Western Empathy
Is Our Greatest Virtue being Used Against Us?
This Thanksgiving I am thankful for Western culture and it’s last best hope, the United States. But I know it’s not enough to be thankful.
Among the nations of the world, the United States is the youngest and most vulnerable. The shadow of ancient animal chaos- the cycles of kingdoms and despotism — of various forms of collectivism, is abusing its most promising child. This nascent nation stepped out of line and asked: What if we created a society designed to protect, rather than violate, the rights of its individuals?
The history of humanity has been one of conquering — and if we look at the darkest parts of our hearts, it is easy to see why we feel so comfortable in hating each other. It is hard-wired. Reptilian. But something emerged when a few of our ancestors were peaceful enough to reflect on their world with deep thought — they began to conquer animal instincts and superstitions that they relied on for so long. The fears that leveraged emotion to divide us- if they remain, we will not. Like Carl Sagan said, they lit a candle in the dark and found science. To delve into the nature of their world — and then, the nature of themselves, pondered meaning — human meaning.
In that dark tunnel there was a glimmer of truth, they began to realize that each of us has an inherent claim to life, and that the only way to foster the best in us, was to respect that claim and remove our animal hatred- to rework society so that force was removed from our interactions and reason was fostered. They had enough stability to cherish the phenomena of mutually beneficial interactions- to see individuals outside of their immediate groups as full of potential, not as people to be conquered and stepped over, but as friends deserving of respect- to have empathy. And to expect autonomy and agency- civility. In a world of barbaric turmoil, pillaging, and pack mentalities- they saw the future. Our ancestors started to care for one another so much, that they began to dream about societies that would reflect this ideology.
This light continued to be stoked. A small contention of people hoping to escape religious persecution and fearing the corruption from old ways of thinking onto their children, traveled into the void of the sea and landed in North America. And soon after, liberated themselves completely from tyranny. Though in their hearts and customs the old world remained.
The American experiment began. And with it the very first society in all of human history which was founded solely to protect individual rights. Imperfect, and in many ways directly violating its own principles, but uniquely good in its potential, in its fragile light.
The evolution of Western culture further refined itself in the American land despite its barbarous baggage — marred by the carry-over evils of inhuman history they continued to have slaves, corrupted by theocratic Manifest Destiny they continued a war with the native people that lasted 200 years, and Rockefeller appeals to a newborn utilitarian collectivism established early corporatism, but embers of enlightenment hope galvanized half of the nation to risk their lives to recognize the dignity of their fellow humans. Their foundation in empathy led to the fight for women’s suffrage- recognizing the rightful place all human beings regardless of their immutable characteristics have in this great experiment. They set an example, the light growing into a great beacon in the fog — inspiring the French revolution, and a new obsession across the Western world with human dignity. But now we face a turning point.
Around the world, atrocities still flourish — human trafficking, slavery, societies with re-education camps for ethnic minorities, government sponsored genocide, 1984 style surveillance societies and the rise of theocracy. All the while, we have been neutered by a world which has perversely blamed all evil on the United States, and assigns all good to itself. The empires we thought we escaped, we now know entangle us and have entangled us since the beginning, perverting the concept of human rights in order to siphon power and continue their expansion masked in righteousness. [In a smaller scale- I have seen brutes feign social advocacy while profiting off of division, pointing the finger- projecting their dark heart, or in many cases showcasing they have none. The same kind of sleaze Malcom X decried in progressive elites who mutated their Jim Crow legacy into welfare statism.] And the very virtue that spurred the good among us to enshrine and extend the rights of fellow human beings, that great empathy, was the chink in our armor.
Like the child who acquiesces, who sees himself as potentially faulty and so assumes guilt, he makes himself a target for bullies to press further. If he had stood up for his right, for what he knows is good in him, like so many remorseless nations around the world pretend, he might have saved himself. Guilt works exceedingly well on the empathetic. In this way we have been so convinced of our evil that we are destroying ourselves- assigning our darkness to some inherent quality, we leave the light to fade. We implicitly agree that all cultures are equal — cultures that violate rights, that would snuff out the individual for the group. Cultures whose governments are targeting ethnic minorities and censoring the powerless among their people. Cultures that define themselves based on ethnicity, and yet we are told we are a nation of racists. We have lost the self-respect to recognize what defines us. We have become agreeable to the re-write of history — weak. Fading.
It is not enough to be thankful. We have to recognize what makes us good and stand up. Not all heroes perform superhuman feats of strength or prowess — the perfect can be the enemy of the good, sometimes just standing up for truth, being a candle in a world of darkness. That is enough to stop evil. The silence of Germans during Hitler’s rise preceded 10 million deaths, the silence of Russians at the dawn of the USSR preceded 10 times as many. They are not to blame, collectivism is to blame, but evil cannot survive in the light — if enough of us care, we can save this experiment from the encroaching dark from within and without. Stand for what you know is right and elucidate the true source of suffering- and true source of salvation.
I heard that we spend our entire lives trying to save our parents from the tragedy of their past. Maybe that’s true. I have seen the virtue of empathy, but I have also seen it used to destroy — I have seen how empathy and emotion, unchecked, can corrupt the soul. How monsters are created in good faith. Empathy can be used against us, and used by us to get power. I cannot change the past, but maybe I can help the future. The more I have studied history- the more I respected what the United States meant- what our ancestors did to save us from the parts of us dominated by emotion. What that experiment created- a nation powerful enough to rise up against the old world that spawned inhuman collectivist empires that slaughtered hundreds of millions of innocents in the 20th century. A nation that despite torrents of vitriol from the ancient world-eating storm of chaos, a world of animal emotion and hate- desperately protected its flame and sought to prove that submission to the state, to the king, to fellow men was wrong. Empathy is thus our greatest virtue, but also our greatest weakness. Do not let what is good in yourself, or your society, be destroyed. Do not let anyone leverage your empathy against you — do not be complicit in creating hate, see the light in people — focus on the light. The good.
“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”
-Aristotle
While we indoctrinate our children to believe that every culture is equally viable, our enemies force dogma upon their young — and in a fight between a people groomed to let their empathy be used to guilt them into submission and those imbued with vicious conviction- just as in the battle between the White Shirts and Red Shirts- those with conviction, who are fighting for something not just against something, they will win. We must find our conviction.
It is a cruel irony that our empathy may be our downfall- and subsequently the destruction of the only nation whose spirit of freedom still burns bright enough to inspire the world. It is our responsibility to clarify the process that led to the results- not to redistribute our success to cultures that slaughter their own people. We must respect our sovereignty, create true allies and stop propping up our bullies as protectorates.
If we truly care for the future of the world- we must harden ourselves against the wind. We have to protect the candle in the darkness of the world.
