How should we live our lives? We should try to do things that make sense, that are fair and just, and are not governed by emotions. How good are we at it? Well, often we’re not very good at all. But the very fact that we can make this judgement implies that we have the capacity to do better – says Paul Bloom, a Canadian psychologist from Yale, whose book Against Empathy caused quite a stir.
There’s nothing more inspiring and invigorating than an idea that goes against the grain of common sense – provided that it is well argued. Such ideas used to be a domain of philosophers. Take any book on the history of philosophy and you’ll find a flamboyant conga line of outsiders, eccentrics and iconoclasts, stretching for 2500 years. They all had the courage to “think against themselves”, to use the phrase of one of them, eminent 20th century French essayist of Romanian origins Emil Cioran.
Nowadays scientists too are joining this conga line. Some are quantum physicists who study a reality completely different than the one to which our senses are accustomed. Some are evolutionary biologists, discovering strictly natural bases for many lofty ideas. Some are psychologists who are taking apart many of our convictions about the internal life of Homo sapiens.
One of the most interesting representatives of the last of the aforementioned groups is Paul Bloom, a Canadian psychologist from Yale University. Every book he publishes is an event. Bloom is an expert in controversies, and at the same time a bona fide academic who strictly follows the rules of science. He gained fame a couple of years ago when he proved that morality and ethics are mostly primal, despite what many philosophers and priests think. According to Bloom’s research, even toddlers follow some moral instincts.
In 2016, Bloom published a follow-up, the provocatively titled book Against Empathy. In it he argues that – contrary to what many neuroscientists or psychologists, such as Simon Baron-Cohen, think – nothing good comes from empathy. According to Bloom, we shouldn’t be asking for more of it. Quite the opposite. If we want to live in a liberal democracy built around such values as freedom, equality, empowerment, tolerance and diversity, we should be curtailing empathy and instead developing rational compassion. Empathy – the capacity for feeling whatever other people are feeling – revolves around our bias to favour those who are like us and think like us. It is mainly directed towards our family and tribe; therefore, we not only stop caring about everyone else, but also begin treating them as enemies. And then violence becomes a real possibility.
Sounds like a provocation? A controversial