11 ms·

Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society

93 points by laurex 8y ago

nostrademons 8y ago
It seems like the type of empathy taught in the 1970s had a very specific purpose: prevent the world they knew from going up in flames through nuclear war. And the type of tribal empathy people show together has the same purpose: prevent their world (in the form of values, customs, traditions, and other things they hold sacred) from going up in flames through inaction and the erosion of others not holding those believes. It makes me wonder how much empathy is coupled with fear. I've read that the post-WW2 unionized capitalism, the Marshall plan, all of the egalitarian civil society built up in the 50s and beyond was supported by the capitalist elite because just about everything was viewed as superior to the devastation of WW2. People were willing to sacrifice some of their personal wealth because the alternative was losing all of it, and oftentimes their lives as well. Memories of war have faded from most of the developed world. Perhaps it'll take a refresher before people remember why all of those institutions that preserve social stability were necessary in the first place.
debatem1 8y ago
Seems like a call for what used to be called enlightened self interest-- the knowledge that "there but for the grace of God go I, or any man" can also be read as a call for a less punishing, more compassionate way of life.
b0rsuk 8y ago
Tribal instincts are super strong, that's been proven over and over again [citation needed]. I'm afraid long-term empathy for the sake of Other can't work. It only seems to work when people still remember major disasters and wars. It's inevitable these fade away, isn't it? (except for very, very long term, when evolution and/or genetic engineering might change this) In my country anti-Muslim sentiment is strong, made stronger by the government and its alliance with the church. When I see people get carried away, I often recommend them to learn more about Muslims to "know your enemy better". It's a trick and I think we need further studies to see if it's more likely to backfire (people hit another group they perceive as enemy much harder because they now know their weaknesses) or work towards peace and cooperation. (I'm not a fan of any religion myself, as for Islam my main beef is it doesn't distinguish between the religion and the secular state. It can therefore be called a form of totalitarianism)
- speedplane 8y ago
  > Tribal instincts are super strong, that's been proven over and over again Tribal instincts aren't as strong as you think. Every civil and egalitarian right that people have gained since the enlightenment are the result of overcoming tribal instincts. The definition of a "tribe" is more often than not mostly a social construct. If society can set it up, it can tear it down.
  - fromthestart 8y ago
    Tribal politics affect every social interaction. Family tribe, social tribe, political tribe, all of these subconscious imprints play a role in how we interact (or don't interact) with other people. I would argue that they are not only human nature, but they are emergent from a set of baser tendencies necessary for self preservation in a reality which is resource and time scarce reality. Tribal instincts will exist so long as individual compete. That goes for social status too.
    - speedplane 8y ago
      > Tribal politics affect every social interaction. You're broadening your definition of tribal instincts to encompass all of society. Sure, people make teams based on shared social values, but those aren't really tribes in the traditional sense, i.e., you look like me and/or reside near me, therefore I will team up with you. Under your broader definition, a "tribe" can be anything. It could even emerge based on shared social values of egalitarianism, which directly contradict the more traditional notion of a tribe.
      - Reelin 8y ago
        I think you are confusing tribal instincts (ie thought patterns and emotional drives) with tribal entities (ie the emergence and labeling of tribes themselves). A given instinct (ie predisposed thought pattern or behavioral tendency) potentially applies to everything we do. In particular, our tribal instincts don't suddenly stop affecting us just because we're interacting with something that doesn't resemble a traditional tribe.
devoply 8y ago
Or just not caring is a step up from hating. Having no opinions is better than having hate. What seems to have happened in America is that the blue collar working class has become disenfranchised both economically and before Trump politically because of business decisions made by the executive class and they want someone to blame. Nobody forced America to move all of its blue collar jobs to China and the 3rd world, that was a political decision. Though you can make up reasons of why it's economically impossible now to compete with 3rd world manufacturing these are post-hoc arguments. Before the fact it was perfectly possible to continue to manufacture goods in the US by moving manufacturing to poorer states and innovating as much as possible to keep the costs down. The wealthy in America have no empathy for the poor and the poor hate on the immigrants while not correctly assigning the blame for their economic woes. Going forward with this whole basic income idea, it's likely the executive class will try to turn it into a work for food and housing program. Where you can get a basic income but you have to work for it at jobs the companies don't really need to employ for but are simply offering to increase employment in return for a basic income check. That will offset any amount that the companies pays for basic income taxes.
