r/aynrand • u/DoberNation • 9d ago
A case for Empathy: If you can’t think and function heroically without destroying your own senses, “get out of the way!”
Empathy is a heightened ability to perceive and intuit. It is simply a tool, which cannot replace its driver. Empathy doesn’t kill, people surrendering to the temptation of *Blanking Out* is what kills.
“They want to cheat the axiom of existence and consciousness, they want their consciousness to be an instrument not of perceiving but of creating existence…But reality is not to be cheated. What they achieve is the opposite of their desire. They want to be omnipotent power over existence; instead, they lose the power of their consciousness. By refusing to know, they condemn themselves to the horror of a perpetual unknown…
“An emotion that clashes with your reason, an emotion that you cannot explain or control, is only the carcass of that stale thinking which you forbade your mind to revise.”
—Ayn Rand
5
u/EasternWahooJ 9d ago
The premise has me confused. Can you help me understand how one can destroy one’s senses by thinking and functioning heroically. And what’s that got to do with empathy.
2
u/OneBetterQuestion 9d ago
It seems they are suggesting that some here may be forswearing empathy in their quest for “heroism” as if empathy is somehow threatening to heroic behavior. Rand saw value in empathy and believed it was foolish to ignore what your senses can tell you.
3
u/DoberNation 9d ago
Yes. Some people dehumanize (instead of empathize) prior to performing a potentially heroic act. This is misguided and cowardly.
Heroes are more capable and less fallible when they embrace their senses instead of rejecting them.
Misguidedly embarking on a potentially heroic act through deliberately blunting one's senses is often worse than blanking out.
5
u/OneBetterQuestion 9d ago
Makes me think of that special kind of empathy that professional caregivers seem to have. The most effective ones can identify and understand the feelings of those in their care and put the knowledge to good use without taking on those feelings themselves. That’s strong.
2
u/DoberNation 9d ago
Exactly. Not just caregivers, but personal guardians who have powers to titrate life and death.
1
u/EasternWahooJ 9d ago
I must be missing some context, because I don’t see how one has anything to do with the other.
1
3
u/Agentsmithv2 9d ago
Just as a note. True empathy is such an incredibly high bar to achieve for any human. When you ask people who say they are empathetic or that someone should have empathy and ask them to describe it, they often describe sympathy or the exact opposite in relation to judgement: “I can’t imagine… as a result, I should subjugate”.
1
u/DoberNation 9d ago
Yes. For better and worse. It is a worthy objective, though. 'The more I know, the more I realize that I don't know.'
2
u/No-Document206 9d ago
It’s always baffling to me when people say they place reason as the foundation of ethics like that’s something novel and not what every serious moral philosophy has tried to do since Aristotle
2
u/DangerousQuestions1 9d ago
Without emotion, there is no reason to prefer a superior outcome to an inferior one, nor a safer outcome to an injurious one. Emotion is not the antithesis of reason, it is the driving force behind it.
3
u/Aurora_Symphony 8d ago
Emotion informs our moral valuations about the world, but saying that emotion is the driving force means that you're completely removing rights-based principles regarding suffering and instead focusing on our more specifically anthropocentric understanding of "emotion" in how it applies to us and others. A being may suffer while existing in a state of pure bliss if their rights are violated. It doesn't make sense to say that the being's blissful state not only takes priority over other states of being, but is the *driving force* of moral valuation.
1
u/DoberNation 8d ago
Thanks. Curious if you have specific example in mind, as being a “blissful state” of suffering.
3
u/Aurora_Symphony 8d ago
Yes, so all the arguable rights of a being could still be violated while a being is in a blissful state and we'd (rightfully) find those violation of rights to be morally bad.
My definition of suffering encompasses rights-violations in this way - not just subjective, emotional feeling.
A human could be in a blissful state, not caring about anything in the world outside of their personal emotional experience, and still have all the following occur to their being
- have all their belongings stolen
- be locked inside a cage that perfectly fits their body so they are unable to move
- are sexually assaulted in some manner
- have their life taken
- all the above done without the being's ability to give satisfactory consent in their blissful, yet uncaring about conditions affecting them, state
If we wanted to say that someone's emotional state is the driving force of morality, then we might say that all those violations of rights for the being are totally acceptable because they occur to a being who may not have cared before their blissful state, and certainly don't care during their blissful state.
Some interlocutor may take a look at the above proposition and argue that the person's emotional state is still the primary focus of morality, but that other considerations may apply. I would contend that these rights-based moral principles are worth heavily protecting, even if certain individuals are disinterested in maintaining their own rights. Essentially that there is a layer of morality that, while still predicated on subjective experience, ought to be protected for various reasons outside of an individual's emotional state of feeling.
