The Empathy Election?

 

For the first two-thirds of his book The Age of Empathy, the late primatologist Frans De Waal describes the observations and experiments that show that contrary to the conventional wisdom both within and outside science, empathy and its various building blocks exist in primate species and even in other mammals.  Empathy is not based wholly on human imaginative projection.  It is emotional and above all it is physical.

De Waal goes step by step through the research, and late in the book summarizes the findings and implications: "...empathy is part of a heritage as ancient as the mammalian line.  Empathy engages brain areas that are more than a hundred million years old.  The capacity arose long ago with motor mimicry [imitation] and emotional contagion, after which evolution added layer after layer, until our ancestors not only felt what others felt, but understood what others might want or need.

The full capacity seems put together like a Russian doll.  At its core is an automated process shared with a multitude of species, surrounded by outer layers that fine-tune its aim and reach.  Not all species possess all layers: Only a few take another's perspective, something we are masters at.  But even the most sophisticated layers of the doll normally remain firmly tied to its primal core."

The research De Waal cites (prominently including his own) is fairly new, because science has its own dogmas.  Animals were studied for what was assumed they were all about: hierarchy, competition, aggression.  All of that is real but incomplete.  As De Waal writes in an earlier publication, scientists did not observe cooperation, conciliation or empathy among primates or other species because they weren't looking for them.

Even empathy in humans is derided in dogma that's prevailed for a century or two, which maintain that "selfish genes" rule ruthlessly, that survival depends on selfishness and dominance, and wishy-washy concepts like empathy are dangerous outgrowths of unrealistic feelings, mostly feminine and definitely low-T.  Darwin's natural selection was immediately distorted into a personal survival of the fittest ethic.

It's no surprise how these dogmas became dogmas.  They were promoted and supported by the people that most benefit from them: the overlords, the wealthy and powerful, who legitimize their own dominance by convincing underlings that this is the nature of things: this is nature red in tooth and class.

 De Waal also goes into animal research that studies concepts of fairness and reciprocity.  Even in some hierarchical primate social groups, these must be honored or the ruling alpha and high ranking females could lose power.  There are behaviors that clearly aim to smooth out inequalities.  Sharing and the rules of sharing are also important. De Waal links these concepts of fairness to empathy, which makes intuitive sense.

In the last third of this book, De Waal looks at current society, especially America, in light of these findings.  In a section called "The Dark Side," he defines the psychopath as lacking in the feelings of empathy, who is interested only in defeating others.  Though he wrote this in 2009, he describes leaders we recognize: "A lot of trouble in the world can be traced to people whose Russian doll is an empty shell....[T]hey are intellectually capable of adopting another's viewpoint without any of the accompanying feelings.  They successfully fake empathy.  Whenever they achieve power...their disdain for truth and morality allows them to manipulate others into carrying out their evil plans."

How are they successful?  De Waal continues: "Their authority overrides the better judgment of underlings so that sometimes an entire nation, for example Germany in the previous century, falls for the cruel fantasies of a charismatic psychopath."  

I would add another phenomenon we've seen and are seeing more: people who serve them and essentially use them for their own selfish ends--they want power for their perverse ideologies, and especially a piece of the corruption.  But there is one more element that De Waal mentions, and it is important because it follows from his premise of natural empathy:

"What makes it so hard to wrap our heads around this mental disorder is that we can't imagine being immune to the suffering of others."

This could help account for the stunned response of so many Americans, and the denial indulged in by Chaos supporters, especially in the early months of this administration.  Is it really possible that an American President could cut off aid that would essentially kill thousands if not millions of vulnerable children?  Could that be true?  Isn't there another explanation for the cruelty and injustice visited upon human beings--men, women and children--in this country, now vilified instead of described as immigrants and asylum-seekers? For people living in fear of being snatched off the streets or worse by a brutal and incompetent but heavily armed army protected by the highest federal authority?  What about millions of people facing suddenly denied medical care?  

Chaos and his minions have used the time-tested method of what is today commonly called "othering" to short-circuit any sort of empathy or sense of unfairness regarding these victims of official cruelty.  It is true that research shows that in primates as in humans, empathy and fairness are more easily extended to familiar members of one's own social group.  So Chaos evokes racial and class prejudices as well as fear of the unknown stranger, to create what used to be called--and can still usefully be called--dehumanization.

But now nearly everyone knows someone who can no longer afford medical care, just as they don't have to look far to see victims of high prices from tariffs and war.  Here and there the immigrant groups being targeted and vilified are well known in particular towns and cities.  People depend on their work, and see them as contributors to their communities.  That's why the Minneapolis response was so potent and had to be taken out of fickle public attention: because they said over and over that what they were doing was defending their neighbors.  They enacted empathy, every single day.

By now perhaps more Americans are able to face the fact that the ruling party and the ruling class, led by Chaos, is "immune to the suffering of others."  And if this November turns out to be a wave election, as it appears it well might, it may be because people vote, not just their particular self-interest, but to  bring fairness back to the social order, to fight back against callous inequality, to revive the ethic summarized in the phrase "you'd do the same for me."  This might be an empathy election. 

That would be a triumph for democracy in several senses.  For there is another implication of empathy as a natural state (not always dominant and not all the time, as De Waal describes) that he does not discuss directly. It has often been argued that without the authority of a religion or a king to transmit the moral laws given by a transcendent deity, there would be only cruelty, selfishness, chaos and immorality. 

 But if the sense of fairness, reciprocity and the constituents of empathy exist in nature, this cannot be so. There is no absolute need for artificial centers of authority in order for humans to behave ethically, fairly and with kindness and mercy. If ethics and what we call morality are rooted in nature, we don't absolutely require religious authority to impose them, let alone threaten us with eternal hellfire to force us to behave. We can always use models of behavior, guidance, inspiration and definition, and societies need some rules to fulfill the reciprocity and equity we recognize within.  But empathy is part of who we are.  We can assert that and express it in the sacred American ceremony of individuals voting.