im3w1l 8y ago
If I show you a kindness, will you reciprocate, do nothing or try to extract more?
- speedplane 8y ago
  > If I show you a kindness, will you reciprocate, do nothing or try to extract more? Showing kindness is not enough. Kindness has to be taught, and baked into our social norms for it to work. If it is, then yes, people will reciprocate.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  If you give a person kindness and they are not able to reciprocate, is it selfish of you to expect such a thing? What if a person needs kindness more than once? A broken arm or leg, for example? Is a single kindness enough?
fromthestart 8y ago
>young people on average measure 40 percent less empathetic than my own generation — 40 percent! Meaningless without context.
muah-dihb 8y ago
This is actually a key mechanism for what's wrong, socially, with pretty much everything these days. It fits right in with the concept of The Long Tail. We get to selectively apply our preferences now, for our unique musical tastes to hear any artist, and thus only those we like; an infinite choice of movies, and thus never the fixed schedules of centralized broadcasts; we can binge on an entire series in a weekend, commercial free, viewing dozens of hours, watching itall in one sitting; browse unlimited archives of text, applying search appliances to a corpus of text, to randomly access select passages ona whim, in ways notpossible with a conventional library of physical volumes. So too, now, we apply this tendency to the company we keep. We ghost people. We provide votes to rank performance, and perform to score points in a virtualized hypertext context (it's not really a community, it's just web pages still, despite all you may know about interaction, javascript, live video streams, chat, texts, telecommunications and telepresence, social media profiles, blogs, photo sharing... even AR and VR, and second life type avatars... it's all actually still pretty primitive with leaky abstractions everywhere, to be quite honest). Dating random people has exploded in ways not possible with classified ad sections in print media, or even dating services that played match maker, decades ago. So it's this impulsive, push-button tendency toward instant gratification, creeping in atthe edges of every facet society. The combinatorial explosion of random access awareness to everything we can expose ourselves to, limited only by the pace we set for ourselves. Far from sheltered in an informational sense, now armed with a much broader context of understanding, determined by whichever choices are fortuitous enough to present themselves to us in an endless chain of relational links or rungs we climb, as we negotiate a landscape of media consumption to learn and inform ourselves. With this awareness, we build the context to pass further judgement, stored in a buffer of medium-term memory, like driving at night, with the high beams on, following road signs, but only ever being led to fast food pit stops, big box stores and gas stations, and hotels. Never a home to reside in. No family to speak of, just strangers on the street, it seems. So that buffer of medium-term memory dictates which peers receive love, who gets the ranking votes, why we buy junk food from this gas station, but not the other. It's not going away. It can't be simply destroyed and directly eliminated. The void left behind will force something to regrow in its place. This way of life is here to stay. It's going to harden and calcify in this disposition, unless we find a new way; a replacement to unseat it. To fix the broken parts. A way forward.
lpu4o74p 8y ago
Maybe Civil Society's empathy was exploited a bit too much, a bit too brazenly. If that's the reason, insisting the show must go on won't get you much empathy.
soniman 8y ago
Ammon Bundy is the example they use? Ammon Bundy supports migrants because he's a rancher and wants cheap labor on his ranch. He wants taxpayers to bear the cost so he can privately profit. That's why people are suspicious about "empathy," it's usually a way of manipulating your emotions so that other people can profit.
- TimTheTinker 8y ago
  Wow, skeptical comments like this strongly reinforce the article's point. To question whether empathy is helpful and suspect the motives of those who are promoting it? Ammon Bundy is a fellow human being with struggles of his own - isn't that enough? It doesn't mean you have to agree with his choices (you can even call them morally wrong). Empathy is merely a concern for fellow human beings, not emotional manipulation, despite the fact that some people attempt to manipulate others.
  - chongli 8y ago
    Empathy is a concern for some fellow human beings, not all. I think you'll find that most people draw the lines of empathy around the identity group to which they belong and exclude from empathy those their group has identified as the "other." Empathy is an evolutionary tool for promoting group cohesiveness. It's not likely to extend to all human beings, unless we make contact with a hostile alien civilization.
    - TimTheTinker 8y ago
      > Empathy is a concern for some fellow human beings, not all. > Empathy is an evolutionary tool for promoting group cohesiveness. Empathy is an emotional attitude we can choose to extend to others. The fact that some people don't feel empathy towards everyone else doesn't mean that's morally right. Evolution has nothing to do with our moral choices, and it's no excuse either. Extending kindness and dignity to others is far more effective at creating social good than hoping (or waiting until) aliens show up. If you insist on a pure-naturalistic philosophy (which I do not, but hear me out), consider human society as an emergent property with attributes of its own that are irreducible to natural (or evolutionary, or whatever) causes. As long as we can choose the right as individuals, we carry a moral obligation to do so.
frolig 8y ago
The pot calling the kettle black, rubbing it in with a dictionary description spun into a book. How humiliating to have spent time here.
patrickg_zill 8y ago
After abusing the great majority of people in the US for the last 50 years both economically and socially, the elite are now surprised by the fact that some of the people have noticed.
- doktrin 8y ago
  If you're implying that abuse by elites is some new phenomenon within the last 50 years I completely disagree. In fact social inequality has probably been more favorable and egalitarian during the last 50 years than basically any other time in human history, and US history. There's always room for improvement, but it's worth remembering how far we've actually come.
  - jhbadger 8y ago
    I think a lot of the argument over whether "things are getting better" as Pinker et al. claim and "things are getting worse" as Piketty et al. claim is the time scale involved. (Nearly) everybody agrees that we are living in a better world than existed before WWII. The question is are we continuing to get more egalitarian or have things begun to regress.
Proven 8y ago
It's not selective empathy that chips at "the society" (actually at individuals - the article makes the same generalist assumption - by "averaging" empathy they average the same way that Bundy's followers did), but the State. Why should I cultivate empathy or make an effort to show it when the State entirely monopolized it? Sure, I have empathy for family and friends but beyond that I know that its all driven by statist "policies" that run on stolen taxpayer money, so screw the State and screw virtue signaling. Stop stealing and telling me what to do, and then when it's up to me I may start paying more attention. By the way note that the so called empathy displayed on FB is merely virtue signaling - all it takes is a Like, there's no effort or anything else beyond that empty gesture. If anything happens after that (very unlikely), it comes at practically no cost to the signaller, whether it's in effort, money or time.
thinkingemote 8y ago
I'm not sure about the statement that people have less empathy these days. I'm also skeptical when people say this or that group has low empathy. Rather I think all humans have a store of active empathy which they can spend or allocate in different ways. most common is empathy to family and close friends and then to the neighborhood. Active empathy is where empathising does something. That some groups of people seem to show lack of empathy could be a sign that the observer should empathize more with that group to locate where and how their active empathy is. Empathy is neutral too. The worst "monsters" of nazi regimes were often fuelled by empathy.
roenxi 8y ago
What about the hypothesis that focusing on empathy is the problem, rather than its application the cure? Gloomy as it is to say, technological superiority has been very comfortable but doesn't offer any new way of tackling the fact that humans are basically the same as they have been for the last millennium; large groups of people who simply are not going to agree with each other. What is important is maintaining the institutions that have been wildly successful in mediating conflict between diverse groups, and that all the different tribes of a society make an effort to accept that institutions are more fair and reasonable than the alternatives. Empathy does not resolve genuine disagreements. If it solves a problem, the problem was one of perception rather than reality.
- 0815test 8y ago
