The erosion of empathy
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Empathy, the ability to feel and see another’s suffering, not just through understanding what they are going through but by being able to put themselves in another’s shoes, is on the decline.
Elon Musk said that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” The late Charlie Kirk stated that, “I can’t stand empathy, it is a made-up new age term that does a lot of damage.”
Traditionally the perception has been that empathy lends itself to strategic thinking, bringing people together and creating strong connections. Not so for Kirk and Musk. They prefer the term compassion. Compassion is supposed to be a natural next step beyond empathy, recognizing a person’s pain and involving the desire to alleviate suffering and to provide helpful action.
What that helpful action should be is open to debate.
For Musk, if the person was a federal government employee who worked to provide food and medical aid to foreign countries, it encompassed laying off the employee and stopping the aid to these countries.
If you were a transgender person, Kirk’s thinking was that it would help if you got “brain treatment.”
U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his compassion for Americans by rounding up illegal immigrants working in low-paying jobs and sending them back to their native countries.
Clearly these individuals lacked empathy and compassion. What they might have felt would be more akin to sympathy.
Sympathy involves feeling sorry for someone. As such it drives disconnections. It is based on emotional versus rational thought and manifests itself in self-righteousness and good intentions.
A physician once told me that he would not discuss the excruciating pain that I was experiencing because it was Sunday and, on Sundays, he did not deal with what he considered to be a chronic problem. When I complained about his refusal to treat me, he said, “I am sorry you felt like I did not provide a good service for you.”
The emotional basis of sympathy, however, is deceptively appealing to people. When you feel sorry for someone it can lead to a feeling of superiority and the suspension of critical thought. How often, for example, are letters to the editor submitted expressing sympathy for someone or something when in reality these letters represent nothing more than virtue signalling?
Sympathy is a powerful and potentially dangerous emotion because it can often involve flawed moral judgments. In a recent article in the Free Press about homelessness, a woman expressed frustration with homeless organizations for “adopting a holier-than-thou attitude.”
But that is what we are increasingly seeing in American and Canadian politics: the erosion of our capacity for reflection in favour of the certainty of moral judgments. Moral anger and concomitantly “angertainment” are now driving forces in the media and how we function as a society.
Moral righteousness is addictive and destructive. Moral superiority imbues people with the feeling that God is on their side. While campaigning with Trump, Kirk stated that, “Democrats stand for everything God hates.”
It leads to a polarized political system that creates targets of hate and us versus them thinking. When you think that you are good and everyone else is evil you can rationalize attacking and devastating your enemies.
Contrary to what Musk and others think, we need empathy now more than ever. A lack of empathy historically has led to the subjugation and dehumanization of large groups of people. Empathy arises when people recognize the importance of being human, humble and flexible. Moral certainty is an illusion.
We need leaders who are not blinded by the politics of exclusion, division and hatred that now characterize our discourse. We want politicians who are not driven by self-righteous indignation, arrogance, and prejudice.
Let us work together to find the forces that can unite us and create a society that works for everyone.
Mac Horsburgh writes from Winnipeg where issues of social justice prey on his mind.