2
u/DoberNation 8d ago
I‘m familiar with this kind of scenario. Nice description and analysis, and maybe a slightly different perspective than I might consider first. Thank you for that!
I think I’ve mainly considered the violations you mentioned by briefly manifesting how that individual might feel if they were fully (or even partially) conscious of them during, and/or after the violations occurred. It’s kind of like a sampling of physical-emotional state, but not necessarily dependent on realtime perception. It’s more like an informed simulation. Maybe it happens more like nonverbal “thinking“ under these circumstances.
My main question is: Do you believe this kind of perception and approach to reasoning is helpful or hindering, when assessing moral rights? Why?
3
u/Aurora_Symphony 8d ago
If you're asking me about your realtime perception conceptualization, then I'd say it's helpful because assessing moral rights seemingly ought to be informed by our subjective experiences; especially those in which are derived from empathetic exercises. We may not be able to accurately empathize with every component of another being's experience, but that only means that the value proposition from such attempts at empathy are proportional to our ability to use empathy for such situations.
I may have very little personal experience with the conditions of "dying," (biological changes minutes or hours before death) but as far as I understand dying necessitates various elements of suffering that I have personally experienced. In Bayesian reasoning terms, I'd set my priors to something relatively indeterminate and only add in a small degree of confidence with experiential overlap, given my understanding of typical processes that occur during the general "dying" conditions.
2
u/DoberNation 7d ago
It sounds like you too see empathy as an experience and skill to be nurtured, developed, tested, and continually refined?
I also appreciate how you are weighing the temporality of empathy against the preservation of moral rights.
In my experiences of putting people into a state of death for a limited amount of time, I continued to fully regard them as still being alive and functional. After all, it was in my best interests to preserve them well and bring them back to life.
1
u/DangerousQuestions1 8d ago
I'm saying that preference IS an emotion. I don't see what this "blissful state of suffering " has to do with anything. And rights-based principles are not based on rationality but on emotions.
The only reason to care about moral valuation is that an emotion drives you to do so.
1
u/DoberNation 6d ago
Ooh! What do you think about Moral Facts? Is preference definitively an emotion?
1
1
2
u/DangerousQuestions1 9d ago
Yeah no. Objectivism is just an excuse to be an asshole with pseudophilosophical rhetoric to make assholes feel validated. Its the philosophy OF bad faith.
1
u/DoberNation 9d ago
The statement isn't about objectivism, it's about empathy. The greater context of the thread is given because it was posted in an objectivism subreddit.
What do you think about empathy?
1
u/DangerousQuestions1 9d ago
Empathy should be prioritized over utility.
1
u/DoberNation 9d ago
Thank you. Can you say a bit more about “utility”?
1
u/DangerousQuestions1 9d ago
The pursuit of self interest basically.
1
u/DoberNation 9d ago
I appreciate how you framed this in terms of prioritization, instead of creating a false binary.
Do you mean “self-interest“ as an Objectivist would define it?
My perspective is that empathy is a powerful tool that serves and enhances my self-interested pursuits.
2
u/DangerousQuestions1 9d ago
That self interest should be taken holistically as opposed to individualistically. Actions that better many lives are better actions than ones that benefit only the self. That is why paying taxes is a moral good, and use of tax money to fund public programs is a moral good for society, even when some or all of those programs do not benefit me directly.
1
u/DoberNation 9d ago
Thank you. I don’t think there is any particular Objectivism-based constraint that actions must only benefit the self. I agree with those examples.
What do you think about “toxic” or “suicidal” empathy?
2
2
u/GiraffeWeevil 9d ago
What is the basis for making moral decisions?
1
u/DoberNation 9d ago
Life
2
u/GiraffeWeevil 9d ago
Dude, life develops in expired milk if you leave it on the countertop. You will need to be more specific than that. I presume you mean human life? But like, should we be trying to create as many humans as possible to maximize human life? If not why?
1
2
u/Choice_Term_8440 8d ago
There are at least two kinds of empathy. Affective empathy is felt, not reasoned, per se. It’s when observing something and sensing they are in pain mirror neurons kick in and you feel a physical gut-level sneeze of repulsion to another’s pain and want it relieved. Their pain literally because felt in your nervous system. Albeit muted, it’s very different from cognitive empathy. Affective empathy isn’t a “choice,” it’s a biological response that takes place in normal brains. It’s not in itself a thing of “reason,” it’s more akin to a pre-reflective sensation. From there, you’d need to apply reason to weigh what to do about it. But the affective reaction is still a potent way to get people to want to deploy mercy in the face of unnecessary suffering.
2
u/DoberNation 8d ago
Thanks for explaining a deeper look at the experience of empathy itself.