  > What is important is maintaining the institutions that have been wildly successful in mediating conflict between diverse groups This is indeed very important, but "empathy", while not such an institution, is a baseline cultural requirement to make these institutions feasible and sustainable in the longer run. There's not much ambiguity here; intensely tribal, closed and corrupt societies do a lot worse at managing conflicts (e.g. consider the Middle East, and why violent conflicts flare up so often there), not just empathy.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    How does this explain Europe, which was the most frequently and destructively violent place in the world for hundreds of years until fairly recently?
    - 0815test 8y ago
      "Most frequently and destructively violent" seems like European exceptionalism to me. Yes there's been lots of wars in Europe, but it's not like other parts of the world have been free of conflict, it's just that us Western folks don't know as much about them.
      - 8y ago
neilv 8y ago
One other possible dotcom connection, to the alleged decline in empathy... Before the initial IPO gold rush, there seemed to be relatively more thoughtfulness and altruisim among CS people, about futures of this technology. Then the norm became CS students (and sometimes professors) talking like MBA students (who, previously, were very different, and complementary). Talk of futures became simplistic, self-focused, and self-promoting, and often seemed disingenuous. If we look at the way social media works today, one interpretation is that some dotcom founders have remade the world in their image.
sitkack 8y ago
Random acts of kindness was a popular phrase when I was a teen. It always struck me as a motto for a psychopath, see someone in need, roll a die, and then act. I know that wasn’t the intent. But it should have been, strive for more kindness. But it is ieasier for folks to act once and feel better than to change their median behavior. It seems like one time changes don’t move the average, that behavior is conserved and we do worse things at other times but our ego masks any sort of self reflection.
itronitron 8y ago
I think teaching empathy in schools is problematic, because students will see through the bullshit of being graded by any teacher who is encouraging them to be empathetic and attribute that BS to empathy as a concept.
Aloha 8y ago
I would argue that failure to presume good faith does more to harm civil society than a lack of empathy. Perhaps presumption of good faith is a form of empathy - but I don't need to empathize with someones point of view to presume they have their own very good reasons, and are trying to advance the argument fairly.
ineedasername 8y ago
The article very much seems to reverse cause and effect. It cites numerous examples of selective empathy or lack of empathy coinciding with the erosion of civil society, but never clearly explains how that empathy element caused the issue. Instead, it seems much more likely that our hyper partisan devolution into more segments and tribal in groups and outgroups is itself that erosion in civil society and lack of empathy or such that is only reserved for your in group is a symptom, an effect rather than the cause.
Razengan 8y ago
Almost 10,000 years of civilization and we’re still trying to figure ourselves out. Why is it so hard to codify “Don’t be a dick”? Because then what do you do about someone who is being a dick? But what if they just were being a dick to someone who was being a dick?! Who decides what counts as being a dick? What if they are dicks?
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> By 2009, on all the standard measures, Konrath found, young people on average measure 40 percent less empathetic than my own generation — 40 percent! I apologise in advance to folks in the humanities for my skepticism, but when you're quantifying something like "empathy" which is not well defined and canot be measured directly, then a quantitative difference on its own doesn't mean much. That 40% shift may be because the questionnaire itself changed over time, or because it didn't change enough with the times, or any other factor that is has nothing to do with the actual "empathy" of the subjects. Edit: I was once given a personality test by a psychologist [for reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose, like]. One of the questions was along the lines of "a holy man can heal a patient by laying on hands: true or false?". At the time, I had no idea what that even meant. "Laying on hands"? What, like a D&D Paladin? Years later I learned that some evangelical sects in the US practice this as some kind of prayer or ritual. The personality test I took was most likely drafted originally in the US and there were many more questions that I found very confusing, like that one. So, if I had no idea what many of the questions meant, what exactly was that questionnaire supposed to be measuring? Yet I believe it was some standardised psychological test given to people around the globe.

