Hugh J. Curran Informed Comment
David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher and his friend, the Scottish economist, Adam Smith, author of the “Wealth of Nations”, wrote extensively on the history of morality in his book: The Theory of Moral Sentiments” and considered “sympathy” (similar to our current usage of “Empathy”) the highest sentiment, Hume maintained, in a famous phrase, that “reason was the slave of passion” to indicate the limitations of rationality as an arbiter of higher sensibility. “Sympathy” was defined in terms of its root “pathos” which means “feeling or suffering together” as is “Empathy”, a word which came into vogue in the early 1900s.
To David Hume, who wrote “A Treatise of Human Nature” sympathy is a “mirror where you are aware of another person’s emotions automatically”, whereas Adam Smith considered “sympathy as the very first building block of human society.—activated through the imagination by placing oneself in another’s situation—it is our “fellow-feeling in which we share similar passions”.
Recently Elon Musk, on a radio podcast, stated that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy”. Musk asserted that the “empathy response acts as an “exploit” or a “bug” in Western society that can be weaponized or manipulated against its best interests”. Although he also believed that people should care about others, he argued that “empathy can be exploited so that it becomes weaponized which threatens civilization’s stability.”
David Hume considered human minds as being closely mirrored to one another and that “the minds of all men are similar in their feelings and operations. “Sympathy acts like a string instrument—when one string is struck, the others vibrate in motion. Because we can recognize the feelings of others, we value things that bring happiness to society and dislike those things that cause harm. This forms the basis of our moral judgments”.
Both Hume and Smith believed that human beings, at their best, have a natural capacity for sympathy that allows them to be concerned for the well-being of all those in their social and moral sphere.
He acknowledged that empathy is easily dispersed and often lacks focus? We lose empathy for our adversaries and often devalue, dehumanize and demonize “enemies” and project the worst traits unto them.
From a religious perspective, empathy is an essential aspect of the “Sermon on the Mount”. The “Beatitudes” include blessings of the poor in spirit, as well as those who mourn, the meek, and the merciful, so that each person aspires to a higher spiritual understanding. Empathy is to respond to those who persecute you with kindness, mercy and generosity. The Golden Rule: “So in everything, do unto others what you would have them do unto you.”
Empathy is suffering with others without being overwhelmed by their suffering? In Gaza the Western World has been militarily complicitin the destruction of the habitations of 2.2 million people, bombing them continually over the past three years. The Distinguished Political Science Professor at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer considers this a genocide which is causing a considerable erosion of Western values throughout most of the world. Those who once believed that Western values were worth emulating have become disillusioned as they watch the complicity of leaders of the EU, the U.S, Canada & other nations, while they continue to provide tens of millions of dollars worth of weapons and bombs to Israel, resulting in the on-going slaughter of indigenous Palestinians.
What kind of empathy is being expressed when only one side of a conflict is being supported in the obliteration of twenty thousand children and fifty-five thousand adults? Perhaps it is what Musk inadvertently referred to as the “weaponization of empathy” where a political elite makes destructive decisions, supposedly to support a theologically oriented nation. But due to 21st century worldwide communication, the photographic and video evidence becomes readily available to the people of the world, whether in Africa, Asia or South America.
There are peace organizations who have large platforms in peace-making circles. Such include “Jewish Voice for Peace” with its 750,000 supporters and ALLMEP in Palestine-Israel with 200 peace-building organizations and hundreds of thousands of activists.
Though they share much empathy for the suffering of the victims of the assaults that have taken place against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, they, nevertheless, have had little direct impact on the decision-making in the U.S. Congress or the Israel Knesset. But they do have a growing membership and ever-evolving support,
Besides the destruction of Gaza and so many of its people, there is another criticism leveled at the Western World by Professor Mearsheimer. This was the deliberate assassination of Iran’s leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenie, with five of his family and subsequent to that, the bombing of a school and the killing of 120 young girls and their teachers. As Professor Mearsheimer noted: these acts against the Ayatollah took place while Iranians were negotiating in good faith, caused a very serious blow to western liberal values. Those values now appear more and more hollow to those in Asia and Africa who had once wished to emulate Western countries.
