Bloom’s Against Empathy from a (Mostly) Girardian Perspective

The book’s title, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion,  apparently aims at eliciting an emotional reaction, either piquing someone’s curiosity or stirring vehement opposition, both good for its sales. But from a broader perspective, on a balanced reading, the book might be seen as arguing for broadening one’s decision-making apparatus, especially in cases concerning moral issues, by developing or giving proper stress to one’s rational abilities. Which in the process is expected to have the effect of relatively diminishing the role of empathy in morally-charged decisions and actions, but in the long run might actually make empathy more universally deployable in the individual, something that the book does not acknowledge. In any case, there is a big role for both “cognitive empathy” and “emotional empathy” (both terms‘ usage explained in the book) in man.

Neuroscientific research shows that deliberatively developed moral decisions, when they become actions, and especially when that happens repeatedly, produce synapses in our brains that make those processes increasingly automatic. Before long they become more and more like emotional pleasure-producing moral reactions, emulating those empathy-based. And, as neuroscientist Antonio Damasio would have us believe, the same final result can also be effected by imagining morally-charged situations with a benevolent attitude. What we seem to have here is a de facto emotional-cognitive feedback loop, or “as-if body loop” (Damasio’s term), although apparently more or less developed or effective, depending on the individual and the length of training.

In view of the above it would certainly be safer not to argue for emotional empathy not to play any role in moral decision-making, but for its being supplemented (though sometimes possibly overridden) by cognitive empathy and rational thinking, in a display of a capacity the book refers to as projective empathy. In fact this is what apparently happened to Bloom himself, who describes himself in the book as having been driven largely by emotional empathy in the past, something that he now sees as excessive if not wrong. But never in his book does he give an impression—nor does he claim it outright—that he actually has become less emotionally empathic, which capacity is involuntary anyway, at least in the short run.  What could be easily inferred is that he has managed to augment his moral apparatus by inclusion of, or additional and significant role assigned to, (benevolent) reasoning, by cultivating both cognitive empathy and compassion. It seems that the well-rounded human being should ideally both exhibit a degree of emotional empathy and be rational about his or her moral decisions and actions, however difficult that might be. 

Of course all that has been said above rests on the assumption that ours are universalistic values and morality. But it should be clear from the start that this is exactly what this book is premised on, quite apart from making a case for what is signaled by its title. It just happens that cognitive empathy seems to be consistent with it, at least in the author’s opinion, whereas emotional empathy is apt to impair man’s ability to embrace such a world view in practice if not in theory, both points plausibly corroborated by the book’s plentiful examples and their rationale. The latter point is expounded over and over throughout the book, and the case will seem pretty convincing to those who need no convincing but could nevertheless use an empirical or scientific argument to solidify their position. But neuroscience shows that that the whole picture tends to be much more complex.

Yet even when deployed, cognitive empathy apparently might not be sufficient as an instrument for practically propagating universalistic principles as reflected in our attitudes and, especially, as guiding our behavior. Besides, it is a concept that for many readers of this popular science book might be new and thus not immediately assimilable. The author has a solution for that: he falls back on a concept that has wide currency and the advantage of connoting a more active behavior as compared to cognitive empathy, that of compassion. So when Bloom mentions that he has been engaged in meditative practice for some time the safe bet is (given also his stated reservations about religious worldviews) that it is mindfulness meditation accompanied, as it normally is, by a loving-kindness practice (kindness is frequently and approvingly referred to in the book). Though it is not stated outright, the book could also be viewed as making a case for this particular practice or spirituality.

It is especially important as it is the cognitive—or, more broadly, rationalistic— mindset, as opposed to a more emotional one, that underlies Western individualism, and which must have contributed in a major way to the West’s current state of social atomization. Bloom seems to recognize that there is an urgent need for a counterbalance, but doesn’t see emotional empathy as fit for the job, seeing compassion in this role instead (with a preliminary role for cognitive empathy), a capacity that is consonant with a rationalistic mindset. 

But compassion, or even kindness, doesn’t come naturally to everybody. As mentioned, Bloom himself speaks of a practice inculcating it. People who ostensibly are rationally-minded tend to be less emotionally empathic than others. But are they compassionate? Based on cited research it is clearly stated in the book, for example, that libertarians are the least empathic of all the adherents of any social doctrine. Being, as they are for many, the epitome of Western narcissistic individualism, and judging by their doctrinaire attitudes, they would probably also rank low on any compassion scale. Interestingly, Bloom cites research showing that lack of empathy is characteristic of virtually all psychopaths, whereas other research points that lack of empathy alone is no indication that a person is a psychopath. But on the other hand, virtually no emotionally empathic person is ever found to be a psychopath – which obviously is not to say that empathic people engage only in morally good behavior.

