Suicidal Empathy Is Not The Problem

 

I've been meaning to address this for a while. Many people on both sides of the debate use this word wrong. The problem is not that empathy has gone too far it is that very few people have empathy and therefore the West is being taken advantage of. That is the real problem.

The way people use the term empathy, is like this, "Put yourself in that person's position, how would you feel." But this is incorrect. Empathy is not about what you would feel in that situation. Rather it is understanding what the other person is feeling and thinking. This is very different. In fact, these things are worlds apart.

What you as a western middleclass man or woman would feel or be thinking in a situation, is almost certainly not what others from distant cultures and lands would be feeling or thinking.

For instance, you, as a high trust person look at a crowd of illegal immigrants coming into the border, say in the south of the US. You put yourself in their situation, you think about how you would like water, a place to sleep, somewhere stay to stay, etc, etc.

But among that group are some that are drug mules, human traffickers, and some that are criminals running from their own country. Not all, but some. The drug mule is hoping there are no sniffer dogs. The people smugglers are thinking about their profit and where they will unload "stock." The women being smuggled in are thinking about what they had to do to not get hurt by the coyotes...etc.

There are some people in the group who may be thinking what you are thinking. Maybe. But the point is you don't know who they are. You cannot possibly know who they are, because you are not exercising empathy, you are thinking about what you would be thinking. You are projecting your own thoughts and feelings on that person. And, this is important, because you cannot know what they are truly thinking or feeling, you can't allow such a progression of people to pass. But because of how you have been propagandized and because you know what you would think in their situation, you are moved to condemn those who would stop such movements of people.  

The real problem, therefore, is solipsism. That is, only being able to see the world through your eyes and projecting that on others. And while both men and women can be guilty of solipsism, women tend to be much more likely to be solipsistic than men on average. This is why as our leadership in the West has gotten more egalitarian, incorporating more women, the West has increasingly been taken advantage of. Because the one thing that the solipsistic person cannot do is understand what another person is thinking or feeling. At best they can only project themselves into that situation. And this causes them to often misread the situation.

Women like to think they are empathetic. But they rarely are, and men rarely are as well. Knowing what someone else is thinking is a very rare skill, and usually you can only achieve it with people you know really well.

This is why the West is being taken advantage of so badly. Because low trust societies run circles around high trust peoples. The idea that everybody basically thinks the same is a false idea. If we did, every nation would be the same.

Also, empathy does not require you to care what another person is thinking or feeling, but simply to know. If we were to know how other societies wanted to take advantage of ours, we'd do things very differently.