28 Comments

1. Stan:

   I sure thought this would get more bites. Regardless of how flawed the study may have been, or of how superficial the speculation was about the reasons for this waning of empathy.

   The dominant Mine-More-Now ideology, played out on the ever more addictive television in so-called reality tv, as well as in our notion of good (competitive market) ‘economics’? The increasing jadedness of each generation, as cultural productions escalate the spectacle to renew the transient pump? The constructed scarcities built into the system, from grade competition in schools to the job market? The addiction to violence?

   I watched a popular television show yesterday, where the police protagonists de-personized people as ‘perps,’ ‘scumbags,’ and eventually one of the ‘perps’ ‘cried like a little bitch.’ They bullied people, deceived them, humiliated them… and these were the heroes, the role models.

   Empathy has become a character defect in our culture.

   31 May 2010, 7:13 am

2. DeAnander:

   Screenworld Theory…

   if everything is just a spectacle on a screen then there is no need for empathy? because no one is really real except the Me sitting in front of the screen?

   but it seems too easy to blame it all on Modern Times.

   we all know that there have been notoriously unempathic cultures before, or great voids of empathy in the midst of “civilised” (harumph) cultures. it’s not as if Americans were all soft and squishy and sensitive a couple of centuries ago when they were wiping out the indigenes, hanging “witches,” buying and selling slaves, and hunting down runaway wives for bounty. we can’t blame the Nazi moment on video gaming or reality TV.

   are our violent TV shows any different from the Roman Games? people flocked to those, to watch animals and human beings suffer unspeakable fear and pain.

   I do wonder if the brutal police TV shows are a deliberate brainwashing offensive, to condition the populace to accept harsher and more and more authoritarian policing? or is the police narrative a thin pretext for the delivery of pure sadistic spectacle (much as pornographers used to hide behind “education” or “documentary” wrappers to render their artificial titillations respectable)?

   the bizarre thing about (many of) the children of the N Am middle class — to me, based on limited exposure — is their similarity to [a Victorian, Edwardian, or later] stereotype of “slum children” — their small and obscene vocabularies, precocious sexualisation, early exposure to alcohol and drugs, callousness wrt violence and suffering, idolisation of gangsters and thugs. it is as if the middle class has become “poverty culture” in the Hogarthian sense: people are drugging their kids rather than deal with them (Hogarthian mums dosing their crying babes with gin or opium), families are alienated, everyone is more focussed on the desperate search for money than on solidarity or kindness. a sordid and crude society. and yet these are the children of relative privilege!

   I do occasionally wonder about the increasing incidence of autism. is it being overdiagnosed because we are DSM-mad, driven by big pharma’s profit-seeking to find “syndromes” where there is merely eccentricity and variation? or is the nightmare chemical cocktail building up in all our bodies actually derailing the neurological development of our offspring?

   “Empathy has become a character defect” — empathy is a “female” virtue and hence Unmanly. our culture is tipping towards the Spartan mania, though in a weirdly decadent and pseudo-ironic way.

   there’s a recent book called “Nudge” which I haven’t read yet, but as I understand it, the author asserts that people’s decision-making process is very sensitive to well-timed small influences, i.e. a nudge at the right moment can tip the outcome. the author talks about the power of “nudging” rather than domineering, micromanaging or punishing, to allow e.g. governments to encourage saving rather than debt, resource conservation, good public behaviour, etc. but I am thinking about the endless nudge — more of a boot in the backside really — of capitalist advertising (in which I include most media output except indie productions, really) pushing the viewer to be selfish, to consume, to be self-absorbed, to fall into the trance of “product evaluation and choice” (a potentially O/C behaviour for most of us). always nudging us towards self-absorption.

