Disclosure Day and Empathy: Can You Handle the Truth?

Catherine Carr

*This article contains mild spoilers for ‘Disclosure Day.’ The author has tried to avoid spoilers that were not already revealed in the film’s trailer or in Spielberg's pre-release interviews*

The antagonist of Steven Spielberg's latest alien film, Disclosure Day, argues that people can't handle the truth. We’re not strong enough, he argues, to handle the strong feelings that would come from learning that we’re not the most powerful species in the universe. He says that the fear would be too much for us, that it would cause an outbreak of panic and irrational violence.

Is he right? What skills are needed to handle that kind of truth?

Edwina Cowell, Motherfounder of Spiritual Playdate, has some opinions. And she thinks Spielberg got the important things right. 

“In the film, it’s children who are chosen by the aliens to have their minds opened. Their nervous systems are in that critical period where new abilities can be learned. This is why it’s so important that we teach our children during that formative window. If you’re going to teach someone how to manage their fear well enough to empathize with others, the easiest and most powerful way to do that is to start early in life.”

It’s not hard to see why Spielberg chose this moment in history to make a movie in which, as Stephen Colbert noted in his interview with Spielberg, “Empathy is a superpower.” Spielberg is responding to the same threat as Cowell is in her work at Spiritual Playdate: an increasingly violent and divided world. 

As grownups fail to prevent war and solve our differences, Cowell says, raising kids with the resilience to handle new information and big feelings in a peaceful and respectful way is essential. Disclosure Day is about aliens—but also about the ways in which trauma, loss, and big feelings that we don’t know how to deal with can make Earth an unbearable place to live.

That’s why Spiritual Playdate offers a library of free and extremely low-cost activities, scripts, and videos for grownups everywhere to use to teach life skills to their kids. These activities create simple, yet profound moments of connection designed to instill empathy and resilience in developing nervous systems. 

“Those ages are essential,” Cowell tells me. “If you want to know what happens when children don’t learn these skills…well, look around.”

And that’s not the only way in which Spiritual Playdate’s work is eerily echoed in Disclosure Day. Disclosure Day also hits another tension that Spiritual Playdate encounters: is there a conflict between religious faith, and accepting moral teachings or values from a source outside your religion?

In the movie, one Christian character tells another: “If people believe in aliens, they won’t believe in God anymore. And God is what holds civilization together.”

Later in the movie, another Christian character reassures the first that God is not threatened by aliens. A third opines that the children whose minds have been opened to superhuman levels of empathy, “Are closer to God than we are.”

This reflects a surprising conflict that has arisen within some religions in recent decades. While virtually all global holy texts describe empathy as the defining Divine virtue of prophets and saints, some religious leaders have begun to feel threatened by “the sin of empathy.” Those same leaders often object to the inclusion of Social-Emotional-Spiritual Learning in schools, saying that allowing secular teachers to teach values and empathy threatens the moral authority of religious teachers. 

This was likely the tension Spielberg was getting at by including these characters in the film. The idea that empathy is considered a sin by some religious leaders—even though their own founders are highly venerated for their empathy—is a contradiction that modern religious leaders need to take a long, hard look at. 

So is the idea that religion will become obsolete if it is “replaced” by secular Social-Emotional-Spiritual Learning resources, and other outside sources of help and support.

“People who really understand what religion is for are not worried about being replaced by SESL,” Edwina Cowell told me in an interview. “We can’t replace the function of religion. If God isn’t threatened by other ‘higher powers’, religious leaders certainly shouldn’t be threatened by other parties teaching empathy. In helping children to live the core values shared by all world religions, SESL serves the goals of religious leaders. It couldn’t replace them if it tried.”

Disclosure Day does something very clever. It spends two and a half hours preparing the audience to accept aliens. To accept fundamental truths that would change anyone’s worldview, challenge anyone’s sense of security. Then, he leaves us with a final exhortation: 

Listen. To each other.

Can we handle that? 

Can you?

If you’re up to prove those who would “protect us from the truth” wrong, we invite you to take Spiritual Playdate’s Respect Challenge today.