93 points by laurex 8y ago

It seems like the type of empathy taught in the 1970s had a very specific purpose: prevent the world they knew from going up in flames through nuclear war. And the type of tribal empathy people show together has the same purpose: prevent their world (in the form of values, customs, traditions, and other things they hold sacred) from going up in flames through inaction and the erosion of others not holding those believes. It makes me wonder how much empathy is coupled with fear. I've read that the post-WW2 unionized capitalism, the Marshall plan, all of the egalitarian civil society built up in the 50s and beyond was supported by the capitalist elite because just about everything was viewed as superior to the devastation of WW2. People were willing to sacrifice some of their personal wealth because the alternative was losing all of it, and oftentimes their lives as well. Memories of war have faded from most of the developed world. Perhaps it'll take a refresher before people remember why all of those institutions that preserve social stability were necessary in the first place.

debatem1 8y ago

Seems like a call for what used to be called enlightened self interest-- the knowledge that "there but for the grace of God go I, or any man" can also be read as a call for a less punishing, more compassionate way of life.

b0rsuk 8y ago

Tribal instincts are super strong, that's been proven over and over again [citation needed]. I'm afraid long-term empathy for the sake of Other can't work. It only seems to work when people still remember major disasters and wars. It's inevitable these fade away, isn't it? (except for very, very long term, when evolution and/or genetic engineering might change this) In my country anti-Muslim sentiment is strong, made stronger by the government and its alliance with the church. When I see people get carried away, I often recommend them to learn more about Muslims to "know your enemy better". It's a trick and I think we need further studies to see if it's more likely to backfire (people hit another group they perceive as enemy much harder because they now know their weaknesses) or work towards peace and cooperation. (I'm not a fan of any religion myself, as for Islam my main beef is it doesn't distinguish between the religion and the secular state. It can therefore be called a form of totalitarianism)

speedplane 8y ago
> Tribal instincts are super strong, that's been proven over and over again Tribal instincts aren't as strong as you think. Every civil and egalitarian right that people have gained since the enlightenment are the result of overcoming tribal instincts. The definition of a "tribe" is more often than not mostly a social construct. If society can set it up, it can tear it down.
- fromthestart 8y ago
  Tribal politics affect every social interaction. Family tribe, social tribe, political tribe, all of these subconscious imprints play a role in how we interact (or don't interact) with other people. I would argue that they are not only human nature, but they are emergent from a set of baser tendencies necessary for self preservation in a reality which is resource and time scarce reality. Tribal instincts will exist so long as individual compete. That goes for social status too.
  - speedplane 8y ago
    > Tribal politics affect every social interaction. You're broadening your definition of tribal instincts to encompass all of society. Sure, people make teams based on shared social values, but those aren't really tribes in the traditional sense, i.e., you look like me and/or reside near me, therefore I will team up with you. Under your broader definition, a "tribe" can be anything. It could even emerge based on shared social values of egalitarianism, which directly contradict the more traditional notion of a tribe.
    - Reelin 8y ago
      I think you are confusing tribal instincts (ie thought patterns and emotional drives) with tribal entities (ie the emergence and labeling of tribes themselves). A given instinct (ie predisposed thought pattern or behavioral tendency) potentially applies to everything we do. In particular, our tribal instincts don't suddenly stop affecting us just because we're interacting with something that doesn't resemble a traditional tribe.

devoply 8y ago

Or just not caring is a step up from hating. Having no opinions is better than having hate. What seems to have happened in America is that the blue collar working class has become disenfranchised both economically and before Trump politically because of business decisions made by the executive class and they want someone to blame. Nobody forced America to move all of its blue collar jobs to China and the 3rd world, that was a political decision. Though you can make up reasons of why it's economically impossible now to compete with 3rd world manufacturing these are post-hoc arguments. Before the fact it was perfectly possible to continue to manufacture goods in the US by moving manufacturing to poorer states and innovating as much as possible to keep the costs down. The wealthy in America have no empathy for the poor and the poor hate on the immigrants while not correctly assigning the blame for their economic woes. Going forward with this whole basic income idea, it's likely the executive class will try to turn it into a work for food and housing program. Where you can get a basic income but you have to work for it at jobs the companies don't really need to employ for but are simply offering to increase employment in return for a basic income check. That will offset any amount that the companies pays for basic income taxes.

