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.
Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
61–70 of 80 posts
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#62What 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…
> Empathy does not resolve genuine disagreements.
Empathy enables compromise.
Many disputes cannot be resolved to the full satisfaction of all parties, short of spawning a parallel universe for each sentient.
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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 Sec…
Taiping and pacific theater were influenced by western thought.
Taiping was led by a religious Jesus inspired fanatic. Japan was just copying Germany.
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#64Almost 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?
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Accepting the results of mediating instructions doesn’t require empathy, it requires a deference to rules-based process and a commitment to be bound. To use the US as an example, our social empathy has never been higher, whereas our commitment to mediating institutions is at historic lows. (Especially to the highly empathetic left, our mediating institutions have become mere means to ends.)
To the left's chagrin, the rightists have mostly come around to this way of thinking as well. All is not lost. We can always replace old institutions with newer ones. Previously we got the news from large news-media firms. Now we know that we should ignore those firms if the topic is of any interest to the military-industrial complex. There are now independent journalists on youtube etc. to show us e.g. that there is…
> We can always replace old institutions with newer ones.
Can you? We’ve become a country of factions and echo chambers, and our new “institutions” (Facebook, YouTube journalists, podcasters) reflect that. Institutions are easy to tear down, hard to rebuild.
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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.
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#67What 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.
> I think the widescale lack of communicating without empathizing pheromones is quite obviously making a shitstorm of the whole wide world.
I rather believe that deep empathy for your own groups is the cause of many shitstorms. To quote from the article:
"For example, we often think of terrorists as shockingly blind to the suffering of innocents. But Breithaupt and other researchers think of them as classic examples of people afflicted with an "excess of empathy. They feel the suffering of their people.""
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The silver lining of this cloud is that it acts as a selection force on institutions, too: If people are harder to pacify, institutions have to step up their game and deliver, or failing that, market themselves better. And that parallels a broad trend that's been in place since antiquity: building sustainable institutions instead of succumbing to warlords and despots. Legal codes, religious orders, and so forth have built up a vast underlying structure to face the ordinary challenges of humanity at its worst. There's nothing to suggest that that trend ends because we have some new gadgets.
But it takes place as a reaction, a series of rapid cultural changes. I would say that we had such a shift take place post-2008: besides the economy, the smartphone era took off and everyone since then has contended with a new status quo of limited privacy, temporary status, broad-not-deep social networks, and a constant background noise of gossip and scandal. Have we gotten better at navigating this world since 2008? Absolutely, I would say. In the first four-to-five years we had a whole bunch of theories about a massively connected world get tested in reality, culminating in stories such as Anonymous, Wikileaks, Arab Spring, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and Gamergate. The years since then have seen various reactions to those stories play out as one major figure after another gets embroiled in scandal.
Even if this is fostered by state actors, the overall effect is one of "boiling down" institutions to their basic premise, where they are easier to challenge, as the arrangements that locked them in before get severed.
And I think the public recognizes that to some degree - the low empathy comes in combination with a renewed interest in a private approach to philosophy, rather than a collective one - a sense that existing institutions fundamentally don't have the right answers and something has to be done. We're merely acting in accordance with the times.
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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…
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.
You're entering dangerous territory here. It's not a well-accepted fact that empathy is something you can choose to extend to everyone. On the contrary, there's ample evidence to suggest that we cannot extend it to everyone [1]. To then ascribe moral character to a function which is biologically limited is to run afoul of the ethical principle that ought implies can [2].
Re: Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society
#70What 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, and that all the different tribes of a society make an effort to accept that institutions are more fair and reasonable than the alternatives.
Dred Scot Vs. Sandford
Plessy vs Fergusson
In short we can not agree that institutions have mediated anything, nor that they are even remotely fair.
Sometimes, quite often actually, no real compromise is possible, unless you consider half a glass of poison and half a glass of water is an acceptable compromise between drinking a glass of water and a glass of poison.
The reason for the current issues in the US is that the various groups have now discovered that no, they can't live and let live.