Jokes aside, how can we trust people that have already displayed such selfishness? How can we trust they won’t continue to work against the group interest the second their goal is no longer aligned with ours?
Maybe we need to start treating lack of empathy like more of an intellectual / educational problem, rather than a moral failing in like your “soul”? If only just so we can forgive people enough to actually work with them.
I’m spitballin, but I can work with ignorance or even feeblemindedness - you just focus on education or harm reduction. Like maybe they’ll never never be able to see outgroups as fully human, but with the right kind of external validations and incentives, maybe they could simulate it.
I don’t know. My sister is a psychopath. She cannot understand the feelings of the other people around her, no matter how clearly or explicitly or adamantly they are explained to her.
We have a lot of psychopaths out there running the government and in positions of power and in positions of authority and serving as megaphones for their interests.
No amount of explaining empathy or extending hands or teaching will ever get through to these people.
They are fundamentally broken in a way that cannot be fixed.
That’s what I was trying to get at with my talk of incentives and external validation - Stop trying to “fix” them and accept that they lack the capacities that we take for granted.
I’m through with caring about what’s in someone’s heart of hearts. Can we get them to behave, even if it’s out of fear of being ostracised? Fine. Good enough.
Then work on the conditions that make people maladaptive (or really just adaptive to a mal world) separately.
that’s basically the approach that all of popular culture had been taking since like 2008. like that was the attitude of the last 20 years. show these bigots that if they at least pretend to play nice we can all get along and be more prosperous for it.
they hated it. it’s the “woke mind virus” to them now. I genuinely don’t believe people like this will ever be ok in a kind and accepting world. I also don’t think that trying to get rid of them will solve this problem… i don’t know if there is a solution to some people being mentally incapable of empathy, but it certainly doesn’t help that it’s so baked into our culture now.
capitalism is highly compatible with a lack of empathy. it’s a system that inherently promotes those with no scruples. the less you feel bad about being a piece of shit for money, the more money you’ll be able to make. it’s a predatory system where those most willing and able to cannibalize everyone and everything around them for personal gain will gain the most. those that gain the most are then also in a position to manipulate both political votes and public opinion. they blatantly bribe our politicians and they own our media platforms. this is especially problematic on social media. if you were a young American on tiktok in the last u.s. election you probably saw numerous vague tiktoks about kamala starting WWIII. no quotes, no context, just “me and the boys after kamala starts wwiii” type shit. as I understand it nearly every major election around the world since then has seen tiktok flooded with “memes” like that supporting the right wing candidate. we’re certainly not going to make any progress on this issue while that’s the world we live in.
maybe a stable enough government with keen enough regulations can at least try to keep these people from completely raiding the hen house. we’ll have to see how things play out with Germany and the afd ban, but I’m not too hopeful on that playing out well in our current situation.
IDK, I’m half convinced that humanity is eternally doomed to repeat the same mistakes. with long periods of everything sucking because too few have or want too great a percentage of what humanity has claimed their own and the occasional period where things are accidentally not that bad.
we are currently leaving one of those brief periods of “not that bad”
There is an intellectual burden to behaving against your nature/wishes. It’s reasonable to expect them to not want to do that. We just need to show them the cost is more than just external, which certainly isn’t happening at an institutional level in the States right now. You’d think reminding someone who’s voting to kick out illegal immigrants that that group included members of their own family wouldn’t be harder than Homer remembering that Lisa needs braces, though.
Ugh but they suck so bad…
Jokes aside, how can we trust people that have already displayed such selfishness? How can we trust they won’t continue to work against the group interest the second their goal is no longer aligned with ours?
Maybe we need to start treating lack of empathy like more of an intellectual / educational problem, rather than a moral failing in like your “soul”? If only just so we can forgive people enough to actually work with them.
I’m spitballin, but I can work with ignorance or even feeblemindedness - you just focus on education or harm reduction. Like maybe they’ll never never be able to see outgroups as fully human, but with the right kind of external validations and incentives, maybe they could simulate it.
I don’t know. My sister is a psychopath. She cannot understand the feelings of the other people around her, no matter how clearly or explicitly or adamantly they are explained to her.
We have a lot of psychopaths out there running the government and in positions of power and in positions of authority and serving as megaphones for their interests.
No amount of explaining empathy or extending hands or teaching will ever get through to these people.
They are fundamentally broken in a way that cannot be fixed.
That’s what I was trying to get at with my talk of incentives and external validation - Stop trying to “fix” them and accept that they lack the capacities that we take for granted.
I’m through with caring about what’s in someone’s heart of hearts. Can we get them to behave, even if it’s out of fear of being ostracised? Fine. Good enough.
Then work on the conditions that make people maladaptive (or really just adaptive to a mal world) separately.
It does really seem like a societal issue. We incentivize this behavior, so it shouldn’t be surprising when people display it.
that’s basically the approach that all of popular culture had been taking since like 2008. like that was the attitude of the last 20 years. show these bigots that if they at least pretend to play nice we can all get along and be more prosperous for it.
they hated it. it’s the “woke mind virus” to them now. I genuinely don’t believe people like this will ever be ok in a kind and accepting world. I also don’t think that trying to get rid of them will solve this problem… i don’t know if there is a solution to some people being mentally incapable of empathy, but it certainly doesn’t help that it’s so baked into our culture now.
capitalism is highly compatible with a lack of empathy. it’s a system that inherently promotes those with no scruples. the less you feel bad about being a piece of shit for money, the more money you’ll be able to make. it’s a predatory system where those most willing and able to cannibalize everyone and everything around them for personal gain will gain the most. those that gain the most are then also in a position to manipulate both political votes and public opinion. they blatantly bribe our politicians and they own our media platforms. this is especially problematic on social media. if you were a young American on tiktok in the last u.s. election you probably saw numerous vague tiktoks about kamala starting WWIII. no quotes, no context, just “me and the boys after kamala starts wwiii” type shit. as I understand it nearly every major election around the world since then has seen tiktok flooded with “memes” like that supporting the right wing candidate. we’re certainly not going to make any progress on this issue while that’s the world we live in.
maybe a stable enough government with keen enough regulations can at least try to keep these people from completely raiding the hen house. we’ll have to see how things play out with Germany and the afd ban, but I’m not too hopeful on that playing out well in our current situation.
IDK, I’m half convinced that humanity is eternally doomed to repeat the same mistakes. with long periods of everything sucking because too few have or want too great a percentage of what humanity has claimed their own and the occasional period where things are accidentally not that bad.
we are currently leaving one of those brief periods of “not that bad”
There is an intellectual burden to behaving against your nature/wishes. It’s reasonable to expect them to not want to do that. We just need to show them the cost is more than just external, which certainly isn’t happening at an institutional level in the States right now. You’d think reminding someone who’s voting to kick out illegal immigrants that that group included members of their own family wouldn’t be harder than Homer remembering that Lisa needs braces, though.
We don’t need to. Anyone on our side even temporarily is useful.
FDR, Churchill, and Stalin made it work…