake (think about nuclear weapons, climate change, wars), the song tells us that we need to give ourselves one more chance--"ourselves" being people, collectively. Can't we do it?--the song asks. And it continues asking, dramatically: Why can't we give one more chance to love? Indeed, we must do it, even when everything seems so hopeless and the pressure is breaking us down and apart. Here, the song offers a beautiful play on words. The question about giving one more chance to love morphs into another vital question: Why can't we simply give love? The end of this last question, "give love" turns into a persistent echo. It turns into an imperative. If we want to save ourselves, save the world, we should stop responding with hate to hate. Love is the only answer. Remember King's words: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

But, of course, it is not easy, so not easy. We need to keep asking ourselves this question: Why can't we just give love? The song continues, reflecting on that. It calls the idea of love "old-fashioned". We are afraid that if we talk too much about love, we will be seen as "not cool", as too soft, as inferior to people of action who do stuff instead of trying to hug their problems away. Just to be clear, I am not talking here about some weak toothless love that allows everybody to step over it. Love must be strong, love must be proud, and this love can be perfectly well combined with resistance to violence. So, we should not think that love is something that's just for babies and romance. Love requires an effort. Loving your enemy while stopping him or her from doing harm to you or somebody else requires extra strength.

Love that will save the world in the age of growing conflicts and polarization is the kind of love that dares you. It dares you to care for people no matter how much you dislike their worldviews and actions. It dares you to empathize with "people of the night" no matter how much darkness you see in them.

Love dares us to change how we deal with each other, and it also dares us to change the way we take care of ourselves. Real change starts from within. We cannot love others until we learn to truly love ourselves and know ourselves. This is like a two-sided coin. Know yourself to know others, and the other way around. Love yourself to love others, and the other way around. Take care of yourself in order to take care of others, and the other way around.

This all is so not easy, but we must do it, as humanity, because this might be our last dance together on this planet. Our last dance, our last chance. Will we take it?

We keep dividing ourselves into us and them, but there is no us and them, because on this planet, we are all in this together. And in the grand scheme of things, there is nowhere else to go. This pressure of being human might be killing us. But the key to our survival is in our hands. Not ours as opposed to theirs. Just ours. There is nobody here, on this planet, but us--under the enormous pressure of being human.

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*In case you didn't know: a video recording of Queen and Bowie performing this song together does not exist. What you see on YouTube is an edited version that put together clips from two different concerts.