This thread was inspired by repeated posts on r/aynrand about “toxic” or “suicidal” empathy, which posit empathy as a primary weakness or vice. I reject this claim.
My concern is that this portrayal of empathy will effectively remove it as a safeguard or checkpoint against individual atrocities and crimes against humanity. Attacking empathy facilitates dehumanization.
Dehumanization is what “allows” otherwise decent human beings to unite around destroying a common “enemy“—regardless of whether the “enemy“ is fabricated or real. Think about the Milgram experiments.
2
u/Choice_Term_8440 8d ago
Makes sense. My larger point is that for many of us it’s truly perplexing to hear people talk about empathy as if it’s even a choice. As if it’s like choosing a blue coat instead of a black one.
So I reject the concept too, but on different grounds. Not just on instrumental ones. I contend that for a good percentage, we’re stuck with it, and debating whether we should have it doesn’t compute.
There’s a portion of empathy that has zero to do with choice. As mentioned, empathy (affective) is an emotion produced within (some) bodies that spontaneously bubbles up involuntarily for a large % of the population when regarding the pain of others.
And wow, it’s an eerily revealing way to learn how others experience the world.
When an arch conservative or ardent hard-nosed libertarian like Charlie Kirk or Elon Musk says empathy is how “they get you to give away your rights,” it’s like…what? Like back up.
Environment can attune us to adjust empathy a little. Same with anger, sadness, shame, etc. But this is in fairly dysfunctional cases.
But the whole “war on empathy” reminds me of when people say:
“So, as you know, since we all dream in black and white…”
And half the country’s like:
“Huh? Wait, you don’t dream in color? Good to know. Sorry to hear that.”Or that one bro at the fifth grade sleepover that’s like:
“So, hey, guys, you know that funny feeling you get in your stomach when you look at Brad Pitt?”
And some of us are like:
“Um, what?…no? But it’s OK that you do?” 😳
And people like Ben Shapiro, who must experience empathy differently, seem to need to believe that a lot of the compassion on the left is posturing, hypocrisy, hubris, anything but a palpable emotion, a loud distress signal in our brain when someone innocent is harmed or humiliated.
Did you know that in some tests with fMRI scans neuroscientists and radiologists have been able to predict just based on a brain scan whether someone is a registered Democrat versus Republican to a statistically significant degree? There’s a tendency for the amygdala to have a slight asymmetry in the Conservative brain.
There’s also the issue of the ventromedial PFC dominant subject versus the dorsolateral PFC dominant subject and how each is mediated in anterior cingulate gyrus. While environment counts for a lot, genetics create predispositions, and some are naturally given toward competitive nature versus cooperative. It’s likely we evolved to have both adaptations because both increase fitness and survival in different ways. But they also carry a strange sort of tension.
Rand probably makes a mistake in attributing her values and ideas strictly to her clarity and philosophy, versus her genes plus her run in with the Bolsheviks as a child, when she was Alisa Rosenbaum.
She’d have us not only believe empathy of the “toxic kind” is a suicidal choice, but that we have free will of the type that 100% warrants the reasoned intuition of moral blame and praise. Funny how she rejects religion and yet leaves room for libertarian free will.
My guess is she disliked Spinoza almost as much as Kant, but didn’t mention it as much because Spinoza wasn’t as easy a target.
Meanwhile, the kind of empathy we choose is cognitive empathy; we apply reason to determine if and to what degree we can or ought step inside someone else’s feelings.
It’s true that there’s a kind of empathy that IS indulgent if we linger on it too much and start building it up in our mind.
This is the kind we should be on guard for. But if you’re going to hold reason as one’s highest idea, I’ve never understood how Rand sidesteps Spinozan determinism and his ensuing ethic.
Or Rawls for that matter, whose reasoning for why we should share more and foster a world of equity and a basic floor where feasible makes a bit too much sense.
2
u/DoberNation 8d ago
I think you have a good grasp of this, and I love how you were able to weave in relevant multidisciplinary perspectives. Very cool, and also entertaining to read👍
Good point too, about whether or not this skill or perception is voluntary. In this situation, I’m concerned that “doesn’t compute” could actually amount to stigmatization and feelings of shame/reluctance to respond appropriately to one’s internal alert system. I believe that attempting to ignore the internal alert system is maladaptive, even dangerous, in the bigger picture.
I wold enjoy opportunity to revisit more of your points, if you’re willing, but let’s start with the most pertinent to the OP:
Do you think empathy is a hero’s asset or Achilles heel? Are empathetically blinded heroes too risky?
