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.
Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
51–60 of 80 posts
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#52Ammon 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.
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 manipulatio…
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.
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
How does this explain Europe, which was the most frequently and destructively violent place in the world for hundreds of years until fairly recently?
"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.
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#54What 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…
And we should all pretend that the internet resolves conflicts at any level? I think the widescale lack of communicating without empathizing pheromones is quite obviously making a shitstorm of the whole wide world. But keep culting with your bad self.
> And we should all pretend that the internet resolves conflicts at any level?
A lot of people believe so and unfortunately some policy-makers as well. I thought the book https://www.amazon.com/Net-Delusion-Dark-Internet-Freedom/dp... made a good argument against cyber-utopianism.
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#55I 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.
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#56What 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…
>What is important is maintaining the institutions that have been wildly successful in mediating conflict between diverse groups...
Trust is what maintains societal institutions. Trust in the institutions. Unfortunately, trust has been eroded significantly all around the world. I suspect that this erosion was intentional, the result of highly effective propaganda campaigns being waged by different governments against each other. Ironically, these campaigns are so effective at eroding trust because of the efficiencies that our technological advances have contributed to their prosecution.
Personally, I'm not sanguine that trust will return. Couple these professional manipulation campaigns with the very real degradation of professionalism within many societal institutions and you can see the very clear challenges ahead. Without trust, you just can't get there. And in the face of these manipulation campaigns, without professionalism, you'll be challenged to get any level trust back.
It's just too easy right now for these campaigns to point out the lack of professionalism. (BTW, we should be shining a light on corruption etc. I'm just pointing out what I see as a problem with building trust.)
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I’ve seen some light criticism that there appears to be no black traders which would exist in those times, and that the characters are uniformly white while Slavic skin color is actually a range between pale and olive. Having been born and raised in a slavic country, I don't think I've seen a black person for the first 15 years of my life, except on TV. In a city with far more people than anything included in the W…
Well, there was this whole geopolitical fluffup throughout the twentieth century....
And there is evidence there were significantly more black people in slavic countries before that? Taking the example of Yugoslavia, this doesn't seem to be the case [1]. We're just assuming diversity, while demanding proof of homogeneity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Yugoslavia#Demograp...
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#58What 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…
> What is important is maintaining the institutions that have been wildly successful in mediating conflict between diverse groups... Trust is what maintains societal institutions. Trust in the institutions. Unfortunately, trust has been eroded significantly all around the world. I suspect that this erosion was intentional, the result of highly effective propaganda campaigns being waged by different governments agains…
Excellent point. I find it notable that in spite of the trend you cite those who are empowered by the faltering institutions seem to feel no urgency to regain (or re-earn) trust.
Maybe this is the result of years of such institutions attracting those who simply wish to wield authority and gradually replacing the culture of earned authority with one of opportunistic, or “sold” authority.
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#59I 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.
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does this explain Europe, which was the most frequently and destructively violent place in the world for hundreds of years until fairly recently?
"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.
I think that’s true if you look at a broader range of history, but if you look at the couple of centuries up through 1945, I don’t buy it. What other region during that period had something to rival the Napoleonic wars, the World Wars, and all the other European wars of that period? It’s difficult enough to find one conflict to rival either World War (the Taiping Rebellion comes to mind, and the Asian side of the Second World War, but that’s it), let alone enough wars in the same area to match the whole period.
I am happy to be educated if I’m wrong, though!