Empathy is what makes us human

Opinion

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and archetypal Bond villain, opined recently that “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” This fits quite tidily the philosophy of America’s current plutocracy.

Musk now heads the quasi-government department, DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) that is swinging a wrecking ball through government. The goal is to slash more than a trillion dollars from federal spending. The biggest losers will be the poor, as millions are losing access to health care, pensions and support for families. Empathy is conspicuously absent from DOGE.

Musk, and others like him, view empathy as a “bug” in western democracy, one that can be exploited by the ruthless.

In 1964 the economist John Kenneth Galbraith observed that: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

What Galbraith said was true then and is even more true today.

In America, conservatives no longer try to conceal their selfishness. Under President Donald Trump, friends, cronies and the president himself enrich themselves at the expense of the less fortunate. They are so crass as to hold advertisements for Musk’s Tesla products on the White House lawn. Empathy is nowhere to be seen.

Musk and his fellow travellers are wrong. Empathy is not weakness.

From research in anthropology and animal behaviour, it is clear that the origin of empathy is linked intimately to the origin of humanity. Within the animal kingdom, being able to assess the needs of others and to act proactively to address those needs is restricted to a very few species, none more so than humans.

The noted anthropologist Sarah Hrdy has pinpointed the conditions that led to the hyper-co-operation, where large groups of unrelated individuals work together, seen only in humans. Raising offspring co-operatively in small groups of relatives and non-relatives.

Anthropologists tell us that humanity arose in relatively small, mobile and highly egalitarian groups that practised co-operative breeding: children left in the care of others, the alloparents, that include non-relatives. Effective allo-parenting requires an ability to detect the needs of others, and to respond to them. That requires empathy.

Why will humans risk their life to rescue someone from a burning car or retrieve a dog from a raging torrent? Empathy.

Once empathy arises, it lays the foundation for hyper-co-operation among non-relatives. And that is what separates humans from every other animal. Why do humans cooperate in large groups of non-kin, like armies or big corporations? It’s because cooperation is built into our DNA.

Empathy is preceded by a sense of fairness, knowing what is inequitable. That is, the ability to recognize inequality within groups and to rebel against unequal treatment.

The classic experiment was performed by the anthropologists Frans de Waal and Sarah Brosnan on capuchin monkeys. One monkey receives favoured treatment in sight of another, getting grapes when the other gets less preferred cucumber. The disadvantaged monkey sees this and rebels by throwing the cucumber at its human handler.

That’s the first step toward empathy. The next big step, one that humans and few other species have made, is to recognize when others are treated poorly, and to address that inequality: give your grape to the individual getting only cucumber. That requires empathy.

Why is this important? Because conspicuous inequality undermines social harmony. Giving that grape to the disadvantaged individual promotes long-term co-operation. Why? Because a social relationship with perpetual inequality cannot last. It’s in your best interest to share.

Conspicuous inequality in society fosters jealousy, resentment and violence. Egalitarianism in the small, mobile, ancestral human societies was maintained by punishing the selfish. Anthropologists such as Christopher Boehm tell us that those who did not play fair paid a heavy price: they were mocked, ostracized, and at the extreme, even killed.

In modern human societies, greater inequality is linked directly to greater levels of violent crime. A lack of empathy allows the psychopath to exploit others remorselessly. But it comes at a cost. The strong can exploit the weak, but only if they live in fortresses protected by high walls and are surrounded by a phalanx of armed guards.

It is human empathy that is the great stabilizing societal force: recognizing when others are in need, and acting accordingly. Societies based on greater sharing are far more peaceable. Abandon empathy, offend the sense of fairness, and society pays the price.

So when conservatives choose policies that foster inequality, they are choosing more violent societies.

Musk is quite wrong. Empathy is not a weakness. It is the essence of what makes us human.

Scott Forbes is an ecologist at the University of Winnipeg.