Empathy. It’s overrated. Gets you into all sorts of
trouble. And yet not having any also seems to get you into trouble. You can’t
win.
Take, as exhibit one, this photo:
Whatever. The point is why do we care (ah ha, I see
what you did there) whether she cares or not? I know, empathy is what makes us
human, how would we cope if no one cared about anyone else, society would
collapse, Google would become sentient, our bank accounts would marry our cars
and we’d all go to Hell in a handbasket, fine. But. Really?
Altruism, selflessness, the principle of having
concern for others. Lauded, considered a virtue, is the basis of religions and
society. But it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Altruism could be loyalty, the concern
for special relationships, friends, family and so on and in that form it’s
admittedly useful from an evolutionary standpoint because (a) it seems to
ensure that parents are nice to their children, and (b) is reciprocal, in that
the nicer you are the nicer people generally are to you. Which brings me to the
fact that there is some debate about whether people can actually be altruistic.
To be truly selfless, to truly care, there has to be nothing in it for you.
There’s a cost to you, but there’s no benefit. But there is a theory called psychological
egoism, which holds that humans are always – always – motivated by self-interest.
The desire to experience pleasure and to avoid pain. Being nice makes us feel
good, it makes it more likely that others will be nice to us.
To take the concept of altruism and turn it into a
stick with which to beat people with strikes me as being the antithesis of, er,
empathy. On the one hand it’s saying you’re a good person because you care, and
on the other hand it’s demonstrating your complete lack of care by attacking
someone else’s reactions (and in this particular case it’s decrying a lack of
tolerance by being intolerant, but no one ever said bigots were logical I guess).
Just…let’s understand that you can be a good person
while not necessarily giving a shit about everything. Some of us find it a bit
harder to do.
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