   31 May 2010, 12:12 pm

3. kim sky:

   the title “generation me” just seemed too mean spirited, i almost responded before, but thought, ugh. it kind of reminds me of the articles out there proclaiming the baby-boomers as the me-me, always in the spot-light, always about them type stuff.

   a movement called “generation we” has emerged.

   i live far from the main stream, more than a year ago, i had some exposure in jacksonville, florida, even there i met amazing people. here in the northwest. there are so many people that are so aware, far from a me-me-me type experience.

   unfortunately there are large areas of illiterate people in the states. illiterate because they’ve lived in the suburbs and had minimal exposure to things. then the poor, suffering abuse by police and everyone else just because of that poverty.

   in some ways, to me, people seem more informed that ever. they’re just plain overwhelmed right now, the sledge hammer of a “life cast aside” is swinging awfully close overhead – for all generations! I recently read something to the effect that: the youth of today are facing the worst job market in 50 years.

   materialism – the ruler of contemporary pop-culture for the last how many years now? is slowly becoming replaced with “how can i survive?”

   anyway. things aint easy and they’re gonna get a lot worse before they get better. and education, reaching out, are the things that continue to be de-funded in this society of ours. what are we going to do? first we have to survive.

   we have empathy!

   31 May 2010, 1:07 pm

4. (Boer) Tom:

   Were the police ever any different (than how they are now)? Violence and sadism have always been present – take the (aristocratic) count of the stables (from whence constable) – how many aristocrats did not take great pleasure in slowly (and often sexually) torturing peasants to death, or at least engaging in frequent violence? (Bathory, de Sade, others…) The odd thing about the modern police is that it is primarily recruited from the working classes, who can now take similar ‘pleasures’ from their fellow underlings, who are slightly below them. As I don’t watch TV, I cannot relate strongly, but my limited experience suggests that people who watch that kind of garbage tend to have psychological problems before they get there. Great charity is often a balm for the conscience.

   31 May 2010, 2:58 pm

5. frank:

   In the circles that I find myself, empathy and the constant thought of how to be helpful and useful to others is encouraged and personality traits like selfishness and self-centeredness are discouraged. As part of the group we are constantly reminded to strive towards these qualities, and as long as we remain in close contact with each other I think that to display attitudes and behaviors that border on the more self-absorbed, “look-at-me” type risks ostracism. I avoid the individuals with only themselves in mind. Do I have to interact with them? No, I don’t. I live modestly, in a small apartment and bike to work when possible and try not to overconsume and spend hours climbing, surfing, drawing and talking with others and hope that I can lead by example, so that these youngsters see more value in cultivating a healthy personality and a relationship with others than in getting a new Escalade and a pair of boobs for graduating high school.

   31 May 2010, 4:29 pm

6. latte lenya:

   How the hell does anyone measure empathy, far less for a whole generation?
   The same folks who deduced the weight of a soul (2.1 grams, I think), with their special soul-calipers.
   Science has certainly given us some grand illusions…

   1 June 2010, 8:57 am

7. Jack Thompson:

   I think there are some great points and very interesting questions posed here. I’ve always been horrified and puzzled by the lack of empathy in our culture. When I listen to the right wing folks defend our wars abroad, I can tell that they are not really putting themselves in the shoes of the people who are being terrorized by war. They are not looking deep within and allowing themselves to imagine, what would it be like to lose my children, to live in constant fear, to see brutal and terrible things being done to my loved ones? If they were, they’d look at those who support the wars as if they were completely mad, because they’d realize that nothing is worth resolving problems in that way.

   Looking back, I can see that it was my mother who instilled empathy in me from a very early age. She could see my impulse to cast judgement and distance myself from people without trying to understand their situation. I can see that she was always catching me acting out what I’d learned from the boys in my school, mostly boys who’d not received a drop of compassion in their life and impulsively projected their anger and pain onto those around them. I emulated them, and she very directly challenged me. Even so, I remember concealing my empathy more than I showed it. But I did have it, and that made school more difficult without a doubt. It is easier to turn away from people being bullied and ostracized than it is to stand up for them. And its difficult to walk around with a guilt conscious for every time I didn’t stand up.

   My male who didn’t have houses full of domestic violence, drug and or alcohol abuse, often had dominating masculine personalities in them that didn’t nurture empathy one bit. Obviously, we can discover empathy in own way despite being in environments devoid of it, but I think American culture is showing me that it is rare. I see a lot of empathy that comes with conditions that exclude just about everyone, except for the people who look and believe like we do.

