Compassion and empathy are now seen as bad things. The first time I heard about this understanding of these traits that is rapidly spreading in MAGA circles was a quote from Elon Musk—“ "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy“. This idea is now even supported by none other than Robert Barron.
Hannah Arendt warned “ The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism. I think we’re pretty close to barbarism right now.
Reactions? Thoughts ?
Article from The Atlantic
https://tinyurl.com/msk7f4ma
More on this topic here: https://www.ncronline.org/news/bishop-barron-word-fire-fuels-debate-empathys-role-society
ReplyDeleteTo me it looks like a bunch of men (BP Barron, Elon, JD) united by the fear that somebody's going to use "empathy" to get one over on them somehow. And they want everybody to know they're by-god rootin' tootin' red-blooded hard-asses.
What's likely to happen is that women, who "traditionally" are supposed to have more empathy than men, will become objects of derision and increasingly sidelined by the anti-empathy goons.
Bad times ahead, since these guys have a lot of social capital to spend.