That's the last paragraph of "'Empathetically Correct' Is the New Politically Correct/The movement for 'trigger warnings' in college classrooms is part of a troubling trend toward protecting people from their own individual sensitivities," by Karen Swallow Prior in The Atlantic.
Prior links to this New Yorker article from last year by Paul Bloom called "The Baby in the Well/The Case Against Empathy." Excerpt:
A “politics of empathy” doesn’t provide much clarity in the public sphere, either. Typically, political disputes involve a disagreement over whom we should empathize with....AND: More discussion of the "gas chamber" quote… with a tattoo: here.
On many issues, empathy can pull us in the wrong direction. The outrage that comes from adopting the perspective of a victim can drive an appetite for retribution. (Think of those statutes named for dead children: Megan’s Law, Jessica’s Law, Caylee’s Law.) But the appetite for retribution is typically indifferent to long-term consequences....
Putting aside the extremes of psychopathy, there is no evidence to suggest that the less empathetic are morally worse than the rest of us. [In "The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty,"] Simon Baron-Cohen observes that some people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, though typically empathy-deficient, are highly moral, owing to a strong desire to follow rules and insure that they are applied fairly.
Where empathy really does matter is in our personal relationships. Nobody wants to live like Thomas Gradgrind—Charles Dickens’s caricature utilitarian, who treats all interactions, including those with his children, in explicitly economic terms. Empathy is what makes us human; it’s what makes us both subjects and objects of moral concern. Empathy betrays us only when we take it as a moral guide.
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45 comments:
Time for an 'empathy bullshit' tag?
First civility, now empathy, keep your eyes peeled for the next one.
It's out there.
Empathy is probably a chemical reaction and should be far less important in politics.
Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2012 Apr;37(4):576-80. doi:
10.1016/j.psyneuen.2011.07.018. Epub 2011 Aug 19.
Vasopressin selectively impairs emotion recognition in men.
Uzefovsky F(1), Shalev I, Israel S, Knafo A, Ebstein RP.
Author information:
(1)Psychology Department, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91501, Israel.
The biological mechanisms underlying empathy, the ability to recognize emotions
and to respond to them appropriately, are only recently becoming better
understood. This report focuses on the nonapeptide arginine-vasopressin (AVP),
which plays an important role in modulating social behavior in animals,
especially promoting aggressive behavior.
Oxytocin for women
Oxytocin, a naturally occurring neuropeptide, has been proven to increase compassion, empathy and other affiliative emotional responses. “It also increases attentional bias for rewarding social cues and has been found to enhance the attenuation of stress responses by social support,” said Rockliff. Therapeutic trends have increased the practice of compassion based therapies, such as Compassion Focused Imagery (CFI), and clinicians have suggested that oxytocin could enhance the treatment experience for people who struggle with empathy.
It's all chemistry.
Also, may I recommend 'Everything That Rises Must Converge?'
Timely with what you've been posting, Althouse.
If "defective" babies make it through the gauntlet of death and manage to be born, we then make them the stars of the Special Olympics.
So, the thought here begins with sentimentality and ends up with empathy. I think O'Connor has the better of it, though.
This sounds wrong: "Empathy is what makes us human; it’s what makes us both subjects and objects of moral concern. Empathy betrays us only when we take it as a moral guide."
Empathy is a wonderful thing generally -- the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and see the world through someone else's eyes. But the rest of that quote is basically fluff. It takes more than empathy (quite a bit more, as it turns out) to be "human." And empathy has nothing to do with what "makes us both subjects and objects of moral concern" -- even a self-centered creep is a subject and object of "moral concern." And it's not true that empathy necessarily "betrays us when we take it for a moral guide." To the contrary, if you are looking for any single attribute to serve in all situations as a "moral guide," you can be sure that there will be times when it will fail you. There is nothing special about empathy in that regard.
O'Connor the novelist had the sense not to fall in love with her own prose, to the point of letting the word-smithing substitute for critical thinking. The Yale professor, not so much.
I think that since she reviews all comments before allowing them to be posted here, Prof A should consider placing a trigger warning on some.
Looking at the statement "Empathy is what makes us human", shortly after the comment about "...some people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, though typically empathy-deficient, are highly moral..."
Did the author just say that some people with autism/Asperger's are not (fully) human?
Is that what the author meant to say?
This begs the question. Why do some cases inspire empathy and others pass without notice. Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, and Faulkner were all terrific writers but I think it's fair to say that they were all more empathetic to the sorrows of the dispossessed planter class than the miseries of Lowndes county sharecroppers......I have always wondered why the trail and execution of Sacco & Vanzetti caused so much outrage while the purposeful murder of so many millions in the Soviet Union passed without notice.