   In the absence of a family instilling empathy in a child at a very young age, was American culture and its popular narratives at any time in history better at instilling empathy in people than it is today?

   If we are not loved and nurtured and taught what empathy feels like and looks like, what are we left with to learn it? I would suspect that TV in America is at its height of sensational callousness and I think it would be silly to deny that it has a big affect on our current generation of young people.

   The book Generation Kill is about our young American generation (raised with the influence of violent video games, internet porn, and TV) marauding through Iraq. Where these kids quicker to commit flagrant atrocities than the kids who were in Vietnam?

   I can’t say because I wasn’t there, but my experience with young people (and young Marines) tells me that it wouldn’t surprise me if they were. Is racism and sexism stronger in young people now that it was in the 50′s and 60′s because of kids access to TV and video games?

   1 June 2010, 2:40 pm

8. Jack Thompson:

   Sorry, that’s many males

   1 June 2010, 2:43 pm

9. xenia:

   teenagers are always low on empathy. my own harshness comes from seeing numerous people who regularly proclaimed how concerned they were about the state of the world, but in fact always ignored the real poor, real immigrants, illegal or not, the ill, the old…even having a slight “deviation” makes most people terribly nervous.

   that being said, i have noticed in my own circle of family and friends that teenagers are a lot more ready to verbally attack older people as well. just two weeks ago, i was called a “perfidious cunt” by my 18-year old niece for expressing criticism with the way she was describing a “dowdy” teacher. my niece grew up in a first world country, was never exposed to war directly and is rather pampered.

   i think that’s the fruit of many violent action movies and ruthless tv shows in which people are encouraged to mock each other viciously and revel when there is physical violence. the parents are working all the time, chasing after money, and buying ever more little electronic (DEAD) gadgets for the kids. all of us grew up with tv and some even with computers, but the developments of the last 20 yrs constitute a big social experiment.

   i’m not surprised by the study. most of my students couldn’t care less about civilians in war zones or handicapped people.

   1 June 2010, 3:55 pm

10. (Boer) Tom:

    I still think that there is a huge misconception about empathy/sympathy. A few examples may help:
    People who don’t feel empathy are autistic, not psychopaths, e.g. Aspergers (anyone who’s got family with autism should be able to relate). Psychopaths and sociopaths have highly developed empathy, and they use it to harm others emotionally and otherwise.

    Young people of today are highly empathetic, and clearly understand racism, especially those who are upper-middle class: they befriend black age-peers (or N-American Indian), take them along to mall stores (as an example), and use the racism of the security guards – the guards follow the non-white young, leaving the white young to shoplift at their leisure – they are quite frank about it – a moderately sociopathic behaviour, but hardly lacking in sympathy/empathy. I doubt there is conceptual coherence in the study.

    2 June 2010, 2:08 am

11. (Boer) Tom:

    I’ll expand a bit: Empathy is the ability to guess another mammal’s (typically a human’s) emotions. Empathy often is confused with kindness and a kind disposition toward others. People with high-functioning autism lack empathy (they cannot read others’ emotions), yet they are as likely to be kind (or cruel) as people who have empathy, if they have learned these behaviours – when they are cruel toward animals, it is often a modest cruelty, with a near-childlike innocence – they need to be taught that these mammals (and other humans) undergo the same emotions they do, and what the manifestations of these emotions are – empathy is a (learned) cerebral activity for them.

    In order to sustain a state of Stockholm syndrome in a victim, a highly developed empathy is needed – too much (gratuitous) violence (or too little) may fail – likewise with insults and devastating arguments (e.g. in the course of a political discussion with someone who does not consider one’s arguments). The hollywood depiction of the thug who knows when exactly to murder the person he is defrauding suggests an extremely sensitive empathy – quite reasonable, actually. I cannot imagine that abusive men lack empathy – they lack a kind disposition, and have a resentment toward women (not emotional distance from their mothers, but rather suppressed resentment).