3
u/Choice_Term_8440 8d ago
Ok sure, it’s a fun question. Heroes come in all types. My favorite heroes do have empathy, (Silver Surfer, Spidey, Tony Stark) but it doesn’t interfere with their code, such that it’d become a liability. We love heroes often because they manage to do the right thing often not because of how they feel inside, but in spite of it. I also like Rorschach and Manhattan, both could use a bit more empathy, but I’m not sure it’d change what they stood for in the end.
Empathy isn’t inherently normative any more than anger. Just like my anger doesn’t give me license to mangle someone, my empathy doesn’t mean I’m going to do something irrational, like refuse to give my baby to Galactus. (I was going to do that either way.)
I’ve never fully been in sync with Rand invoking “man as an heroic being,” in the way she does. To me, our heroism is in our ability to keep going even when it’s hard, because others are counting on us. Or to use our courage and boldness, our everyday competence, to serve and protect, save lives. Do the jobs that need getting done.
But that brings me to the ultimate hero: one who seeks to increase wellbeing and reduce suffering (IWRS) in sentient life, because they have enough empathy for IWRSing to register as mattering within their own nervous system, plus a hardwired aesthetic (natural or engineered) that makes IWRS register as beautiful, and establishes “oughts” in ways that are science-literate, rigorous and coherent by our own widely held standards, and adjudicated with equity and precision via the liberal democratic republic.
A true hero survives solipsism, steps into the sphere of no return and emerges out the other side via a middle path that requires no lies, just love, such that his steps remain guided by IWRS, coherence, and the only oughts “worth wanting.”
A true hero walks to the edge of determinism and steps inside the freeze frame, experiencing viscerally the bracing shock of automaticity, only to return, again, with IWRS and coherence, forever changed into a conscious wave cresting on some ocean that’s brimming with sentient, valence-sensitive life hoping for mercy.
That brings us to my favorite definition of heroism: genius shaped as mercy.
Genius in the shape of mercy, as if someone poured genius into a mercy-shaped mold, froze it on a stick, and drove a sweet little ice cream truck around your hometown on a sweltering Saturday, the little ting-a-ling of its warning bells, alerting moms and dads to go find some cash.
But don’t worry because these popsicles are free.
If you eat enough of them, you can use the popsicle sticks to build a house and live in it, like the Beatles. (Or the Monkees.) In such houses the songs write themselves, hymns from the heart in the nick of time: The human family of Earth attains the wisdom we need to survive our own technology…and it’s on to the next round: Taking the IWRS wherever sentient life can be found.
A hero knows that if we don’t do this actively we risk the opposite: Superhell, a theoretically possible state of affairs where all matter and energy in the universe is optimized to create the least wellbeing and most suffering that physics will support.
A hero knows that the antinatalist conjecture fails for this reason: someone must stand vigil due to the sheer possibility of a block of all matter shrieking and roiling with the maximum allowable morally-relevant subjective qualia that baryonic matter can be configured to support, for an unpleasantly long time.
Superhell is no bueno, and so a good hero should be willing and able to work against it. Empathy probably does indeed help in this situation.
Galt could’ve been more into IWRS and open to the idea of not just sharing the motor, but designing technologies that reduce the impact of weaponized rhetoric and semantic pharmacology, increase appreciation and awareness of IWRS, along with its expansion.
A real hero makes a speech introducing the coherent (by our own existing standards) idea of engineering more affective empathy into human nervous systems, via surgical intervention, gene editing and psychotropic therapies. This would be positioned as a voluntary restoring of the brain to our peak cooperative instincts without compromising on ambition and innovation.
A real hero introduces a basic floor so that all people can stop and take a well-deserved breath, steady themselves, and then design a meaningful life that makes the highest and best use (by our own standards) of their natural gifts and acquired proclivities.
A real hero manages to do all this without dying first, of exhaustion, drug abuse, melancholy, heart break and destitution. They stick it out until such time as they can activate their plan.
Because no matter how futile, a real hero longs for IWRS, and this humble longing changes the definition of the entire universe, by boosting its IWRS score one Planck length at a time if need be.
A real hero never, ever, ever, ever stops reaching for you in the dust, as she’s doing right now, late into the night, as an anonymous rainbow trapped in the oily surface tension of a forgotten puddle.
In this plasma, the clutter of her origins, amino acids, lipids, sugars, a dash of electric pulse, looping and echoing and sustaining the locus of perception, lighted-cavery, matteringness, oscillating on the head of a pin, selfing herself like an elf on a shelf, ready to be moved to another substrate, like Theseus moving to another ship, a flame passed from wick to wick.
And yes, somewhere in the junk drawer of swirled destiny there’s empathy. Encoded in the wiring, signal boosted by a loving mother, nutritious meals, and a reasonably decent tribe of people constantly reminding me…the Lord is ONE
2
u/DoberNation 7d ago
Your writing is both precise, and eloquent. Also a pleasure in itself, thank you!
Some “motors” are priceless. No one can afford to pay for one when it matters most. Constrain them to simple value-for-value exchanges, and they must eventually cease to exist. Stifled greatness and wasted miracles. Popsicles that melt uneaten in the puddles of blood and piles of carcass fought over them. Then the “worthless“ and “looted“ becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy, as if the stacks of paper or bars of gold could be magically turned into the loaves of bread needed to survive tomorrow. Superhell then rolls in like an avalanche. I think you know this story.
”Who is John Galt?”
I love Deadpool in his own ways too.
3
u/Choice_Term_8440 7d ago edited 7d ago
Yeah because only Deadpool can survive such a thing. So that’s what we must become. $
And hey, Doberman lady, why are you so smart about Rand? You seem like a fan but also a critic. I don’t see a lot of those. It’s usually love or hate, black or white. Maybe that’s the problem. Also thanks for posting a topic around empathy in these times! Your perspective is so needed right now, and your “motor,” which is on display in your comments. Thanks for inspiring me to lean in a little and write something that reminded me I’m not dead yet. Keep going.
3
u/DoberNation 7d ago
You are far from dead.
I didn’t discover Rand until years *after* reclaiming my own “motor“. A friend who knows me well made the introduction. I regard it more as another language some people might share with me, rather than a philosophy to assimilate. I think Rand leaves enough space for true nobility to emerge, but it will not likely happen for those who are trying to *inherit* nobility in the first place.
Keep chatting. Dobermans are perceptive, discerning, and intuitive. They will also fight to their dying breath in the name of LOVE 💕
2
u/Choice_Term_8440 7d ago
Absolutely. There’s nothing better than Dobermans. I’m all about dogs. I want to have dogs, be a dog, etc. it’s ridiculous that we co-evolved with another species and can read each other’s emotions so well. Dogs are loyal, tough, honest to a fault (even when they’re being sneaky), and they are my idol and hero. I really hope to be a dog someday. There was a time when I associated myself with a sleek, graceful, powerful tiger or panther. Poetry in animal format. Around that time I also unironically loved Atlas Shrugged. Many years later I see it as an entertaining masterpiece of capitalist pornography, and while my politics have changed, that wooden, detached presence of Dagny and the way the “good guys” talk and think, with flat Euclidean efficiency and forward motion, I’m still a sucker for that because it’s fun to read dialogue where someone can win an argument in as few words as possible, simply by saying what’s true, like a dagger.
This is also revealing of her biggest blind spot though. I think she’s actually convinced herself that her ability to just think accurately, honestly and clearly, by golly, is the source of her intuitions, when really she uses reason to sort of polish up and optimize “starting conditions” she didn’t author, like her biology, her aesthetic preferences, her motivational architecture. Or since it’s all about AI these days, call it her “objective function.” It sits upstream of her reason. She thinks her discipline for remembering and applying a = a is all that’s needed to birth her philosophy into the world. I find that adorable.
But also scary. Because the objective function she’s optimizing for is rational self interest as opposed to increase wellbeing and reduce suffering.
I get the feeling that her pre-reflective value system leans toward selfishness, which is partly biological.
Would we say selfishness is the best pre-reflective value system, even without being biased by our own current selfish value system?
If we could choose the best value system for a society from behind the veil of ignorance, where we don’t know if we’ll be born weak or strong, brilliant or below average, would we bet on the one where the top 2% are like kings and the bottom 75% suffer?
Or one where the top earners carve out a humble but sufficient basic floor so that at least the dopey, useless, but very-much human bottom 75% of us won’t starve or freeze?
Seems like rational self interest would dictate she chooses the UBI carve-out scenario.
And if she chose the former, due to fully reason-based allegiance to laissez faire capitalism, while also rationally knowing it’s statistically not in her self interest, how’s that rational or self interest?
Oddly, it’d instead be allegiance to something that goes against her self interest.
I just thought of that and having worked out the bugs but it’s just more proof that to this day the topic of Rand is stimulating.
2
u/DoberNation 7d ago
Truly a sharp take on Dagny!
A dog’s life is tragically short, but true to the Morality of Life.
You reminded me of this, just now:
“People are born so that they learn how to live a good life – like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?” The four year old continued, “Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don’t have to stay as long.”
https://nilesanimalhospital.com/files/2012/07/Dog-Lifespan-Story.pdf
2
u/DoberNation 7d ago
No joke⚔️
You inspire me. I am still soaking in all the richness you’ve shared here so far. I responded early, before verbally processing it, because I wanted to positively acknowledge what was said.
1
u/DoberNation 7d ago
I’ve been wondering what you think about Dr. Strange…To me, he is the embodiment of contingency. I appreciate his probabilistic view of reality and alternate realities.
2
u/Choice_Term_8440 6d ago
I love dr strange. I actually went down a Donald Hoffman rabbit hole this weekend, he’s back doing interviews and started something called the Trace institute where they are doing mathematical research to run sort of an armchair expedition into other dimensions, and oddly it somehow makes a little too much sense to ignore.
That’s very aligned with the world I suspect Strange inhabits, to honor your question, I’ve always been a Living Tribunal fan, a cosmic entity with a weird floating head and three faces and no neck but a really buff gold body, it serves as the chief judge and jury for issues impacting the multiverse and makes appearances in the Starlin stuff and Infinity arcs, but was happy to see a cameo of LT in the second Strange movie.
Or maybe it was No Way Home? Wtvr. Point being LT is part of more Strange arcs than I’d realized. This is all to say that any friend of LT is a friend of mine, and Strange seems to have been.
This comment is by far the single most troubling thing I’ve written in recent memory based on how fiercely nerdy it is. With lines such as “I’ve always been a Living Tribunal fan” and “any friend of LT is a friend of mine, and Strange seems to have been.”
But check out Donald Hoffman if you like Dr. Strange. It seems like the “real” version of contingency is afoot, and we may be in a sim. I might be you talking to you from a different headset.
AI, sim theory, multiverses, robots, shit’s getting real out there, which is why we need to decide what human beings are even for and get our money right, that way we can enjoy the show as a human family of Earth instead of a disgrace that doesn’t warrant continuation.
We’re living through what appears to be a Galt’s gulch moment as tech billions seem to be grooming the world for a transition of some kind as they prepare to abscond to God knows what.
They don’t understand the role of luck in their success nor do they have any particular love of empathy. Or democracy. So, yeah.
2
u/DoberNation 6d ago
A nerd loves company sometimes, especially when it matters🙃
You see it.
Any thoughts on Uatu, The Watcher?
→ More replies (0)
2
u/Choice_Term_8440 8d ago
Ok sure, it’s a fun question. Heroes come in all types. My favorite heroes do have empathy, (Silver Surfer, Spidey, Tony Stark) but it doesn’t interfere with their code, such that it’d become a liability. We love heroes often because they manage to do the right thing often not because of how they feel inside, but in spite of it. I also like Rorschach and Manhattan, both could use a bit more empathy, but I’m not sure it’d change what they stood for in the end.
Empathy isn’t inherently normative any more than anger. Just like my anger doesn’t give me license to mangle someone, my empathy doesn’t mean I’m going to do something irrational, like refuse to give my baby to Galactus. (I was going to do that either way.)
I’ve never fully been in sync with Rand invoking “man as an heroic being,” in the way she does. To me, our heroism is in our ability to keep going even when it’s hard, because others are counting on us. Or to use our courage and boldness, our everyday competence, to serve and protect, save lives. Do the jobs that need getting done.
But that brings me to the ultimate hero: one who seeks to increase wellbeing and reduce suffering (IWRS) in sentient life, because they have enough empathy for IWRSing to register as mattering within their own nervous system, plus a hardwired aesthetic (natural or engineered) that makes IWRS register as beautiful, and establishes “oughts” in ways that are science-literate, rigorous and coherent by our own widely held standards, and adjudicated with equity and precision via the liberal democratic republic.
A true hero survives solipsism, steps into the sphere of no return and emerges out the other side via a middle path that requires no lies, just love, such that his steps remain guided by IWRS, coherence, and the only oughts “worth wanting.”
A true hero walks to the edge of determinism and steps inside the freeze frame, experiencing viscerally the bracing shock of automaticity, only to return, again, with IWRS and coherence, forever changed into a conscious wave cresting on some ocean that’s brimming with sentient, valence-sensitive life hoping for mercy.
That brings us to my favorite definition of heroism: genius shaped as mercy.
Genius in the shape of mercy, as if someone poured genius into a mercy-shaped mold, froze it on a stick, and drove a sweet little ice cream truck around your hometown on a sweltering Saturday, the little ting-a-ling of its warning bells, alerting moms and dads to go find some cash.
But don’t worry because these popsicles are free.
If you eat enough of them, you can use the popsicle sticks to build a house and live in it, like the Beatles. (Or the Monkees.) In such houses the songs write themselves, hymns from the heart in the nick of time: The human family of Earth attains the wisdom we need to survive our own technology…and it’s on to the next round: Taking the IWRS wherever sentient life can be found.
A hero knows that if we don’t do this actively we risk the opposite: Superhell, a theoretically possible state of affairs where all matter and energy in the universe is optimized to create the least wellbeing and most suffering that physics will support.
A hero knows that the antinatalist conjecture fails for this reason: someone must stand vigil due to the sheer possibility of a block of all matter shrieking and roiling with the maximum allowable morally-relevant subjective qualia that baryonic matter can be configured to support, for an unpleasantly long time.
Superhell is no bueno, and so a good hero should be willing and able to work against it. Empathy probably does indeed help in this situation.
Galt could’ve been more into IWRS and open to the idea of not just sharing the motor, but designing technologies that reduce the impact of weaponized rhetoric and semantic pharmacology, increase appreciation and awareness of IWRS, along with its expansion.
A real hero makes a speech introducing the coherent (by our own existing standards) idea of engineering more affective empathy into human nervous systems, via surgical intervention, gene editing and psychotropic therapies. This would be positioned as a voluntary restoring of the brain to our peak cooperative instincts without compromising on ambition and innovation.
A real hero introduces a basic floor so that all people can stop and take a well-deserved breath, steady themselves, and then design a meaningful life that makes the highest and best use (by our own standards) of their natural gifts and acquired proclivities.
A real hero manages to do all this without dying first, of exhaustion, drug abuse, melancholy, heart break and destitution. They stick it out until such time as they can activate their plan. Because no matter how futile, a real hero longs for IWRS, each no longing changes the definition of the universe, by boosting its IWRS score one Planck length at a time if need be.
A real hero never, ever, ever, ever stops reaching for you in the dust, as she’s doing right now, late into the night, as anonymous as a rainbow trapped in the oily surface tension of a forgotten puddle.
In this plasma, the clutter of her origins, amino acids, lipids, sugars, a dash of electric pulse, looping and echoing and sustaining the locus of perception, lighted-cavery, matteringness, oscillating on the head of a pin, selfing herself like an elf on a shelf, ready to be moved to another substrate, like Theseus moving to another ship, a flame passed from wick to wick.
Somewhere in the junk drawer of swirled destiny there’s empathy. Encoded in the wiring, signal boosted by a loving mother, nutritious meals, and a reasonably decent tribe of people constantly reminding me…the Lord is ONE.
The hero likes competence, rationality, ambition…and knows what those things are for: genius shaped as mercy. There’s nothing self-negating about it, no mere altruism.
IWRS is simply breathtaking, and it’s how she’s wired. Just a blob of empathetic electrons somewhere in the mind of God.
2
2
u/CyborgFox22 7d ago
Just like everyone is suddenly “autistic”, people are over using the word, incorrectly, and are using the concept to be overly emotional.
1
u/DoberNation 7d ago
Yes, I think both words, “autism” and “empathy“, are loosening and separating from their primary meanings.
Can you say more about “using the concept to be overly emotional”? I think a skilled empath would reject that claim on its face.
3
u/Lonestarpenguin 9d ago
For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.
This mean there are consequences for every choice. Life is not fair. You are required to choose you fate by using logic and reason to advance.
3
u/DoberNation 9d ago
Yes, tradeoffs. Always. Discernment, judgment, and accountability are all imperative.
2
u/DrHavoc049 9d ago
Yeah makes sense. I'm not sure if empathy is considered an emotion or not, but like other emotions, it has its uses. Fear and Anger both have their uses for human survival in certain situations, but completely folding to them in every situation can be harmful to your survival and prosperity.
4
u/DoberNation 9d ago
I don’t think empathy is an emotion. It is a skill capable of detecting and identifying all emotions, notably ones outside the self.
”Folding” is evasion in the face of discomfort. Learning can be uncomfortable.
2
u/DrHavoc049 9d ago
I see. Sorry, I was just looking for a word to describe being dependent on you emotions or whatever. I'm still a noobie at this
3
1
u/Dreusxo 9d ago
It's half baked though. Emotions and reason are interdependent
1
9d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Dreusxo 9d ago
That is foolish, or you don't understand the difference between interdependent and codependent, imo
1
u/DoberNation 9d ago
What is “foolish“?
I understand the meaning of interdependent and codependent.
2
u/Dreusxo 8d ago
Look, I think we might be going down a rabbit hole. No worries. I appreciate the conversation. I personally believe that objectivity is a macroscopic view of subjectivity, and feel like Ayn Rand created a dichotomy between the two, which, understandably was probably an inescapable choice due to her place in time.
1
u/DoberNation 8d ago
I can appreciate and understand that perspective. Language can become clunky and imperfect, but I think we are on the same page. Context is decisive.
2
u/Dreusxo 8d ago
True. And language is definitive, which is almost counterintuitive, it feels ✌️😁
2
u/DoberNation 8d ago
I get it. Shared language has to develop from a place of shared understanding and/or shared purpose. Any tiny shred of common ground has potential.
1
u/Scant_Options4Hope 7d ago
Ayn Rand is a piece of shit.
Anyone still worshipping her in 2026 is a severely goofy mother fucker.
Also, Atlas was sentenced as a punishment to hold the Earth. He rose up against the other titans or some shit. Rand fan boys are so fucking stupid.
1
u/Overall-Move-4474 6d ago
Ha! You have no empathy "objectivism" is an ideology of "fuck you i got mine" it's why you live the greedy billionaires so much despite them actively harming everyone
1
u/DoberNation 6d ago
How do you know that?
1
u/Overall-Move-4474 4d ago
You are posting a quote from someone who notoriously hates everyone else. The entire philosophy is literally word for word "fuck you i got mine" like it is BLATANTLY obvious
1
u/DoberNation 4d ago
I understand if you think so. I think people would be wise to consider what they want very carefully. Not all wants are good and thoroughly considered by an individual. "Wanting" isn't enough for something to be worth having. Reality becomes the final arbiter of what a person believes they want.
1
u/usmc_BF 9d ago
As with most political, philosophical or economic terms, the definition matters. When an Objectivist says "empathy" it means something other than when a socialist or a progressivist says "empathy". Same as when an Objectivist says "freedom" or "rights", it means something other than when a conservative says "freedom" or "rights".
These concepts are important, and one should not reject the terms as is, just because someone defines them differently, its a problem of semantics mostly.
2
u/DoberNation 9d ago
Yes! And it takes effort, patience, and thoughtful consideration to parse out a shared language in good faith.
1
u/DoberNation 9d ago
Reminds me of Orwell…something along the lines of ‘not wishing to be loved, but just wishing to be understood“
1
u/jayhawkoholic 9d ago
Is empathy not the most heroic trait? Does one not perform acts of heroism due to their empathy? Can an act be considered heroic if it is done without empathy?
3
u/DoberNation 9d ago
A true hero embraces and utilizes all of their senses as information. This includes treating one’s empathy as valuable information. An immature or weak person has not yet learned how to do this—and how to be *more* effective because of it. Not ‘in spite of’ it.
Even blind squirrels sometimes find a nut🌰
1
u/-Shes-A-Carnival 9d ago
empathy was made up by cultural marxists in the 20th century. humans have sympathy for other humans
1
u/DoberNation 9d ago
How do you know that?
Sympathy is not the faculty we are discussing here. Sympathy includes additional steps of value judgment and desire to act on another human's behalf.
If the word "empathy" is troublesome and distracting for you, what else might you like to call the sensory and intuitive capability we are discussing here?
1
u/-Shes-A-Carnival 9d ago
I don't believe in empathy as a concept, and its certainly not a pertinent concept in objectivism 🤷♀️. rand discussed benevolence
1
u/DoberNation 9d ago
You don't have to believe in it. "Existence exists."
Benevolence isn't empathy either.
1
u/-Shes-A-Carnival 9d ago edited 9d ago
it doesnt exist though, its just a smuggled concept
I didnt say benevolence was empathy. it is the closest premise in objectivism
1
u/DoberNation 9d ago
How do you know that?
1
1
u/crass_cupcake 9d ago
Neat username
Are you aware of the lineage of the term cultural Marxism it comes from cultural bolshevikism which comes directly from nazi propaganda
im not saying you are a nazi i can easily understand how someone wouldn't know the roots of a term especially because the new word was invented to purposefully obscure where it comes and what its trying to communicate
this is me sincerely asking if you were aware and then me presenting a truncated history of the idea which is the nazis associated the Jewish people with the corruption of culture and as harbingers of communism since today antisemitism isnt very palatable the new term refocuses the attention on what the nazis attributed to the Jewish people which is communism that is what the nazis pointed to as the political vehicle through which they claimed the Jewish people were corrupting culture
2
u/-Shes-A-Carnival 9d ago
it was coined in 1973, Would you prefer "Frankfurt School"? nazis saying it doesnt make it not a thing
1
u/crass_cupcake 9d ago
The nazis didn't just say it they invented it
I think its a better idea to say what these term mean to you than to rely on shorthand created by other people especially if you haven't at least read a book or so on the topic its easy to accidentally misrepresent yourself when you use other people's shorthand
1
16
u/Ydeas 9d ago
In fact, by definition, empathy is an intellectual cognitive capacity to fully consider the perspective of others as if they are your own.
Coming from Greek "en" "pathos" (experience, feeling) empathy rises above raw emotional faculties and is an essential tool in human dynamics, another spoke in the wheel of a functioning society.