There should be one trigger warning only. Affixed to each college application and/or letter of acceptance should be this statement:
"The academic institution that you are about to enter and many of the classes it offers may contain content only suitable for adults. If you do not wish to be exposed to such material, please apply elsewhere."
If someone is so mentally/emotionally traumatized they cannot handle challenging, difficult, or frank material, they are not ready to enter college. I don't meant to have a lack of, uh, empathy for such persons, but the larger community should not be hobbled in its voluntary endeavors by the fragile emotional states of its minority of damaged members. They should seek therapy and enter college (or other challenging adult realms) only when they have sufficiently mastered their own traumas to be able to function without special considerations being made for them.
Empathy - the feeling that you understand and share another person's experiences and emotions
Whenever anyone presents themselves as having a lot of empathy, my working assumption is that they have a mood disorder. They are almost always empathetic to people who are unhappy, rather than those who are happy. I suspect that they are clinically depressed, recognize that those feelings do not match their objective circumstances, and therefor look for an outside cause for their feelings.
Forgiveness is a Christian ideal, not found in legalistic religions such as Islam.
Empathy is more of a hyper-forgiveness which seems to be violator's right to remain a highly favored human no matter what the rules say that he has violated. That is dangerous. That is recognizes an elite lawless class.
Foe example, our current Attorney General is empathetic to all lawlessness of Socialist elite insiders. That is as dangerous as it gets.
Without any external anchor in law, mores, or trusted guides — or any openness to being challenged in one’s thinking — empathy turned inward will lead each of us to our individual prisons of the self."
I really had a lot of trouble with the structure of that sentence. It took me three or four readings to make any sense of it at all. Then when I made sense of it it did not make any sense.
Robert Cook: ""The academic institution that you are about to enter and many of the classes it offers may contain content only suitable for adults. If you do not wish to be exposed to such material, please apply elsewhere."
LOL
We need a clause like that for every application for employment at universities as well since the leftist professoriate seems to have just as much trouble with "triggering" content as many students.
Trigger warning: Did a bible salesman steal your wooden leg?
Trigger warning: Did your grandmother get you lost in the woods and shot by a misfit?
Robert Cook,
I love it when I can agree fully with something you say!
Shouldn't there be a trigger warning for the term "trigger warning" to warn people who have been terrorized by guns?
Henry: Good Trigger Warnings Are Hard To Find.
Flannery O'Connor is some awesome shut man.
I always wish folks would quote Flannery O’Connor in full, but then they’d have to note that her entire world view was wrapped up in Christ. Anyway, here’s what O’Connor said about “tenderness” and gas chambers:
"It is tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.”
... the larger community should not be hobbled in its voluntary endeavors by the fragile emotional states of its minority of damaged members.
Exactly. Society can't cater to everyone's unique neurosis. To do so cripples society.
"Empathy is more of a hyper-forgiveness...."
It is no such thing. Empathy is merely the ability to understand how another person may be feeling or why he or she may behave as they do. Understanding does not presuppose or require forgiveness, though it does allow one to have compassion. But, even having compassion for someone who has done something terrible because of one's understanding of their circumstances does not automatically equate to forgiveness of the person's transgression(s).
There's nothing wrong with forgiveness. One may feel forgiveness for another's terrible deeds and still recognize the propriety and necessity that they be punished for their deeds.
Forgiveness is really for the one doing the forgiving, at least as much or more than for the one being forgiven. It is a letting go of one's anger or hatred for another that is poisonous to the one who holds it.
Lydia thank you for quoting one of the truly great, provocative, oft misunderstood and misquoted American writers. BTW "rife with warning label violence" ??? by the standards of today her stuff is tame.
Flannery O'Connor's stories would be pretty shocking to the tender racial sensibilities of modern readers. Who could get away with title like "The Artificial Nigger" today?
I have to agree with Cook's second post as well about empathy really being about understanding. No action, and certainly not forgiveness is linked to it, other than facial expression or polite words.
The part about forgiveness being "really for the one doing the forgiving, at least as much or more than for the one being forgiven" is truly Christian.
The only other point is that while forgiveness frees the one who holds the anger or hatred (absolutely!), it does free the other party to some degree. A double bind.
Too bad the Roy Rogers museum closed a few years ago, becaused it could have had the most awesome capital-T trigger warning ever: "'Trigger' warning: stuffed horse may cause oddly mixed feelings of horror and hilarity." They could have put the Buttermilk and Bullert warnings right next to it.
'There should be one trigger warning only. Affixed to each college application and/or letter of acceptance should be this statement:
"The academic institution that you are about to enter is operated by people who will cheerfully take your money and tell you lies, but know better than to offer any guarantees."