    2 June 2010, 3:12 am

12. Stan:

    Perhaps I can re-state my hypothesis. Good-will has become a character defect. (:

    Empathy/good-will is generally seen as something shared by one’s own community, and refused to those outside it. That’s the subversive content of the parable of the Samaritan, who was the good-will protagonist in a story told to people for whom the Samaritan was an enemy person.

    Not uncommon for friends, couples, families, neighborhoods, etc, to see themselves as “us against the world.”

    I think the remark about narcissism is on point… when we watch spectacles of cruelty, the “I” that sees the spectacle is the only thing meaningful.

    3 June 2010, 6:34 am

13. Ms Kitty:

    Current media culture is certainly lacking more and more in empathy and sells torture as entertainment.

    But, my daughter and three friends just bicycled across the country and found that most people are very kind and generous. Many times they were offered meals and housing. The selfish exchange involved a sharing of stories and it seems that a lot of people are starved for real stories from real people, not more of the garbage that is in the media.

    I think it is a huge mistake to confuse empathy with sociopathic behavior. Empathy means being able to really imagine how someone feels as though you were that person and in some people to actually feel those same feelings. If I hurt you, I too am hurt. If I love you, I too am loved. It reflects a sense of connectedness, not of a calculating understanding that helps a hunter understand it’s prey better.

    4 June 2010, 6:23 am

14. (Boer) Tom:

    @MS Kitty
    I don’t think that there is any evidence to suggest that different mechanisms are at work. Perhaps for the majority of humans, kind behaviour is the normal response and cruelty the learned response to empathy, but it strikes me that it is exactly the same mechanism that would explain a predator’s behaviour. Can we develop it into a falsifiable hypothesis, to test the matter?

    4 June 2010, 1:23 pm

15. Uncle $cam:

    My experience, began on campus (as a non -traditional )around the same time wherein, I had a hard time relating to the incoming freshmen on a social level, in that, it became increasingly harder (in general) to communication with them, unless of course, it had something to do with shopping, hip hop, or sports. I believe it to be clinical, systemic, and god damned methodical. Of course, I could be wrong, however, the results are the same. It would indeed, benefit those whom would rule us either way. Part of the rise of ‘Rove’s Republic’ calls for saturated ideology, and rule by chaos, incremental and generational dumbing down of the citizen consumer. Mandate. Meaning. Money.

    4 June 2010, 2:15 pm

16. Uncle $cam:

    Addendum:

    Also see, Capitalism VS Democracy… RS’s article entitled, Rove Rides Again

    4 June 2010, 2:34 pm

17. Ms Kitty:

    I don’t understand how really being able to imagine another’s pain to the point of it making you feel ill relates in any way to someone who gets pleasure from causing pain in others. If I see photos of pelicans and cormorants covered in oil unable to breathe, it makes me ill. It does not make me want to make more birds suffer. How is that in any way related to someone who wants the same animals to suffer? The same is true of torture as entertainment on TV and in movies. I can’t watch it. My imagination runs too fast with what that must feel like. I get no pleasure from it.

    So who, … (Stan, sorry Stan! I really admire almost everything you do and say, but I really think you are confusing empathy with something else )…says empathy is only for those in your group? That is not empathy, that is something else, fear, racism or whatever exclusionary delusion someone wants to concoct to justify privileges or hurting or taking something from someone. It is most certainly not empathy.

    And Uncle $cam, true ‘Rove’s Republic” is about creating masses of idiot consumers, and they have been doing that since Reagan told everyone their patriotic duty was to go shopping, but this next generation knows they aren’t going to have squat to buy anything with anyway. Take heart, what you said has been true in the past, but I am noticing a change towards more awareness in the last few classes graduating from high school. I may be living in a bubble but, seriously, these kids want to make a difference.

    & $cam, right again! As our government moves farther away from democracy to corporatocracy we will see more and more people confused by mixed messages about how they think their government is here to serve them, when really it is about serving corporations and their needs. They own the voting machines, tabulate the results, they have the same rights as citizens and can now donate freely without pretense to the candidate in their pockets. It is pathetic how the US government is taking orders from a foreign national corporation and allowing them to soft pedal this horrible environmental catastrophe into legally safe avenues to decrease their risk rather than save the Gulf of Mexico. The same is true of defense contractors and their cronies working overtime to keep us in perpetual war. It is so profitable. Back to empathy. Do corporations have empathy? Creo que no.

