index

Behavior not empathy

In my last post I spent a significant number of words pointing out the Amazon is severely lacking in empathy and care for humans.

I would like to argue a partial flipside to this, against empathy as the thing that matters.

You see, the issue is that empathy on the face of it is not about how you treat other humans. It is about how you feel in response to others having emotions. You can still choose to disregard care and treat your fellow human badly, even if you feel the suffering they feel as you do wrongly to them.

Empathy is not what matters. What matters is not hurting others. Empathy is just a shortcut to being less likely to hurt others because you know the emotions you are causing in them by hurting them.

Not all people feel empathy. Some people don't feel it at all. We call them psychopaths. Psychopaths still matter. They are still humans who can choose to treat others properly, even if they don't feel the suffering they could cause to others.

Empathy is not either on or off. There is a spectrum of how intensely people feel empathy. If you feel it less so that is not any excuse to treat others poorly.

There is a further thing. We often excuse people for being angry because terrible things happened to them. This makes sense to us because it is harder to choose to do the right thing when we are hurt, angry, etc. If our own mental and emotional state is messed up, it takes more self control to behave well.

None of that justifies doing wrong to others. We must choose to treat others with care. We must train ourselves to treat others well even when we are at our worst. Even the best of us have times when we are in a state that could rightly be described as deranged. That's being human.

But even in a terrible state, we can learn and practice to treat each other well. I'll step right up and say that I am bad at this. But I am learning, and I am working to be better.

You too can do this. You can choose to care about your fellow humans and spend your life working to improve life for everyone.

There is more to doing what is right than not harming others. We should work to do the best for everyone, not just ourselves. It is also not sufficient to only do right by those we care about. The measure of quality for behavior is not to help those we care about and harm those we don't.

Avoiding harm is only the beginning. The measure of humanity is doing right for all, regardless of whether we feel they deserve it or not.

I wouldn't put it past Amazon to add "Have Empathy" to their LPs. Because improving the world is not their goal.