FTFY
So, Christian parents who object to their middle schoolers reading books featuring underage sex -- bad Christianist book burners.
Delicate flower college students requiring trigger warnings -- good little leftists.
Got it.
Flannery O'Connor looked life in the face and did not flinch. She is the Diane Arbus of literature, and, for her carefully rendered verbal honesty, far more important.
Those who cannot read O'Connor deserve the limited life of the mind that they choose for themselves.
Re O’Connor and Arbus: One big difference between them -- O'Connor used her grotesques to probe the mystery of God's grace, while Arbus gave us hers to stare at, daring us to not fall into the abyss. Or maybe fall in and join her there.
“They lost their humor and their empathy. They began speaking in a bizarre new language. They became unable to think critically or independently. They became dependent on the school teachers and guidance counselor who had indoctrinated them,” the suit charges.
http://nypost.com/2014/05/23/high-school-teachers-lured-our-kids-into-a-death-cult/
Karen writes about folks caring.
With the right accent caring is pronounced the same as Karen.
Kirk P:
Good Trigger Warnings Are Hard To Find.
Clever!
BTW, Sophie Tucker said it first!
Henry
Two clever ones also
The phrase "I don't care," is a very valuable guide to life. The is so much to not care about.
Empathy is merely the ability to understand how another person may be feeling or why he or she may behave as they do.
Right. And empathy only leads to sympathy when the object of your empathy is good.
When the object of your empathy is a wretch, the more accurately you understand their internal life, the more likely it is that you will despise them.
Given the apparent state of most modern Americans' internal lives, true empathy today would be virtually indistinguishable from misanthropy.
Picture perfectly understanding Chuck Schumer's internal life. There is no water hot enough to shower that off.
When family and friendships deteriorate people look for to the state and the marketplace for empathy where principles of justice and honesty should prevail. People see themselves as children to be protected from the consequences of their actions and cared for by the all powerful sugar daddy state - at the expense of the rich, the Jews, the kulaks, any group that seems to have more than others.
The phrase “I don't care,” is a very valuable guide to life. The is so much to not care about.
Reminds me of PBS's Masterpiece Theatre, hosted for many years by expatriate Brit Alistair Cooke (who also did a fascinating video series called “America: a personal history of the United States” by the way). Anyway, in introducing the superb series “The Irish R.M.” (a humorous, turn of the 20th century look at the collisions between Irish and English ways of thinking) on Masterpiece Theatre, Cooke told the story of an American friend of his who had moved many years before to Ireland, and whom he had visited there, noticing that not only did he drive a big old American car, but it still had big old (and expired) American license plates on it. He asked his pal, “Don't you ever get stopped?” His friend looked at him pityingly and replied, “Alistair, in Ireland there's always someone who just doesn't care!”
Instapundit has talked about this political principle under the rubric “Irish democracy.”
It so happens that our President believes 'empathy" is a cornerstone of judicial prudence. thus his requirement that his judicial nominees been seen to possess it. In The Audacity of Hope, he finds empathy to be "at the heart of my moral code." See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/12/AR2009051203515.html
Empathy being one of the chief requirements for the President Obama's judicial nominees, it is not surprising that in The Audacity of Hope he sees empathy as being "at the heart of my moral code." See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/12/AR2009051203515.html
I see some validation of Dennis Prager's practice of clarifying which principles of morality (like truth) should be given top priority in the public sphere from those (like compassion) which are important in the private sphere.
Racking the slide is a trigger warning.
We really do need to protect our sensitive young college students from the ravages of characters like Othello and those terrible Karamazov brothers.
Empathy seems to be a learned trait. Over and over I see a family out in the mall, or a restaurant. The youngest will be crying piteously, and the three-year old is totally unconcerned.
In England they have a law which bans causing "harassment, alarm and distress" and this law is used to ban all sorts of protests because the people protesting are alleged to be causing "harassment, alarm and distress" to those whose actions they are protesting.
This is where "empathy" can take you. Yet there never seems to be enough empathy around for anyone in power to able to judge whether those claiming to be upset really are upset or whether they are delighted at suppressing protests.
The sentiment of pity, which masquerades as the emotion of compassion and empathy,gave birth to the horrors of French and then Russian Revolutions. The internalization of victimization and self-pity within the German populace following Versailles led to the carnage of World War II and the gas chambers. The untrained, those lacking in self knowledge, or the immoral, i.e., those who believe the ends justify the means (including many in our political class), easily confuse sentiment for emotion or use it to manipulate the low info voters and those trapped in a shallow or hedonistic existence that masquerades as living.
Funny - when I first read about the trigger warnings, the first work I thought of was O'Connor's Good Country People, an equal opportunity offender.
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