Empathy as a hidden motor of human history

This was a good read. I enjoyed the different take on the children of WWII. I also noted the parallels with the stolen generation of Aboriginals in Australia that was mentioned in the article. The stolen generation had good and bad points.

While it's not a short article, it doesn't do the topic the justice it deserves.

There are many overlapping concepts with competing priorities: ethics, morality, benevolence, empathy, political correctness. Some of these (to my mind) are less desirable. For example, political correctness rejects one set of prejudices and replaced them with another set of prejudices. Alternatively, benevolence talks about the welfare of all and is far more logical and meaningful to me. I've never agreed that people deserve different treatment based on gender or skin colour (which is the heart of political correctness to do so, eg. 50% of women MUST be in IT).

The article takes several swipes at Peter Singer without explaining his views adequately. I feel that Singer believes in prioritising where best to help. You do that by applying a level of logic to empathy. While this doesn't work for some, it provides a basis for collectively prioritising effort and attention for the broader community.

There is a lot of confusion around empathy. I suspect the hateful and intolerant campaign against Matt Taylor for his shirt was driven by people with good intentions who believe themselves to be empathetic. Yet, their behaviour lacked empathy and is more aptly described as intolerance and bullying. I lead this back to Singer's point of view about applying logic and reason with empathy. The author of the article talks about the need for both and appears to discount Singer as having no empathy, just reason.

Ultimately, any empathy that is applied equally (eg. Across genders, skin colours, sexual orientations, etc ) is a good thing. The reasoning is also helpful as it avoids morality judgements and allows us to prioritise our efforts.

> One of the best programmes on offer (...). A class of primary-aged children ‘“adopts” a real live baby for the year (I’m not joking). Every few weeks the baby visits the class with a parent and programme instructor. The kids sit around the baby and start talking about it – Why is she crying? Why is she laughing, or looking back to her mother when reaching for the toy? The children are trying to empathise – to step into the baby’s shoes.

Many do this without needing government programmes. It's called family: siblings and cousins.

Reinventing the wheel?

> Marx said that the fundamental driver of human history was the conflict between classes. Darwin believed it was the evolutionary struggle for survival. Others have claimed that the most important force for change is the clash of civilisations, the rise of political ideologies and religious movements, or advances in technology. A growing number of thinkers, however, are starting to recognise that empathy is an essential missing ingredient in these traditional narratives.

This is misstated; students of evolution believe that it is precisely the evolutionary struggle for survival that underlies all else--namely the clash of civilizations, rise of political ideologies, advances in technology, etc., AND empathy.

Yes, it is nice that the "Evacuation produced an unprecedented explosion of mass empathic understanding, by enabling rural people to step into the lives of the urban poor." But all that poverty and suffering existed long before this reaction. Why did it take the evacuation for people to step out of their bubbles of privilege? It literally took shoving the reality of these children into these people's lives, forcibly popping their bubbles.

Self-serving cognitive dissonance is empathy's arch enemy. It is equally if not more powerful. Sadly, it is only overcome when things get so bad people cannot avert their eyes to the suffering of others. Even then (e.g. Rwanda) empathy too often loses.

This is not history. This is now. Unequal and racist criminal justice. Growing economic inequality that feeds on the exploitation and commoditization of people. The tech industry's living in a bubble of good times and power, building frivolous and self-indulgent products while people are being gentrified out of their homes. The lucky 10% putting their already privileged kids in private or effectively private schools, abandoning the children who need it the most to ever more neglected public schools.

[EDIT: I knew this would be an unpopular comment. Started with 4 upvotes, then two downvotes, the latter confirming my point of view. What other reason is there for a downvote other than my calling out selfishness (who can deny that?) and cognitive dissonance? Any down-voter care (have the guts) to comment?]

Yeah, I think people can sometimes improve their empathy. I remember taking that test on eye expressions a few years back and I flunked it horribly, basically doing no better than random. This October I realized that loneliness had started to seriously bother me (no idea why, I was always okay with loneliness before) and I made a birthday resolution to be closer to other people no matter what it takes. Today I retook the test and actually did better than average (28/36). Moreover, the right answers were completely obvious most of the time. I guess I had the circuitry after all, it's just a matter of using it. Though of course for other people it might be different.

I am struck by a certain level of irony that this article exists on the front page of hn at the same time as a blog post from a university president telling students to effectively 'suck it up'.

Empathy, and its role in design[1], is becoming an increasingly important area of study in engineering/STEM education. Being able to understand one's user (or users) especially when they may differ greatly from you is hugely beneficial to effective design of any product or system. It is implicitly represented in most of the modern startup movements (e.g. lean startup) that understanding your customer is vital to market formation or market progress.

We seem to avoid using the empathy phrase but it is ever-present.

[1]http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09544820902875033