#OccupyWallStreet: What I’m supposed to feel versus what I actually feelI have a friend, an ex-lover, who lives on Rector Street. Sometimes I visit her, taking the 1 train from my family’s apartment uptown. We both come from financially comfortable backgrounds. In an inversion of conventional wisdom, thinking about #OccupyWallStreet, my reason supports the protests but my heart stays curiously detached.After drinking a bottle of wine one night, my friend suggests we walk through Zuccotti Park. It’s a Wednesday, the last week in September. The scene is mild and most closely resembles the kind of social conglomeration you’d expect outside of C Squat (circa 2005).I feel like a tourist. Despite myself, the sleeping bodies undulating beneath blue tarps disturb me. At best I’m indifferent. At worst, I judge the figures with haughty disdain. I meet eyes with a woman who’s hair is dreaded. She gestures toward a haggard little puppy she’s holding. “Pet it.”The woman and  I stroke the dog and stare at one another. It’s that ironic kind of look that suggests a mutual feeling of disconnect. My friend and I move on. I’m careful where I step.“What do you think?”“I think I don’t understand.”“It’ll make more sense on the weekend. With more people.”We walk to the subway and kiss goodbye. I feel in love with her. The protest’s most poignant consequence for me is the sensation that I exist in a moment in history. My heart attaches itself to this wealthy girl and my passion exists for her; the city is a rich narrative setting for my greater love story.Of course, this is absurd. The city doesn’t care about what makes my heart beat faster. Our country’s economic crisis is profoundly more important. But if that’s all true (which it is), why don’t I naturally fall for the cause?Maybe it’s a matter of scale, but I doubt it. Even if I go to Zuccotti Park on a big day, with the electric crowds, music, zombies, witty posters, and barbeques, I will be aroused the way a casual fan becomes a die hard when he sees his sports team live. The energy of crowds is an infatuation. It does not touch the heart.The greater problem, in my opinion, is that people are not inherently compassionate in the way we’re taught to believe we are.  Cognitively (in a systematic, reasonable way) and morally I have an immense compassion for the people struggling in our country. Emotionally, I do not. On one level I’m moved, but there is no emotional compassion without similar experience. I cannot intimate their suffering because I have not felt it myself.This shouldn’t be mistaken for nihilism or deluded, disillusioned humanity. I simply think that we operate under the false assumption that humans will feel deeply about something on the basis of common, pure humanness. That foundation doesn’t exist. Once people become socialized, commonality is determined by experience. Classes create species.Most people believe they are somehow supposed to feel for others who are suffering. When they don’t, they feel intense guilt. “What’s wrong with me?” “Don’t I have a heart?” The issue, however, is that nobody feels deeply for anybody else on purely emotional grounds—indeed, it’d be unreasonable to expect them to—unless they’ve forged a relationship with that person or have a history of the same pain.People who say they feel compassion (when they’ve never experienced what they say they’re compassionate about), are either lying or are confusing their experience. They do not feel insomuch as they can reason the moral need for compassion—which is undeniably important. I support #OccupyWallStreet, follow it, attempt to understand it, because I recognize the very real possibility that I’ll one day share the same or a similar experience, feel the struggle, and need the same support.More by Kyle Kouri:The iPhone 4S and Facebook: It’s not the Technology, It’s YouPut Marilyn Monroe on YouJizz: A Plea for Internet PornPhenomenon: Social Media Thizzing