I’ve heard a lot of talk about empathy the last couple days. “I wear a mask out of empathy for others.” “Key word: Empathy.” One of the people who tried to tattletale on me to my company for wrongthink even used the word.
But I’m not sure that word describes the behavior people think it does. For example, if you do not believe outdoor transmission of COVID is a concern, yet you wear your mask outside because you want fearful people to feel comfortable, you are not being empathetic. If you were being empathetic you’d relate to and connect with the irrational fear they obviously need to get over while setting an example by showing you are over it yourself. Empathy is connecting and relating to their feelings, not protecting them from discomfort.
Empathy for others might lead to you to care a great deal about their actual health. It almost certainly will not lead you to comply with arbitrary rules so that you don’t offend or bother anyone. People in large part do what they’re incentivized to do — if your tribe deems you a good person for wearing a mask, you wear the mask. If your tribe deems you a coward for wearing a mask, you don’t wear it, often irrespective of real world risk or scientific basis. As Charlie Munger said, “Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcome.” Most people who like to throw around the word empathy are not actually being empathetic but rather behaving via incentives in their particular social, professional or tribal circles, and they use feel-good words like “empathy” to justify their own incentive-driven behavior.
Empathy is a rare emotion that can short-circuit this conditioned carrot-and-stick way of behaving. If you can connect with and feel what someone from another tribe is expressing, maybe you’ll learn from him, even adopt some of his positions, perhaps to your social/professional detriment. You might be incentivized to fall in line, but your empathy — your ability to connect with other humans — overpowers the impulse to believe only that which enhances your tribal status. That people can feel empathy is a cause for hope that maybe we can overcome the current climate of hate, suspicion and intolerance of dissent.
But using the word “empathy” to justify your own tribal behavior is meaningless toward this end, and those whose beliefs are optimized for status within their own circles, tend, in my experience, to exhibit the least of it.
"If you can connect with and feel what someone from another tribe is expressing, maybe you’ll learn from him, even adopt some of his positions" there are few these days who actually try to pursue other factions to find that common ground. The past has shown us that people who are willing and able to bridge this divide (MLK, Malcolm X, etc.) are the primary threat to those in power. It is disturbing to see the left and right use either BLM or the "coup attempt" to push totalitarian policies whether it be expanded surveillance or an expanded police state. Extremely short sighted.