The problem with empathy

(not mentioning Paul Blooms' against empathy today)

I am refering to a recent article by Lucinda Holdforth “The Problem with Authenticity (and Other 21st Century Virtues).” (The Guardian, August 2, 2023, sec. Books. ) It’s an edited extract from 21st Century Virtues: How They Are Failing Our Democracy , published 1 August as part of Monash University Publishing’s In the National Interest series.

Lucinda Holdforth begins with a study of LinkedIn branding by platform members using words which are thus classed as virtues. This is fine.

And then covers the entirely reasonable ground that where one maintains a firm grip on the art of the possible (in politics), this should be regarded as a better thing (a virtue with no name?) than rigourously maintaining a virtue/virtuous position/piety in the world.

As a general desciption of the reality principle this is fine too.

It ends with “And if none of this persuades you, remember this: the most awful people you know are probably entirely authentic.”

Now I disagree here, but the disagreement depends on who is, or who is capable of perceiving ‘authenticity’. This is a question of the (social)ecology of our/the POV point-of-view.

For me, the most awful people I know cannot negotiate amidst varying POVs. These are of course narcissists and their subset psychopaths. To do so requires empathy and they have little to none. Empathy is not a virtue, it is a worlding/worldbuilding/moral urge. Empathic, maybe. Empathy, no.

When you walk down the street do peeps get out of your way? If they don’t is it becasue they don’t see you, but bump ntoyou, or because they do not see that you are there in the world with them, and the collisions are not even imaginary?

Photo by Tom Podmore on Unsplash

Narcissists and psychopaths constantly play binary mindgames in order to maintain non-flat dominance playgrounds for the purpose of generating narcissistic supply. It may face hurdles, but this is not a negotiation, this is the manipulation of the social environment (as created by empathy) to suit the personality dis-order of those who have deficits (or total lack) of empathy. (See my last post Worlds of difference on The Manipulated Man).

The article The Problem with Authenticity (and Other 21st Century Virtues) meta-worlds on meta-virtues, and thus worlds but default, but does not engage directly with wordlbuilding (more intentional worlding), with how the art of the possible in politics, our world as a shared/negotiate world-building project is possible in first place (I’ll have to look at the book now to see if it covers this type of thing, no hints of it here though).

Classing empathy as a virture in this semi-conscious worlding may not be the best choice for more conscious world-building, if empathy is the base requirement to create our negotiate/shared world, democratic or not. Remember for Putin democracy is a tool to manipulate fools who do the emotional labour of making the world everytime they nuture another human into the world. And will do so in any case.

Authenticity, put positively, means one also has empathy for oneself. As such it is the end of a process.

While a covert narcissist will cry poor me when ally building their flock of flying monkeys, empathy for ones self is only possible after learning empathy for others. At least that is what I see authenticity as. I do not see it as a pious rectitude. Authenticity is an outcome of an empathic world, it’s a moral outcome, not a cause of ‘it’.

Both person building and world building (the same project really) require empathy. Everything else is a beneficiary of that process.

No babies, no soldiers.

The question of authenticity as LinkedIn here does not grasp that narcissists and psychopaths have no authenticity by defintion because they have no empathy. Inflexibility is a mental dis-order. It’s order, but not as love knows it.

Authenticity arises in empathic negotiation, and is not simply a showing off, of self. To think so reveals a locked-in sydnrome, a world made by individuals alone, like brains in vats. I agree LinkedIn is poo. X is poo too.

Narcissists and psychopaths are brains in the vats that the rest of us provide. They can never acknowledge that, if they do, they are not narcissists and psychopaths. (And yes it is a continuum of self-love.)

So instead, for narcissists and psychopaths empathy becomes a weakness to be exploited in others. They are the world so no world-building (morality) is required. They are perfect, they are complete, so no virtues or moral guidance are required. Like the way you can remain true to your parasitical self and still get the benefit of the doubt when you grab them by the pussy. Is that authentic? Or just disordered?

An example of bad world-building?

We live among these parasites, and the world goes on.

The trouble with this LinkedIn critique of the world is that there is no linkage bewtween personality/ies (disorders), the decisions we personalities make when making do, how empathy worlds our negotiated spaces, nor how the parasites among us are let be, because that is how the world is at the moment.

Blaming the bad when credit might be due for allowing them badies to even be, is bad form.

In this sense, this meta-worlding, there are no virtues, there is just us.

That is why we should.