The Message In Disclosure Day That Could Change Your Life

There’s a moment in Disclosure Day I haven’t stopped thinking about since I saw it last weekend.

Margaret goes to a black site where Wardex is holding Daniel Kellner, and uses her psychic abilities to cut through dozens of guards, and free him.

How does she cut through dozens of guards? Easy! She presents to them as the people they love most, and talks to them, and one by one they fall into a stupor instead of capturing her.

Later, Noah Scanlon says “My god, what is she?”

To which his right hand man Casper says, “Unstoppable.”

Disclosure Day does something brilliant. It uses aliens, and our preconceived notions about their vastly superior technology, to present empathy as a tool with unstoppable power.

In this alien film, the most powerful technology they bring isn’t a weapon, or a spaceship, but the ability to understand people. I find it an immensely empowering message that rings truer than many people might realize.

Disclosure Day opens with a POV shot of a wrestler getting kicked in the face. The wrestlers, unironically, wear red and blue outfits, and folks in the crowd are seen wearing red and blue clothing, with some sporting red baseball caps that have USA printed on it.

It’s not hard to see what Spielberg’s hinting at with this analogy.

The world at large is on the brink of World War 3, and everything changes when a little cardinal visits Margaret Fairchild in her Kansas City home. She’s suddenly given psychic abilities that let her “drop in” on people’s minds, and see what they’re thinking.

These abilities allow her to do things like get out of traffic tickets, or see where people are in the world. It connects her to people so deeply that everyone she comes into contact with, even if they’re diametrically opposed to her, can’t touch her. She walks right through anyone in her path peacefully.

A lot of Spielberg’s critics say his movies are too emotional, or hypersensitive. They probably see his messages as incompatible with a deeply problematic world where all too often brute force rules, and kindness is tossed by the wayside. After all, you can control everything in a movie—but real life is way messier. I think these folks have a point, but I also think their criticisms ironically prove Spielberg’s argument about empathy in Disclosure Day.

Yeah, the world is a dangerous, flawed place that’s severely lacking in kindness, but that’s precisely why radical empathy would be so transformative for it. We just don’t see a lot of it in our day-to-day lives—if at all. I actually don’t think most of us know what love and empathy truly are. I mean, when’s the last time you truly felt understood by someone on a very deep level? Like someone knows your deepest, darkest fears, your desires, and your interests? Conversely, when’s the last time you truly tried to understand someone else on this level?

The real-world research on this is heartbreaking.

Data from the American Perspectives Survey and the General Social Survey highlight that the percentage of people reporting they have absolutely no close friends has quadrupled over the last thirty years. And in 1990, the average person had roughly 4 to 5 close confidants. Today, that average has dropped to 2 or 3, with many people reporting only 1.

It’s estimated that roughly 8-17% of adults live without a single close confidant. When scaled globally, data from Gallup reveals that more than 300 million people report having zero friends or family members they can rely on or talk to deeply.

Empathy is on the decline as well. In 2011, Social psychologist Dr. Sara Konrath discovered a 40% decrease in overall empathy among college students in 2009 compared to college students in 1979.

And in massive tracking surveys, the number of parents who report they would be deeply upset if their child married someone from the opposing political party has skyrocketed from roughly 4% in 1960 to nearly 50% today.

My point is, empathy for anybody outside our own tribe is in short supply these days, and it’s getting worse as time goes on!

For those who feel that empathy is a trap, or is too “touchy-feely” to create change in an increasingly hostile world, the research actually proves Spielberg’s point about the transformative nature of empathy.

Behavioral scientist Guy Itzchakov proved in a landmark study that when people are subjected to high-quality listening, IE they feel heard deeply without judgement, it forces a psychological reset. The person being listened to automatically lowers their defensive walls, begins to reflect on their extreme attitudes, and naturally depolarizes.

Remember the final word of Disclosure Day?

Margaret goes up on live television and says “listen.”

This final exclamation point on Spielberg’s message about empathy lines up perfectly with Guy Itzchakov’s findings about the power of listening. Studies show that listening to people can transform them.

Research from Jamil Zaki, a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, showed that when people are guided through exercises where they imagine the daily struggles, fears, and childhood backgrounds of a political adversary, their brain’s “out-group bias” crumbles. They start engaging with the human being in front of them instead of a caricature of the opposing political party.

Social psychologists also point out that when radical empathy is introduced, it changes the questions we ask. Instead of debating a hot-button topic, an empathetic framework forces us to ask, “What underlying fear or personal experience drove you to care so deeply about this?” Finding common ground on core human fears completely changes the trajectory of democratic dialogue.

The problem is, most of us suck at empathy for people outside our family, friends, and those who share our exact worldviews.

Studies prove this. For example, in the standard Empathy Quotient test, which is scored from 0 to 80, the average neurotypical male scores a 42, and the average female scores a 47. This means that the average person is good at basic social politeness, but consistently fails to comprehend perspectives from people belonging to different socioeconomic, political, or cultural groups.

There’s also something known as the “If I Were You” Fallacy, where when someone tells you a problem they’re having, instead of imagining being the other person, you imagine what YOU would feel in their situation. So if someone’s scared about public speaking, and you’re not, an example of the fallacy would be you saying something like “Public speaking is easy, you’re overreacting.” This is what the average person does. We’re kinda bad at empathy.

In fact, scientists say that if empathy were a school subject, the average person would pull a consistent C-minus.

If you’re still not convinced that,

A. Most people aren’t great at empathy
B. Political polarization would drastically improve with more empathy

I don’t know what to tell you.

The research literally shows all of this—the problem is, most people are just really bad at putting it into action, including me!

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However something happened to me recently that changed my entire life—and it has to do with radical empathy.

5 years ago, my sister started distancing herself from my family. It caught all of us off-guard, and we could feel a distinct coldness from her that hadn’t been there before. She used to be one of my best friends, and seeing her act so uncaring towards us was a very hard pill to swallow.

My whole family struggled with this for years—especially my Mom. I mean, it’s like if someone you knew and loved suddenly woke up and was totally different—and not just totally different, but indifferent to YOU!

It really hurt, and many tears were shed by us in the aftermath of all this.

My sister started talking about things like trauma, and therapy, and emotional neglect. I couldn’t imagine where she was coming from because I lived in the Philippines and saw what real hardship looked like. I mean, we won the lottery!

I watched my Mom cry about it for years. I watched as my sister selfishly went about her life, seemingly not caring about the pain she caused my parents, or me! It was as if her heart went cold, which was so weird because my sister was always so warm with all of us.

I became so angry with her for hurting the family, that last May I was this close to cutting contact entirely, and letting her live her life in peace.

And then I watched live action How To Train Your Dragon. laughs

So I watched that movie, and started reflecting on Hiccup’s journey. He’s a kid who disappoints his father because he’s not viking-like. Instead of being a big dumb jock, he’s smart and sensitive, which rails against the viking way of life.

However, we find that Hiccup is actually precisely what the vikings needed. We realize he’s right about the dragons being gentle souls, and that he’s able to find out their idiosyncrasies because he sees the world differently from everyone else.

Hiccup is a nerdy weakling of a character, but he actually shows more courage than the valiant warriors of his tribe, because it takes lots of courage to disappoint your parents and everyone around you.

Everything suddenly clicked in my mind.

I realized that my sister was Hiccup, and we were Hiccup’s father. She was showing us a new world—displaying immense courage—and we never considered her point of view.

We were all too focused on our own pain.

I mean, if we truly loved her, shouldn’t we have been concerned about what she was telling us? If we truly loved her, shouldn’t we have been happy for her finding peace at last?

In a second my animosity was replaced with curiosity—my pain replaced with empathy. I spent an hour writing a message to my sister, telling her I loved her. Without getting too detailed, I told her I understood the burden she had to bear as a child, and how she gave, gave, and gave to everyone until there was nothing left for her. Our family really depended on her for SO MUCH, and then got mad when she refused to hold everything together for us. It was time for her to look after herself now, I said.

The message I got back from her an hour later was so sweet and warm that it felt like a miracle. I never thought my sister would ever talk like that to me again, and since then, after dozens of calls and countless messages, she’s become my best friend again.

So, why did she react this way?

Well, because of empathy! For the first time, someone from her own family understood her instead of judged her—chose to walk alongside her in her journey instead of chastise her for going the wrong route.

It was incredibly cathartic for her, and the way she’s interacted with me ever since has shocked me.

So when I see Margaret Fairchild stopping agents in their tracks, changing their entire demeanor through sheer empathy and love, it resonates very strongly with me because I know it’s possible. I know you can change people, and yourself, very radically if you just try to empathize with them.

And for the people who think this is too schmaltzy of a message from Spielberg, I don’t blame them! Exactly one year ago I would’ve held a similar view.

But not today. Not after seeing the true power of empathy up close. I do think it’s the most powerful thing in the world, and making it the most advanced of alien technologies in Disclosure Day is actually a perfect analogy for its power.

In the film, Margaret tells Jackson that ever since seeing the cardinal she feels “in the flow.” She then tells him it’s like when he’s playing his music. That’s how I feel these days ever since I invited radical empathy into my life. It feels like I was stuck playing life on hard mode, and now I get to play it on easy mode.

If someone tries to hurt me now, it doesn’t affect me that much. I know they got stuff they’re probably dealing with.

If someone needs space from me, I don’t take it personally. I just want them to be happy.

If I want to connect with someone, I find it so much easier now, because I expect to find beauty in them eventually.

Everything in the world starts making more sense when you invite love into your life. You start understanding that we all got our own trauma that make us who we are today, and you stop blaming people for it. You start feeling compassion.

Yes, the world is messed up, but that’s because there’s so little love and empathy in it. It’s actually really bad, you find. But that’s why true empathy works like a miracle with people—because they simply don’t experience it all that often.

In Disclosure Day, after Margaret finds out Clark wouldn’t follow her if she left Kansas City, she doesn’t get angry at him. Instead she reacts with love and understanding, telling him she loves him.

How many people are really capable of reacting that way?

Radical empathy broadens your world. It makes you see everyone as allies in the grand scheme of things, and when you get this 30,000 foot view, you see how pointless so much of this is. We’re all just floating on a rock in space, here for a blink of time in the grand scheme of things. We’re all scared. We all want to be loved and understood. And so much of the bad things we do are done because we can’t see this broad perspective.

In Disclosure Day, Margaret’s mind gets broadened. She goes from egotistical meteorologist to Ghandi in a flash. Her whole world opens up, thanks to visitors from the outer reaches of space. And that’s perhaps the real genius of Disclosure Day. The world is on the brink of annihilation, and news of extraterrestrial life, which massively broadens our horizons, saves the day.

Just like how news of aliens would make our problems feel small, and broaden our view of the universe, empathy does the same exact thing. All one needs to do, to unlock this superpower of transcendent perspective, is listen.

What did you think of Disclosure Day? Let me know in the comments down below!

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Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time.