im3w1l 8y ago

If I show you a kindness, will you reciprocate, do nothing or try to extract more?

speedplane 8y ago
> If I show you a kindness, will you reciprocate, do nothing or try to extract more? Showing kindness is not enough. Kindness has to be taught, and baked into our social norms for it to work. If it is, then yes, people will reciprocate.
Broken_Hippo 8y ago
If you give a person kindness and they are not able to reciprocate, is it selfish of you to expect such a thing? What if a person needs kindness more than once? A broken arm or leg, for example? Is a single kindness enough?

fromthestart 8y ago

>young people on average measure 40 percent less empathetic than my own generation — 40 percent! Meaningless without context.

muah-dihb 8y ago

This is actually a key mechanism for what's wrong, socially, with pretty much everything these days. It fits right in with the concept of The Long Tail. We get to selectively apply our preferences now, for our unique musical tastes to hear any artist, and thus only those we like; an infinite choice of movies, and thus never the fixed schedules of centralized broadcasts; we can binge on an entire series in a weekend, commercial free, viewing dozens of hours, watching itall in one sitting; browse unlimited archives of text, applying search appliances to a corpus of text, to randomly access select passages ona whim, in ways notpossible with a conventional library of physical volumes. So too, now, we apply this tendency to the company we keep. We ghost people. We provide votes to rank performance, and perform to score points in a virtualized hypertext context (it's not really a community, it's just web pages still, despite all you may know about interaction, javascript, live video streams, chat, texts, telecommunications and telepresence, social media profiles, blogs, photo sharing... even AR and VR, and second life type avatars... it's all actually still pretty primitive with leaky abstractions everywhere, to be quite honest). Dating random people has exploded in ways not possible with classified ad sections in print media, or even dating services that played match maker, decades ago. So it's this impulsive, push-button tendency toward instant gratification, creeping in atthe edges of every facet society. The combinatorial explosion of random access awareness to everything we can expose ourselves to, limited only by the pace we set for ourselves. Far from sheltered in an informational sense, now armed with a much broader context of understanding, determined by whichever choices are fortuitous enough to present themselves to us in an endless chain of relational links or rungs we climb, as we negotiate a landscape of media consumption to learn and inform ourselves. With this awareness, we build the context to pass further judgement, stored in a buffer of medium-term memory, like driving at night, with the high beams on, following road signs, but only ever being led to fast food pit stops, big box stores and gas stations, and hotels. Never a home to reside in. No family to speak of, just strangers on the street, it seems. So that buffer of medium-term memory dictates which peers receive love, who gets the ranking votes, why we buy junk food from this gas station, but not the other. It's not going away. It can't be simply destroyed and directly eliminated. The void left behind will force something to regrow in its place. This way of life is here to stay. It's going to harden and calcify in this disposition, unless we find a new way; a replacement to unseat it. To fix the broken parts. A way forward.

lpu4o74p 8y ago

Maybe Civil Society's empathy was exploited a bit too much, a bit too brazenly. If that's the reason, insisting the show must go on won't get you much empathy.

soniman 8y ago

Ammon Bundy is the example they use? Ammon Bundy supports migrants because he's a rancher and wants cheap labor on his ranch. He wants taxpayers to bear the cost so he can privately profit. That's why people are suspicious about "empathy," it's usually a way of manipulating your emotions so that other people can profit.

