Saturday, April 27, 2019

The Separation of Empathy and Force


A guest editorial, Offering ‘thoughts and prayers’ is not real empathy, appeared in the New Jersey Star-Ledger on Sunday, October 22, 2017. It was submitted by Brian Regal, a teacher of world history at Kean University.

Regal’s theme is that empathy must be backed up with positive action. My problem is not with the theme. There’s some truth to that. My problem is with some of the types of actions Regal thinks qualifies as “real empathy.” Without his kind of action, one can not claim empathy, regal asserts. He writes:

They say suffering builds character. It does more than that, it helps build empathy. It helps us understand the suffering of others and makes us want to help them rather than mock them. I had a sergeant major who once told me, “Never trust anyone who hasn’t had their ass kicked in a fight.” That was because they couldn’t feel empathy for someone who had. It seems many current political leaders and pundits have never really suffered. I come to this position based upon the behavior.

Empathy is an emotional reaction to the suffering of others, which prompts us to help them in some way. Empathy is seeing someone fall on the street unable to get up, and you go over and help them. Not having empathy is when you go over to the person who has fallen and you steal their wallet and then laugh about it.

In what way does he mean “help them in some way?” Certainly, the empathetic ends don’t justify any means, right? Not according to Regal. Here’s a hint:

Too many of our leaders are behaving as if they are devoid of empathy for the citizens they are supposed to be helping.

Which leaders are “devoid of empathy”? Apparently, leaders who believe that government is supposed to protect individual rights, including the right of each person to decide for ourselves who, when, and in what capacity to help others. The type of leader Regal believes is not “devoid of empathy” is the kind that passes laws forcing all of us to pay for help for people he decides need help, whether the taxpayer agrees or not. Force, in other words, over voluntarism. It all becomes clear with this paragraph:

Having no empathy allows you to do certain things. It allows you to vote to take away people’s health care. It allows you to give more rights to guns than the people they kill. It allows you to steal people’s homes and call it good business. It allows you to say that mass murder is “the price of freedom.” It allows you to go golfing while people are drowning. It allows you to be handed everything in life, then ridicule poor people for not working hard enough. It allows you to mock the disabled or the obese or the mentally challenged.

Let me give my “take” on each charge, in turn.

“It allows you to vote to take away people’s health care.”

What he really means is to vote to reduce subsidies that involve legalized government theft—taking the earnings and property of some people for the unearned benefit of others’ healthcare. No one has ever proposed to “take away people’s health care” that has been earned and paid for and agreed to by insurer and customer, or by patient and doctor, except for those who want to force people into government-approved plans (e.g., ObamaCare, which outlawed millions of policies). No one’s healthcare should be at the mercy of other people’s votes. But that’s what the “empathetic” socialists of the Left have forced on us. Nor should anyone be denied the freedom to decide when, who, and in what capacity to back up empathy with action. Empathy begins with respect for the rights of others to live by their own judgement.

Regal says that “Not having empathy is when you go over to the person who has fallen and you steal their wallet.” Fair enough. But then, neither is it empathetic to steal the wallet of someone who has not fallen, right? Not according to Regal. Apparently, stealing that person’s wallet after he has fallen is a lack of empathy. But stealing a person’s wallet to pay for Regal’s “empathy” for people who have fallen and is unable to get up is empathetic. In other words, Regal won’t lower himself to actually “go over and help them.” He wants to force others to do that dirty work.

“It allows you to give more rights to guns than the people they kill.”

This is nonsensical on its face, and a complete misrepresentation of the position of advocates of the right to bear arms. Rights don’t belong to guns; i.e., inanimate objects. No one I know of has ever said that. Rights belong to individuals, and the right of law-abiding adults of sound mind and no criminal record to own a gun is really what Regal is after. Notice the moral inversion: Regal would deny you the right to own a gun for self-defense, but has no problem using law—the government’s guns—for aggression against you in the form of legally forcing you to pay for someone else’s healthcare regardless of your own choice and judgement. He replaces the right of armed self-defense with the “right” of armed aggression (the starting point of all welfare state programs).

“It allows you to steal people’s homes and call it good business.”

If Regal is referring only to eminent domain to take people’s homes for the sake of a developer, then I’m with him. But somehow I think he has more in mind—a smear of the mortgage lenders who foreclose on homes in which the borrower has reneged on his loan commitment. It’s a moral inversion that blames the victim. Imagine the homeless problem we’d have if lenders, including banks who have a fiduciary and moral, not to mention legal, responsibility to their depositors and investors, had no recourse to justice in the event of a loan default, and thus stopped making mortgage loans!

“It allows you to say that mass murder is ‘the price of freedom.’”

