Powerful essay. We especially need more of this today: "Our ability to see the Other as ourselves. To see ourselves in one another. To understand and to believe and to know bonedeep that we all deserve self-determination, peace, and freedom." Being chronically online and being spoon fed information we lost our ability to think deeply and in more nuanced ways and empathize.
I personally don't subscribe to X (formerly known as Twitter) or have an Instagram account and have never felt a need to have them. Too many people seem to think these are important....they're not. And I think too many people rely on them as the purveyors of truth. Nothing can be further from the truth!!
The opening of this post reminded me of the Ride Gud episode that prompted the debate around Squeecore:
"There have been many, many response stories to The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. None of these stories are going to be remembered as long as Ursula Le Guin’s original story; and most of these responses are terrible because they just take it as a surface-level plot, going “I’d rescue the kid!”, and not saying, no, it’s the trolley problem, it’s not a Rubik’s cube; the purpose is it’s a philosophical question to make you think about who you are, and what your values are, and who you are in society. It’s not like, “oh, I’ll just, I’ll save the kid!” And also, you wouldn’t want to save the kid. You will not save the kid. I’m sorry. You’re not going to save the kid."
"They’re not pawns for you to score online points with."
This so much. I remember seeing live streams of George Floyd's funeral. All the people holding up their phones to record it. He was the same age as my brother when he died of cancer, so it infuriated me because I knew those people were claiming to see real people, but they were just getting in on the latest tragedy and use it for their own purposes. I felt so bad for his family having to endure that fiasco and was glad to learn they had a private funeral as well.
This is a thought-provoking essay. Having only just finished reading it, I need time to reflect on it and how its pieces fit together before I can reply in any meaningful way. In the meantime, I'm curious as to whether you've come across the psychologist Paul Bloom's theory that empathy is actually a limiting skill, something surprisingly analogous to news media in the way it inhibits our ability to think rationally. He posits compassion as a more useful alternative. Obviously this is not a popular theory, but I think it's one you might enjoy reading/thinking/writing about!
My response to this without diving deeper is that I wouldn't make a significant distinction between empathy and compassion. Compassion is part of empathy, at least to me.
As for rationality: I think we are fundamentally irrational creatures and too many people put too much emphasis on trying to be rational. In my experience, people's rational conclusions are almost always built from the conclusion derived from their emotional reaction.
With this as one key point, consistent with your summary: "If I have empathy toward you, it will be painful if you’re suffering. It will be exhausting. It will lead me to avoid you and avoid helping. But if I feel compassion for you, I’ll be invigorated ... and I’ll try to make your life better."
He also points to studies suggesting that, on balance, we have an impetus to feel empathy more towards people who are like us, and less towards those who are different, perhaps one part of empathy being a "limiting skill." And as well, that empathy tends to focus our attention on single individuals, as contrasted with larger number of people who might also be experiencing some pain or damage, and where a more expansive approach to an underlying problem could be more productive.
And there's this perspective, focused mostly on the distinctions between the current English language meanings of those two words, but also with the suggestion to "channel your feelings of empathy into compassionate acts."
Hm, I think saying that empathy leads to avoidance is a very strange. I'd be curious to see his research.
From reading this interview, he's using empathy in a very specific way (that I'd call unusual) and his goal seems targeted towards political decision making and rationality.
I don't find this particularly persuasive, but I'd have to look at the actual research to see how he's studied this distinction between compassion and empathy.
Thank you for this. I share your concern for the secondary/vicarious trauma that so many of us are inflicting on ourselves via doomscrolling social media and 24/7 news (much of which is prognostication). So many times we lose sight of our local context and the loved ones we should be paying to, due to the allure of watching destruction.
Powerful essay. We especially need more of this today: "Our ability to see the Other as ourselves. To see ourselves in one another. To understand and to believe and to know bonedeep that we all deserve self-determination, peace, and freedom." Being chronically online and being spoon fed information we lost our ability to think deeply and in more nuanced ways and empathize.