TimTheTinker 8y ago
Wow, skeptical comments like this strongly reinforce the article's point. To question whether empathy is helpful and suspect the motives of those who are promoting it? Ammon Bundy is a fellow human being with struggles of his own - isn't that enough? It doesn't mean you have to agree with his choices (you can even call them morally wrong). Empathy is merely a concern for fellow human beings, not emotional manipulation, despite the fact that some people attempt to manipulate others.
- chongli 8y ago
  Empathy is a concern for some fellow human beings, not all. I think you'll find that most people draw the lines of empathy around the identity group to which they belong and exclude from empathy those their group has identified as the "other." Empathy is an evolutionary tool for promoting group cohesiveness. It's not likely to extend to all human beings, unless we make contact with a hostile alien civilization.
  - TimTheTinker 8y ago
    > Empathy is a concern for some fellow human beings, not all. > Empathy is an evolutionary tool for promoting group cohesiveness. Empathy is an emotional attitude we can choose to extend to others. The fact that some people don't feel empathy towards everyone else doesn't mean that's morally right. Evolution has nothing to do with our moral choices, and it's no excuse either. Extending kindness and dignity to others is far more effective at creating social good than hoping (or waiting until) aliens show up. If you insist on a pure-naturalistic philosophy (which I do not, but hear me out), consider human society as an emergent property with attributes of its own that are irreducible to natural (or evolutionary, or whatever) causes. As long as we can choose the right as individuals, we carry a moral obligation to do so.

frolig 8y ago

The pot calling the kettle black, rubbing it in with a dictionary description spun into a book. How humiliating to have spent time here.

patrickg_zill 8y ago

After abusing the great majority of people in the US for the last 50 years both economically and socially, the elite are now surprised by the fact that some of the people have noticed.

doktrin 8y ago
If you're implying that abuse by elites is some new phenomenon within the last 50 years I completely disagree. In fact social inequality has probably been more favorable and egalitarian during the last 50 years than basically any other time in human history, and US history. There's always room for improvement, but it's worth remembering how far we've actually come.
- jhbadger 8y ago
  I think a lot of the argument over whether "things are getting better" as Pinker et al. claim and "things are getting worse" as Piketty et al. claim is the time scale involved. (Nearly) everybody agrees that we are living in a better world than existed before WWII. The question is are we continuing to get more egalitarian or have things begun to regress.

Proven 8y ago

It's not selective empathy that chips at "the society" (actually at individuals - the article makes the same generalist assumption - by "averaging" empathy they average the same way that Bundy's followers did), but the State. Why should I cultivate empathy or make an effort to show it when the State entirely monopolized it? Sure, I have empathy for family and friends but beyond that I know that its all driven by statist "policies" that run on stolen taxpayer money, so screw the State and screw virtue signaling. Stop stealing and telling me what to do, and then when it's up to me I may start paying more attention. By the way note that the so called empathy displayed on FB is merely virtue signaling - all it takes is a Like, there's no effort or anything else beyond that empty gesture. If anything happens after that (very unlikely), it comes at practically no cost to the signaller, whether it's in effort, money or time.

thinkingemote 8y ago

I'm not sure about the statement that people have less empathy these days. I'm also skeptical when people say this or that group has low empathy. Rather I think all humans have a store of active empathy which they can spend or allocate in different ways. most common is empathy to family and close friends and then to the neighborhood. Active empathy is where empathising does something. That some groups of people seem to show lack of empathy could be a sign that the observer should empathize more with that group to locate where and how their active empathy is. Empathy is neutral too. The worst "monsters" of nazi regimes were often fuelled by empathy.

roenxi 8y ago

What about the hypothesis that focusing on empathy is the problem, rather than its application the cure? Gloomy as it is to say, technological superiority has been very comfortable but doesn't offer any new way of tackling the fact that humans are basically the same as they have been for the last millennium; large groups of people who simply are not going to agree with each other. What is important is maintaining the institutions that have been wildly successful in mediating conflict between diverse groups, and that all the different tribes of a society make an effort to accept that institutions are more fair and reasonable than the alternatives. Empathy does not resolve genuine disagreements. If it solves a problem, the problem was one of perception rather than reality.

