Pitiful Politics & The Regime of Boundless Empathy

The new organized religion

Much is done in the name of empathy and considerably more is demanded. A viewpoint need only “lack empathy” to raise suspicion. Seen as a good in itself, empathy justifies and condemns. Paradoxically, its most ardent proponents advocate for standpoint epistemology, the idea that knowledge derives from personal experience and is therefore subjective. How knowledge’s relativity squares with empathy’s universality remains unclear. 

Developmental psychologist Paul Bloom wrote a book called Against Empathy, which catalogs empathy’s shortcomings. Empathy hyper-focuses on individual cases and forgets to consider general patterns, encourages impulsive decision-making, and reinforces stereotypes by using personal prejudices to understand what culturally dissimilar others are thinking and feeling. Bloom’s research indicates that empathy is not, in fact, universal, but, perhaps like knowledge, derives subjectively from personal experience. 

Empathy works best with people one knows well because interpersonal interaction informs its direction. People have different personalities and cultural background significantly influences thinking and feeling. The deeper the relational history, the fewer assumptions empathy has to make when trying to understand the other’s perspective. 

Pity disguises itself as boundless empathy. “Empathizing” with strangers requires many uninformed assumptions drawn inevitably from personal history. It turns inward, asking how you would fare in the situation, thereby reducing to a projected self-pity. Aww that would suck for me is quickly followed with a congratulatory pat on the back for one’s righteous magnanimity and perhaps a thought about how dramatically society would improve if only everyone else were as virtuous. 

Masked pity turns politics religious by shifting its domain from society to soul. The external struggle over conflicting social interests internalizes as a spiritual journey toward universal empathy. A new priesthood emerges and teaches the faithful how to empathize with strangers without interacting with them. “It’s better to learn empathy through our practices first,” they preach with a smile, “so that you aren’t so selfish and biased when you eventually encounter them.” They mediate relationships with lessons aggregated from personal prejudices and cultural stereotypes deemed acceptable by the church, creating new hurdles to bonding that they can coincidentally solve for a fee. 

One must “do the work,” commodified spiritual work, to achieve political wisdom. The empathy regime develops rituals of confession and repentance for when believers sin against its god. It sends missionaries to convert the impure through, in the present case, compulsory seminars, allegorical propaganda, the restriction of heretical information, and the threat of reputational hell. People pity themselves as they are punished for insufficiently pitying others, further strengthening their resolve to become even more pitiful. 

In this atmosphere, pity is weaponized by the congregation against itself. Meet a stranger’s strategic vulnerability with adequate pity or risk punishment. Ironically, the truly empathetic are the cleverest players of the accusation game because they use their insight into others’ perspectives to win through manipulation. 

Empathy is defiled through its worship. Holding it up institutionalizes pity and incentivizes pointless asceticism. Contrary to its goal of establishing harmony, pitiful politics produces discord by adding prejudicial barriers to potential relationships, creating an “unempathetic” social underclass, and providing symbolically justifiable grounds on which people can take each other down for personal benefit. 

The way to make politics less pitiful is not to pity the current state of affairs but to recognize empathy for the false god that it is and courageously build something new. While pity looks behind, courage forges ahead. 

“…guard ourselves, my friends, against the two worst contagions that may be reserved just for us — against the great nausea at man! against great pity for man!” — Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals