Words often change over time in meaning and in the reaction they trigger. A while back, for example, I pointed out in a column that “disrupt” once caused negative reactions, while today “disrupt” is often used positively.
Today I’m writing about a word that has always created positive feelings but today for some people is negative: empathy. Yes, believe it or not, some prominent people believe empathy is bad.
It may come as a surprise for many readers that empathy—the attempt to put yourself in another person’s shoes and feel what they are feeling—can be for anyone a “dirty word.” But, believe it or not, that seems to be the case.
Here’s what one prominent person said about this trait. “The fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy.”
That’s what Elon Musk said to Joe Rogan in one of Rogan’s podcasts. Musk went even further when he said, “We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on.” He went on to call it “the empathy exploit,” saying that “they” (whoever “they” are) are “exploiting a bug in western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
I can’t assume to know what Musk is thinking, deep down. I do know It’s easy for people to promote an idea that benefits themselves if they don’t consider how it might affect others, especially if their idea affects others negatively.
For example, if I live in a single-story home, it would be easy for me to encourage the federal government to give a tax break to people who live in single-story houses and increase taxes on people who live in two-story houses, provided I don’t think about, or have empathy for, people in two-story houses. If I have empathy, I might have second thoughts.
Well, given the fact that politicians, or people who think they’re politicians like Musk, often act primarily in their own self-interest, I shouldn’t be surprised that Musk thinks this way.
It’s mind boggling, however, that there are Christian preachers who think empathy is bad. One such preacher, Ben Garret, said in one of his podcasts, according to The Guardian newspaper, “Do not commit the sin of empathy. This snake is God’s enemy and yours, too.”
Another Christian preacher, Allie Beth Stuckey, wrote in a tweet, “Toxic empathy is in complete opposition to God’s Word and in support of the most satanic, destructive ideas ever conjured up.”
I don’t know what Bible these preachers are reading or which gospels they might be referring to, but as I read the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth was all about empathy. Think about Jesus’ parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, the many miraculous healings he did for people who were otherwise ignored by others, or his conversations with people like Martha, Mary, Zaccheus and the woman at the well.
I was encouraged when I read a different opinion by another Christian preacher, George Demacopoulos. the Co-Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University (a Catholic college),
“What Musk doesn’t seem to understand,” he wrote, “is that there might be no greater force for good in the modern world than the millennia-long Christian commitment to empathy.”
“Since the advent of Christianity,” he continued, “empathy has motivated remarkable innovations and social progress. Christian empathy led to the creation of the first hospitals in the world. Christian empathy (eventually) led to the abolition of slavery. Christian empathy led to the formation of institutions that care for the elderly and orphaned.”
So I guess I’m not crazy. Empathy is good, not bad. But apparently, we are living in a world where words can mean anything, whatever someone wants them to mean, in order to suit their perspective on life.
Perhaps this has always been one aspect of the human condition. In 1871, for example, the noted thinker with a similar philosophy to Mr. Musk, Humpty Dumpty, is quoted by Lewis Caroll in his novel, “Through the Looking Glass,” as saying, “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
Mr. Dumpty, however, is questioned by Alice (a would-be journalist from “Alice in Wonderland.”) She asks, “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
To which Dumpty responds, “The question is, which is to be master—that’s all.”
Lewis Caroll, more than 150 years ago, must have been something of a psychic, predicting how some folks would think, talk and act in 2025.
Or we could go back to 1949, with the publication of “1984,” a novel by British author George Orwell predicting a country 35 years later ruled by authoritarian leaders.
In that book Orwell has the character Syme (who reflected the politics of his political leaders) declare, “We’re destroying words–scores of them, hundreds of them, every day.”
The character goes on to say, “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words,” in a form of language he calls “NEWspeak.” He continues, “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?”
Orwell was following in the tradition of his fellow British author, Aldous Huxley, who in his novel “Brave New World” (published in 1932) also wrote about the intentional misuse of language by people in authority.
Orwell was off by a few years, however, in his 1949 novel. Instead of seeing a strange new world in 1984, he was apparently predicting a world in 2025.
Maybe it’s because I am an English major. Maybe it’s because I use a dictionary. Maybe it’s because I’m a journalist at heart. But to me words MEAN something specific and can’t be manipulated to mean something else.
In any case, I will continue to be vigilant when people use a word, like empathy, so egregiously erroneously that I have no choice but to vehemently protest.
John Spevak’s email is john.spevak@gmail.com