0815test 8y ago
> What is important is maintaining the institutions that have been wildly successful in mediating conflict between diverse groups This is indeed very important, but "empathy", while not such an institution, is a baseline cultural requirement to make these institutions feasible and sustainable in the longer run. There's not much ambiguity here; intensely tribal, closed and corrupt societies do a lot worse at managing conflicts (e.g. consider the Middle East, and why violent conflicts flare up so often there), not just empathy.
- mikeash 8y ago
  How does this explain Europe, which was the most frequently and destructively violent place in the world for hundreds of years until fairly recently?
  - 0815test 8y ago
    "Most frequently and destructively violent" seems like European exceptionalism to me. Yes there's been lots of wars in Europe, but it's not like other parts of the world have been free of conflict, it's just that us Western folks don't know as much about them.
    - 8y ago

neilv 8y ago

One other possible dotcom connection, to the alleged decline in empathy... Before the initial IPO gold rush, there seemed to be relatively more thoughtfulness and altruisim among CS people, about futures of this technology. Then the norm became CS students (and sometimes professors) talking like MBA students (who, previously, were very different, and complementary). Talk of futures became simplistic, self-focused, and self-promoting, and often seemed disingenuous. If we look at the way social media works today, one interpretation is that some dotcom founders have remade the world in their image.

sitkack 8y ago

Random acts of kindness was a popular phrase when I was a teen. It always struck me as a motto for a psychopath, see someone in need, roll a die, and then act. I know that wasn’t the intent. But it should have been, strive for more kindness. But it is ieasier for folks to act once and feel better than to change their median behavior. It seems like one time changes don’t move the average, that behavior is conserved and we do worse things at other times but our ego masks any sort of self reflection.

itronitron 8y ago

I think teaching empathy in schools is problematic, because students will see through the bullshit of being graded by any teacher who is encouraging them to be empathetic and attribute that BS to empathy as a concept.

Aloha 8y ago

I would argue that failure to presume good faith does more to harm civil society than a lack of empathy. Perhaps presumption of good faith is a form of empathy - but I don't need to empathize with someones point of view to presume they have their own very good reasons, and are trying to advance the argument fairly.

ineedasername 8y ago

The article very much seems to reverse cause and effect. It cites numerous examples of selective empathy or lack of empathy coinciding with the erosion of civil society, but never clearly explains how that empathy element caused the issue. Instead, it seems much more likely that our hyper partisan devolution into more segments and tribal in groups and outgroups is itself that erosion in civil society and lack of empathy or such that is only reserved for your in group is a symptom, an effect rather than the cause.

Razengan 8y ago

Almost 10,000 years of civilization and we’re still trying to figure ourselves out. Why is it so hard to codify “Don’t be a dick”? Because then what do you do about someone who is being a dick? But what if they just were being a dick to someone who was being a dick?! Who decides what counts as being a dick? What if they are dicks?

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

>> By 2009, on all the standard measures, Konrath found, young people on average measure 40 percent less empathetic than my own generation — 40 percent! I apologise in advance to folks in the humanities for my skepticism, but when you're quantifying something like "empathy" which is not well defined and canot be measured directly, then a quantitative difference on its own doesn't mean much. That 40% shift may be because the questionnaire itself changed over time, or because it didn't change enough with the times, or any other factor that is has nothing to do with the actual "empathy" of the subjects. Edit: I was once given a personality test by a psychologist [for reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose, like]. One of the questions was along the lines of "a holy man can heal a patient by laying on hands: true or false?". At the time, I had no idea what that even meant. "Laying on hands"? What, like a D&D Paladin? Years later I learned that some evangelical sects in the US practice this as some kind of prayer or ritual. The personality test I took was most likely drafted originally in the US and there were many more questions that I found very confusing, like that one. So, if I had no idea what many of the questions meant, what exactly was that questionnaire supposed to be measuring? Yet I believe it was some standardised psychological test given to people around the globe.