The poet Auden noted that “those to whom evil is done do evil in return”. The founders of Israel began their colonizing enterprise well before the holocaust that took place in Europe. So why were Palestinians treated so abysmally in 1948 as 700,000 were compelled to leave their homes and see 5 million acres of their property expropriated. Many of these refugees ended up in Gaza where in recent years 75,000 lost their lives to Israeli bombing, while the destruction of universities, schools, hospitals and residences took place.
What then is the shared humanity of a people who have a long history together according to archaeologists and historians. A genetic connection exists from bronze and Iron Age ancestors as well as DNA studies showing that Palestinian Arabs and Jewish populations “cluster closely together on genetic maps”
T.S Eliot remarked in “Four Quartets” that “humankind cannot bear very much reality” and that “Time present and time past/are both present in time future/and time future [is]contained in time past…” Perhaps this is the real issue. Time does not change our deep-seated biases so we find it necessary to limit our empathy to those we have positive emotional bonds with. A related word to “empathy” is “apathy” which has the same root but with “a” in front it means non-feeling. That non-feeling is evident in those elected officials in Congress and Parliaments, who support the interests and concerns of one side in the conflict..
Recently a young visitor mentioned his friends who admired Elon Musk and held him up as someone to emulate. I was puzzled and asked why young people would want to emulate a man who used an imaginary chainsaw to destroy USAID, the most effective of all American international agencies, founded by John F. Kennedy in 1962. My young friend defended Musk who had insisted USAID was riddled with fraud and waste, although later it was determined by fact-checkers, that these claims relied on misinformation. Musk directed his malign intent upon an agency that had saved hundreds of thousands of children’s lives and contributed to the global eradication of smallpox and related diseases.
Now the West faces a grievous dilemma, as John Mearsheimer repeated on several occasions: The genocide that has taken place 80 years after the expropriation of Palestinian property has alienated the world against, not only Israel, but the entire Western World. Western values, as he notes, have become hollow and with little substance due to the complicity of Europe and North America in providing billions of dollars of weapons that Israel used to destroy Gaza and is continuing to do so on the West Bank and in Lebanon. Without this massive military support Israel would be unable to carry out its destructive policies.
The original British Mandate of 1917 that created Israel was supported by those in Britain who wished to create, what Sir Ronald Storrs, the first British military governor of Jerusalem: “a little loyal Jewish Ulster”. In other words, a colony similar to the British colony planted in Ulster in the 17th century. Four hundred years later that colony is still not free of conflict between an indigenous Irish population and a colony still loyal to Britain. In Palestine, the “little loyal Jewish Ulster” was not very long “loyal” as it rebelled against Britain by bombing the King David Hotel in 1946 and killing 90, mostly British, employees. Following that effort to force the British to leave, “Jewish Ulster” turned its attention to displacing Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba.
The Edward Said Professor at Columbia University, Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian, who expressed astonishment during interviews, at the uncanny similarities between British colonies in Ireland and colonial Zionists who had settled in Palestine.
Some of these similarities included the British transportation of seven hundred of the most notorious Black & Tan paramilitaries directly from Ireland to Israel in 1922. Feared for their brutality in Ireland during the War of Independence, they had left a trail of enduring anger so deep that generations later their cruelties were still vividly remembered. In Palestine the Black & Tans trained the Israel military in similar brutal techniques to be used against the Palestinians.
Photo by Floris Van Cauwelaert on Unsplash
To conclude our exploration of the topic of Empathy, there are spiritual leaders, including the Dalai Lama, who view “empathy as the seed of compassion”, requiring cultivation and development through mindfulness practices. He noted that Buddhism includes the cultivation of: loving-kindness, compassion, empathy for the success of others while also trying to maintain the equanimity of interior balance.
Gandhi believed that a truly religious or moral person is one who understands and feels the suffering of others. For Gandhi, non-violence was an active expression of universal empathy and love. Real empathy is to feel the pain of the oppressed and even to comprehend the oppressor’s motivations. He emphasized personal transformation and self-reflection (self-empathy), arguing that inner discipline, humility, and truthfulness must precede any effort to heal or change society. His empathy extended to animals and the environment; A famous statement by Gandhi was that:“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”.
Juan Cole’s Informed Comment delivers independent, expert analysis of war, the Middle East, climate change, and U.S. foreign policy. Help sustain this work
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