Interdependence

Is Empathy a fundamental weakness of Western civilization?

This post is a “twofer.” It’s a response to a question posed in its complete format: “What do you think about Elon Musk saying “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy”? https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elon-musk-empathy-quote/“ — In this case, I’m setting up my answer with an answer to another question: “What role does empathy play in understanding and connecting with the thoughts of others?”

Empathy is a conduit to understanding and connecting with others.

Empathy is like an additional sense or language allowing more profound insights into people than a typical means of sharing information about oneself with others.

“How you say something is as important as what you say.”

I assume you’ve encountered this above phrase or similar ones to understand how meaning is conveyed in ways beyond the definitions of the words one uses.

Empathy is similar in that one identifies more closely with the emotions of others, which makes it easier to connect with people on much deeper levels much more quickly than most people are used to.

Empathy is otherwise the glue that keeps human civilization together.

“Evil is a lack of empathy.”

This sentence above is the simple answer that most have already presented, so I had intended to ignore this question. Tomaz Vargazon’s answer, however, has motivated me to provide my input by the inclusion of the full quote he provided from Musk’s interview with Joe Rogan:

Musk: Yeah, he’s [Gat Saad] awesome, and he talks about, you know, basically suicidal empathy. Like, there’s so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself. So, we’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it’s like, I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide.

Rogan: Also don’t let someone use your empathy against you so they can completely control your state and then do an insanely bad job of managing it and never get removed.

Musk: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. So, I think, you know, empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.

  1. “Suicidal empathy”
  2. “Don’t let someone use your empathy against you.”
  3. The “empathy exploit.”

These three statements indicate that these sociopathic morons don’t understand empathy because they are conflating “ compassion” with “empathy.”

These are not the same thing. Not by a long shot.

Empathy operates like a sensory receiver, while compassion is a cognitive process of identifying with another life.

Empathy cannot be “used against someone” any more than one’s eyes can be used against them.

The ability to experience another’s emotions is not a weakness but a strength.

Another issue is how we process our understanding of the emotions we detect.

The only vulnerability to exploit is the trust connection between individuals, and that exploit exists regardless of either party’s empathetic capabilities.

Their arguments are the equivalent of claiming one can be susceptible to being robbed because they know more about the criminal attempting to rob them.

It’s a bloody ludicrous argument forwarded only by sociopaths who have no clue what empathy is.

The harsh reality in today’s world is that empathetic people are victimized precisely because they’re walking, talking, living, and breathing lie detectors.

Anyone with advanced empathetic sensitivities understands precisely what I’ve just said. Every sociopath on the planet would otherwise vehemently deny this is the case while using this statement to vilify anyone who reveals this truth to the public.

Only sociopaths would ever dare to consider empathy a weakness because they recognize empathy as a superpower wielded by people who always default to showing compassion toward others, especially toward those like them, who comprise the most broken humans among us.

The lesson of today’s age and of this garbage pronouncement by the most destructive sociopaths we have seen emerge in society has pushed the tolerances and compassions that empathetic people experience toward humanity past the brink of decency and forces us to realize how our species is in a severe struggle for survival.

If we allow these sociopathic monsters to continue defining humanity for us, civilized society as we know it will crumble.

Now is the time for empathy to assert itself as humanity’s superpower and end the scourge of sociopathy before it’s too late.

Now is the time for the meek to inherit the Earth because these monsters have no respect for life beyond their fleeting whims.

These are expressions from people who have no reverence for anything outside their navels.

The more we allow them to assert dominion over humanity’s character, the more they teach us they will relent only when we break and repeat history.

Is peace always possible?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Is-peace-always-possible/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

Of course, peace is always possible. The challenge is making it desirable enough for all parties to commit to making it possible.

Peace is otherwise impossible when one or more parties refuse to accept compromise as the only path toward achieving any form of peace, whether temporary or lasting.

We have to accept the reality that some people are so broken they would choose to burn the world to ashes rather than give up their power or relinquish their power designs, and so that means the only path to peace is through the destruction of those types. Sadly and ironically, the argument of an escalation of conflict as the only path to peace is validated by the entrenchment of those who endorse imposition as their means of achieving peace through subjugation.

For some people, reason as a path to peace is rejected in favour of catering to hubris. Sometimes, people are so confident in their ability to overpower those they believe entitled to victimize that they will adamantly reject compromise even upon their final breath.

Peace requires giving up at least some of one’s power, while conflict escalations are almost always about exercising, protecting, or expanding power.

It is easy to become cynical in a world filled with so much violence that there has never been a period in human history where wars have not been waged, at least somewhere on the planet. It’s easy to think humans are an irreparably self-destructive species, but that’s a perceptual choice.

The reality is that although our species has never been “war-free,” humanity has predominately existed in a state of peace. Most people are comfortable with enough personal power to live peaceful lives.

However, a small percentage of humans are unsatisfied with that level of personal security and require much more power to quell their insecurities. Their antics are far more successful at capturing public attention because conflict is like a drug that enraptures people’s imaginations, while peace is boring. With this skewed mindset, it’s easy to believe peace is impossible.

To make peace possible on a universal (or global) level, we must address the fundamental elements giving rise to conflict, which begin with addressing factors that undermine psychological health. It’s a massive task that is conceptually simple but logistically impossible today. Whether we will mature enough as a species to achieve optimal mental health sufficiently to mitigate the aggravating factors for conflict escalation is a toss-up. We are currently on a trajectory toward extreme aggravation and conflict escalation that could dramatically reshape the human landscape.

It isn’t very comforting to contemplate how we might survive our challenges over the next few decades. If we can maintain most of the trappings of modern democratic society, our experiences will encourage systems that can address our psychological issues in healthier ways.