    Tom, what in the hell are you talking about?

    8 June 2010, 9:57 pm

18. Morris:

    Gotta love Ms. Kitty. The voice of sanity.

    9 June 2010, 1:05 am

19. Hooligan:

    Here’s a thought. I am not religeous but I was raised in the Roman Catholic faith. Say what you want about religion, pro or con, but it imparted a set of values: kindness, respect, tolerance and yes, empathy. Religion, in particular
    Christianity, has been stripped from the public square over the last 30 years,and
    has been replaced by a harsh secularism that is based on materialism and selfishness. I grew up in the 1950s and 60s. People back then were kinder and far more polite. Foul language was not tolerated back then but today it is standard language. We are a far coarser people today. I often think of how religion, most notably Christianity was brutally suppressed in the former Soviet Union and state sponsored atheism was its replacement. And that society collapsed after a mere 70 years. I guess we can refer to “secularism” as the new atheism.

    As a young man I turned against religion largely due to what I perceived as its hypocrisy. Looking back now, I realise that there was far less hypocrisy in religion and society back then as opposed to our present “secular” society. And like the Soviet Union, I believe the United States as we know it will soon collapse. Ironically, what we will end up with will be something resembling the old Soviet Union. Being a student of the Russian Revolution and the Cival War which followed, I do not look forward to it.

    15 June 2010, 2:24 am

20. (Boer) Tom:

    @Ms Kitty
    Sorry, I was distracted. Some people might experience that sickness and want to end the violence they perceive. Others (perhaps through training) may experience that sickness, suppress it somewhat so that it is not overwhelming, and use it to manipulate others. Stated another way, the response (illness, manipulation) is partly modifiable; it can be used to manipulate. To understand why, here is some relevant psychological literature – I’ve modified myself back and forth using this method into and out of psychopathic/manipulative behavioural tendencies. As such, I cannot believe that separate physical psychological (i.e. brain) processes are at work.

    16 June 2010, 9:54 am

21. (Boer) Tom:

    @Ms Kitty
    To further motivate my claim, consider most psychopaths – they tend to be whiny and to suffer persecution complexes from time to time (and makes all sorts of implicit and explicit threats while they are at it). John Edgar Hoover is a typical example, but the same can be said about e.g. my next door neighbour (who occasionally steals my stuff, beats his s.o.’s dog and abuses his parents), my one late uncle (who would beat my aunt and my cousins), and several others I’ve met over the years. They tend to alternate between the whiny state and a glib, arrogant state. To the extent that they successfully displace responsibility for their actions and are getting material rewards for their actions, they tend to be glib. When their actions are being exposed and condemned, they get whiny. This behaviour seems an obvious outcome of being aware on an instrumental level of the consequences of one’s actions, but suppressing the embarrassment of moral responsibility (which is somewhat easier when one is the perpetrator) – even the whine may in part be due to the discomfort of seeing others suffer.

    16 June 2010, 1:33 pm

22. (Boer) Tom:

    @Hooligan – I’m not sure. Observe that in that time, you had forced sterilisations of aboriginals, genocidal wars that make the Iraq invasion look civilised, torture, McCarthyism, etc. To be sure, it has been religious people who’ve done much of the civilising (to use Chomsky’s terminology). The majority of the populace has become more civilised (decent), but the power structures have become more indecent/thuggish.

    16 June 2010, 4:58 pm

23. Tess:

    @Ms. Kitty,

    [quote]I think it is a huge mistake to confuse empathy with sociopathic behavior. Empathy means being able to really imagine how someone feels as though you were that person and in some people to actually feel those same feelings. If I hurt you, I too am hurt. If I love you, I too am loved. It reflects a sense of connectedness, not of a calculating understanding that helps a hunter understand it’s prey better.[/quote]

    Beautifully stated. Your statements remind me of the 11th Step Prayer of AA, or its original source, The Prayer of St. Francis.