This is an attack on civilized countries defending themselves against barbarians who would destroy them (e.g., Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and Jihadist Islam). Regal essentially claims that civilian casualties resulting from military action designed to defeat the barbarians is the moral responsibility of the defender--e.g., the U.S. and its allies--not the aggressor--e.g., Nazi Germany, the Empire of Japan. Another moral inversion.

“It allows you to go golfing while people are drowning.”

The evil premise behind a statement of this kind is that no one has a right to pursue happiness and flourish as long as someone, somewhere, has needs. It’s not about empathy for the genuine needy. It’s an attack on the achievement of any kind of good life—to anchor people down to the most suffering and unhappy state of life, intended to make people feel unearned guilt for every pleasure they may enjoy. Since no one would actually continue with his golf game while callously ignoring a person who is literally drowning in a nearby pond, anti-happiness is the only sentiment this metaphor can be intended to convey.

“It allows you to be handed everything in life, then ridicule poor people for not working hard enough.”

It’s hard to make any kind of sense out of this. Is he railing against inheritance? Is it a Rawlsian premise that, whatever your achievement, it’s all a matter of luck? In other words, if you learned a trade or profession or leadership skill and then applied it to a successful lifelong career or built that successful business, and managed to achieve a non-poor lifestyle, you didn’t build that? Is he attacking idea that poor people are incapable of working their way up from poverty in an economically free society, and cannot take care of themselves without government handouts?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Now, I know that, superficially, Regal is attacking one man, Donald Trump, as indicated by his “It allows you to mock the disabled or the obese or the mentally challenged.” But there is a deeper psychology behind his diatribe—a disrespect for people’s capableness and right to live by their own individual judgments and make their own independent choices, and a hatred of self-responsibility, achievement, and happiness. In other words, you, the “average” person, the “little guy”, is incapable of building that—so you must be made a ward of the all-powerful state. Even if you are capable of “building that”-and you do “build that”--you should feel guilty about it.

You cannot be left free to pursue your own happiness under a government that protects your inalienable rights to live and act according to your own capacities and judgement. That’s Regal’s message. Now, maybe Regal’s position is not that extreme. Maybe he allows for some freedom. But his message is clear: If you reject aggressive government force, you lack empathy. But if our political leaders’ empathy is enough for them to override your rights, then you are not actually free. After all, empathy begins with respect for the rights of others. Where’s the empathy in Regal’s stance?

No, the job of our leaders is not supposed to be helping some citizens at the unwilling expense of others. Helping others in the way Regal means it is the job of voluntary charity (the only genuine kind). Our leaders should be protecting individual rights equally and at all times, including for people who have not fallen as well as people who have fallen. Yes, government officials can feel empathy, like everyone else. But, like the private citizens they serve, they do not have the moral right to force their empathy on others—that is, by law. Our leaders and government should be governed by the principle, the Separation of Empathy and Force. Empathy and force are really mutually exclusive.

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3 comments:

Mike Kevitt said...

Yes, true. Everything, here, about empathy and action put forth here is true. It all boils down to something which summarizes in a few words what is said here: no initiation of physical force, not by anybody, particularly not by law and government. Real political and government leaders retaliate against initiatory force upon any of us, and they do nothing else, because they KNOW that is their job whether they have experienced initiatory force upon themselves or not. But, if they have experienced it, they'll have the ability to share the feelings of the victims of initiatory force and, as REAL political and government leaders, they probably will, as per their choice, actually share those feelings. But the 'bottom line' is, do they do what they KNOW regardless of how they learned it? That, is separation of empathy and force.

SteveD said...

'Not having empathy is when you go over to the person who has fallen and you steal their wallet and then laugh about it.'

No that's just evil. Based on his definition of empathy, not having empathy would be walking by and ignoring the person who has fallen.

Mike Kevitt said...

Let's let the cat outa the bag. Empathy is the ability to share feelings about whatever. That doesn't mean you share them. Maybe you reject them, along with the person who has those feelings about whatever. But you are still empathetic. You have the ability, but you don't share, maybe unconsciously, or consciously and by your choice, thus rejecting those feelings. So, HAVING empathy leaves one free to steal the wallet of a fallen one and laugh about it, or to walk by and ignore a fallen one. Empathy is an ability, not a sharing by action, not by body nor by mind.

Now, actually sharing a feeling or sameness of feeling, for appropriate reasons, is different. It's an action of body or of mind, not just a state of being such as ability. Grammatically, it's a verb, not a noun. The actual sharing of a feeling, for appropriate reasons, is sympathy, an action of mind which might be expressed as an outward physical action.

Real political and government leaders, as opposed to crooks in their place, will, by empathy and sympathy for themselves as well as for us, act appropriately for the appropriate reasons for unalienable individual rights under law.