I want to believe that once we emerge from the other end of the dark tunnel of regression we have entered, we will be much closer to reaching a new bar for global peace.

What is this thing people call humanity, and why should I feel it, need it, or want it?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/What-is-this-thing-people-call-humanity-and-why-should-I-feel-it-need-it-or-want-it/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

“Humanity” is from the late 14th century and derived from the Latin word “humanitatem” or “humanitas” for “human nature, humankind, life on Earth, the human race, mankind,” and Old French “humanité, umanité.” “Humanity” includes all humans but can also refer to the feelings of “kindness, graciousness, politeness, consideration for others,” which humans often have for each other.

Variations of the term, such as the adjective “humane,” which arose in the mid-15th century, refer to the ineffable qualities of being human rather than the physical characteristics of human existence. By the early 18th century, it evolved from meaning “courteous, friendly, civil, and obliging” into “tenderness, compassion, and a disposition to treat others kindly” and evoke “kindness” within the sphere of the human condition.

By the 1700s, the plural of humanity — “humanities” was adopted as a description of the study of “human culture” through the literature branches of rhetoric and poetry and from a secular perspective rather than religious via “literae divinae.”

“Humanism” emerged from that evolution in meaning from the Latin “humanitas” or “education benefitting a cultivated man” while supporting the notion of humanity as symbolic of the best qualities of our species.

Much of this evolution in meaning is derived from a history stretching long before prehistory to a time when our survival as a species was contingent upon working together to feed and clothe ourselves as we hunted in packs.

Successful interdependence requires supporting one another; thus, empathy was given rich soil to grow.

I suspect, however, that none of this constitutes new information for you even though your question misses the point altogether — and to such a degree it screams severe psychopathy, even as an entertainment-seeking provocation.

From initially reading it in my notifications for questions I’ve been asked to answer, my first thought was that it’s an apparent provocation from a misanthrope and most likely a troll. What I discovered upon encountering your profile is something far more insidious.

Let’s begin with the presumption in this question, “Why should I feel it?” etcetera.

There is no “should” in that you are not “obligated to feel” anything. That’s not how emotions work. You appear somewhat educated — or at least literate — based on the number of publications you’ve written and have posted on Amazon.

Somehow, though, a fundamental comprehension of oneself as an “intelligent” member of an interdependent species escapes your notice. You rely on others to feed, clothe, and house yourself through literary endeavours and can’t acknowledge how you already “feel it, need it, and want it.”

Even this provocation attempts to cater to those basic needs by identifying people who can respond in ways that support egotistically defined goals.

Most literate people develop a basic comprehension of emotions and the atavistic precursors making them manifest. On my behalf, this could be a flawed presumption, but I’m pretty sure you’re no stranger to “darker” emotions such as fear and anger, and you have no misapprehension about their manifestations within you. The sarcasm in your writing indicates your preference for wallowing in those emotions and is consistent with the attitude displayed within your provocation disguised as a question.

The problem you struggle with is that you hate your interdependence and deny that it exists within you — most likely due to having found yourself disappointed and hurt repeatedly by people who failed to live up to your expectations from a very young age.

Sadly, in a world where a whopping majority 70%-80% of the population is raised within a dysfunctional family unit, your experience is far from being a minority. Unlike some lucky few who can cope with their pain to the degree that can transcend it on levels that allow them to minimize the transmission of a toxic mentality characterized by misanthropy, you have chosen to embrace the cynical view that humanity is beyond hope.

Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant to me because my biased perspective shudders at the prospect of living in a world where one broadly hates all of humanity to such a degree they fail to see or experience the gestalt of existence within each of us.

To live a life without comprehending the value of joy is the equivalent of living a life deprived of meaning. It’s like a walking death. Even if one’s life circumstances necessitate a deprivation of joy, knowing it exists can often be enough to overcome the most painful hurdles.

Even the briefest taste of love in a fleeting life characterized by its absence or a prevalence of fraudulent forms of love is enough to sustain one’s spirit for a lifetime.

That’s the power of living on the side of light those who wallow in the dark fail to comprehend.

Once one understands that power, one no longer feels pushed into seeking something out of conceptual reasons but from an atavistic need to partake in as much as one can, like struggling for breath while deprived of oxygen because of a plastic bag covering one’s head.

Sadly, you’ve never tasted it, or you would know why you are drawn to it while feigning a disinterested rejection. As much as your ploy may feel like a shield protecting you from further disappointment, it’s a cry for help heard echoing its way around the world, crying out in pain.

If nothing else, in your case, it merely reveals you as a product of a wholly dysfunctional era in which we exist today as a species suffering from generation upon generation of transmissible trauma.

In other words, you asked this question because, on some level, you realize your struggle. Although it may be easy to peg you as a statistic identified as part of “the one in five” visible sufferers of a mental health condition in society, you’re not. Instead, the psychopathic dysphoria you struggle with is made invisible by its type of dysfunctionality and how it fits within the accepted definition of a psychologically well-adjusted individual within a maladaptive system (by which I mean our environment and economies are not suitable for cultivating the best of humanity).

As unhealthy as your expressions are, their implications exist outside the boundaries of what the psychological sciences deem unhealthy because you seem capable of functioning at a high enough level to adapt to the rigours of your day. In my view and statistically speaking, of the remaining four in five who do not display visible signs of an inability to adapt, three of those four are still victims suffering from degrees of stress that remain invisible to a triage mentality characterizing the state of our species today.

Your wallowing in cynicism is not your fault. You’re a victim of an entirely dysfunctional world. You happen to be smarter than the average bear, making a positive adaptation to a broken world much harder.

If you’re lucky and can make yourself willing and available to receive the cream of humanity, you’ll feel the answer you seek that words alone cannot give you.

Try not to let the bastards wear you down.

Boa Fortuna