So very perfectly said. Kudos!!!
I personally don't subscribe to X (formerly known as Twitter) or have an Instagram account and have never felt a need to have them. Too many people seem to think these are important....they're not. And I think too many people rely on them as the purveyors of truth. Nothing can be further from the truth!!
The opening of this post reminded me of the Ride Gud episode that prompted the debate around Squeecore:
"There have been many, many response stories to The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. None of these stories are going to be remembered as long as Ursula Le Guin’s original story; and most of these responses are terrible because they just take it as a surface-level plot, going “I’d rescue the kid!”, and not saying, no, it’s the trolley problem, it’s not a Rubik’s cube; the purpose is it’s a philosophical question to make you think about who you are, and what your values are, and who you are in society. It’s not like, “oh, I’ll just, I’ll save the kid!” And also, you wouldn’t want to save the kid. You will not save the kid. I’m sorry. You’re not going to save the kid."
https://kittysneezes.com/squeecore-transcript/
Has anyone written a story with the premise "Omelas is good actually" ? (Because it is, and they should!)
"They’re not pawns for you to score online points with."
This so much. I remember seeing live streams of George Floyd's funeral. All the people holding up their phones to record it. He was the same age as my brother when he died of cancer, so it infuriated me because I knew those people were claiming to see real people, but they were just getting in on the latest tragedy and use it for their own purposes. I felt so bad for his family having to endure that fiasco and was glad to learn they had a private funeral as well.
This is a thought-provoking essay. Having only just finished reading it, I need time to reflect on it and how its pieces fit together before I can reply in any meaningful way. In the meantime, I'm curious as to whether you've come across the psychologist Paul Bloom's theory that empathy is actually a limiting skill, something surprisingly analogous to news media in the way it inhibits our ability to think rationally. He posits compassion as a more useful alternative. Obviously this is not a popular theory, but I think it's one you might enjoy reading/thinking/writing about!
Interesting!
My response to this without diving deeper is that I wouldn't make a significant distinction between empathy and compassion. Compassion is part of empathy, at least to me.
As for rationality: I think we are fundamentally irrational creatures and too many people put too much emphasis on trying to be rational. In my experience, people's rational conclusions are almost always built from the conclusion derived from their emotional reaction.
Thanks, Jayson!
Seeing this, as one presentation of Paul Bloom's theory?
https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/1/19/14266230/empathy-morality-ethics-psychology-compassion-paul-bloom
With this as one key point, consistent with your summary: "If I have empathy toward you, it will be painful if you’re suffering. It will be exhausting. It will lead me to avoid you and avoid helping. But if I feel compassion for you, I’ll be invigorated ... and I’ll try to make your life better."
He also points to studies suggesting that, on balance, we have an impetus to feel empathy more towards people who are like us, and less towards those who are different, perhaps one part of empathy being a "limiting skill." And as well, that empathy tends to focus our attention on single individuals, as contrasted with larger number of people who might also be experiencing some pain or damage, and where a more expansive approach to an underlying problem could be more productive.
And there's this perspective, focused mostly on the distinctions between the current English language meanings of those two words, but also with the suggestion to "channel your feelings of empathy into compassionate acts."
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/compassion-vs-empathy
Hm, I think saying that empathy leads to avoidance is a very strange. I'd be curious to see his research.
From reading this interview, he's using empathy in a very specific way (that I'd call unusual) and his goal seems targeted towards political decision making and rationality.
I don't find this particularly persuasive, but I'd have to look at the actual research to see how he's studied this distinction between compassion and empathy.
Thank you for this. I share your concern for the secondary/vicarious trauma that so many of us are inflicting on ourselves via doomscrolling social media and 24/7 news (much of which is prognostication). So many times we lose sight of our local context and the loved ones we should be paying to, due to the allure of watching destruction.