    @DeAnander,

    [quote]“Empathy has become a character defect” — empathy is a “female” virtue and hence Unmanly.[/quote]

    YES!

    @Tom,

    Stealing Ms. Kitty’s question:

    [quote]Tom, what in the hell are you talking about?[/quote]

    17 June 2010, 2:19 am

24. Tess:

    @All,

    Sorry about the HTML commands used instead of quotes. I think you all understand.

    17 June 2010, 2:21 am

25. Marcilla Elizabeth Smith:

    Two clarifications: 1) the square brackets are usually bbcode, but this board uses standard html, so changing the square brackets to angle brackets should make your tags work properly, and 2) “empathy” is an ability like reading. Just because two people can read a book doesn’t mean they will use that knowledge to do the same things. An *empathetic* person knows when you feel good and when you feel bad. If they are *sympathetic* (as most people are), their feelings will be pulled toward yours as if by magnetism. Thus, sympathetic people will want you to feel good. But as with magnetism, if the poles are reversed, they will want the opposite. Since they still have *empathy* (and can “read” you), this helps their cause. Does this make more sense?

    17 June 2010, 7:39 am

26. (Boer) Tom:

    @Tess
    Consider Hoover’s comments on MLK when MLK pointed out his collaboration with Southern racists – suddenly MLK was a ‘pathological liar’ and ‘the most dangerous negro’ – JEH was being condemned, and he whined about it (albeit whining with social power). Stated another way, they talk as if they are the wronged party, and feel hurt by the accusation. The same goes for most psychopaths. At the same time, it is worthwhile (imao) to have a sympathetic understanding of psychopaths, given the harm that they do, so as to deal with them effectively.

    So that takes us back to the question of psychology. If you wish to experience the psychopathic mindset, you could probably achieve it in two steps: First, find a physical discomfort associated with the unpleasantness you experience in seeing e.g. those birds suffer – this will typically be in the stomache or solar plexus (e.g. butterflies), but may occur e.g. in the head as a headache. Concentrate on that physical sensation for a prolonged period (e.g. half an hour). During this concentration, the muscles in that area may relax, and as a consequence, you might experience your pulse in the place of concentration. The discomfort’s intensity and location may change. If that happens, you may follow it. At some point, you may experience something akin to pins-and-needles (e.g. when you sit on the ground too long) in the place of discomfort. Continue concentrating on the pins-and-needles sensation until it subsides, and any remaining physical sensations, and you’re done with the first step.

    Second, anger yourself with what I’ve said above, and/or with the psychopaths’ behaviour. You should be able to find physical discomforts/sensations on which to repeat step 1, so do that. Now try a bit of modest psychopathic behaviour, and work through any remaining sensations with the method of step 1. You are now a bona fide psychopath, and you should be able to use your sense of empathy to manipulate others; the experience of empathy is probably no longer overwhelming – a bit of a rush.

    You might find that that isn’t really what you want with your life, and it may be a bit emotionally suffocating. To go back, you must first make that decision that you don’t want to be an unethically manipulating thug, and start catching yourself manipulating others unethically. This must become a habit, and can take a week or so – try to avoid the temptation (the trying is important – don’t fail to attempt, but failing to resist isn’t important). At some point, you’ll likely get headaches (or butterflies in the stomache, etc.), and you can repeat step 1 on those – you’ll feel kind of mellow once you’ve changed that.

    17 June 2010, 9:37 am

27. Tess:

    @Marcilla,

    But as with magnetism, if the poles are reversed, they will want the opposite. Since they still have *empathy* (and can “read” you), this helps their cause. Does this make more sense?

    Yes, it does.

    And, thanks with the tagging solution.

    17 June 2010, 5:43 pm

28. Marcilla Elizabeth Smith:

    My pleasure =-) I often find myself translating from English to English. Having been through gender transition, I have found I have a particular faculty with translating mantalk to womintalk and back again

    18 June 2010, 8:21 am

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