When making a case for a universalistic moral stance that overrides a narrowly focused empathy-driven positions (which stance obviously underlies Western liberal democracies, and ultimately derives from Christianity as seen through humanist eyes), the book advocates a mental stratagem: that we give less weight to ourselves and our kin, thus making distant others relatively more weighty when it comes to moral considerations. The examples in favor are drawn from the world and science of economics – why should American workers matter more than Mexican? – showing how controversial a universalistic moral stance may be to many people, as in the economic sphere at least it easily blends with a globalist stance that recently has come under massive attack. And in fact it cannot be otherwise. What one should add here though is that a truly globalist economics—and morality, for that matter—should posit also a free movement of workers (even if introduced gradually), and not just that of capital, across borders, the very thing against which a narrow majority of the British successfully protested in their Brexit vote.

When it comes to politics proper, Bloom observes that, “Political debates typically involve a disagreement not over whether we should empathize, but over who we should empathize with.” But toward the end of the book it gets really weird: “Political views share an interesting property with views about sports teams—they don’t really matter. If I have the wrong theory of how to make scrambled eggs, they will come out too dry; if I have the wrong everyday morality, I will hurt those I love. But suppose I think that the leader of the opposing party has sex with pigs, or has thoroughly botched the arms deal with Iran. Unless I’m a member of a tiny powerful community, my beliefs have no effect on the world. This is certainly true as well for my views about the flat tax, global warming, and evolution. They don’t have to be grounded in truth, because the truth value doesn’t have any effect on my life. (…) My point here is just that the failure of people to attend to data in the political domain does not reflect a limitation in their capacity for reason. It reflects how most people make sense of politics. They don’t care about truth because, for them, it’s not really about truth. We do much better, after all, when the stakes become high, when being rational really matters. If our thought processes in the political realm reflected how our minds generally work, we wouldn’t even make it out of bed each morning. So if you’re curious about people’s capacity for reasoning, don’t look at cases where being right doesn’t matter and where it’s all about affiliation. Rather, look at how people cope in everyday life. (…) Or even look at a different sort of politics— the type of politics where individuals might actually make a difference, such as a town hall meeting where people discuss zoning regulations and where to put a stop sign.”

An effusion like the above, capping a book devoted to extolling the virtues of rationality (most probably unwittingly as it seems to deal a near fatal blow to its main argument) over against emotional empathy, nay, urging us all to be deliberatively rational especially in the field of morality, can signify that in the author’s view politics cannot or shouldn’t be expected to be rational or moral, and thus we should not obsess about its being or becoming such; or that the author thinks it is virtually irrelevant, political “truths” being irrelevant to our lives. But if it were to be so, humanity might seem either doomed or at least its aspiration to rationality should be critically assessed anew.

It’s true that political truths, whatever they might be, are increasingly becoming irrelevant as truths, being “augmented,” undergoing an immediate and largely unwitting shift of focus, or outright substituted for by fake news. But are they really irrelevant to our lives? It is ironic that many partisan participants of the political process find only belatedly that some of those “truths,” supported by them in a spirit of “tribal” collectivity during political campaigns without giving it a rational evaluation, when subsequently translated into policies turn out to be against their real interests, as relevant as they in fact are to them.

And it’s easy to see that most of this society-wide phenomenon can be attributed to deployment, or to (an unwitting acquiescence to) a shift of focus, of our empathy apparatus to members of our tribe and their ostensibly horrifying fate as proffered us in vividly gruesome images by our political leaders. In the process any relevance to our lives of what’s being proposed, or its actual consequences, is being—for all practical purposes and in light of our group’s grand causes—dismissed as in fact irrelevant. One might say that here empathy, and—more broadly—emotion, is allowed to rule over rationality. But the author’s claim as to the irrelevance of those political truths to our lives must also be judged as itself irrational, and this instance of irrationality doesn’t seem empathy-colored. Its only claim to rationality must rest on a seemingly compelling assessment of one’s powerlessness in the political process, not a pretty conclusion.

So it should be interesting that whole passages from the book’s chapter Empathy as the Foundation of Morality for all practical purposes equate emotional empathy with man’s imitative capacity. They are replete with instances of both terms’ interchangeable use, especially as related to toddlers, in whom this seeming identity  is all the more pronounced. And while from a moral perspective this empathy/ imitation is as yet inert (Bloom’s word) given the “moral agents”’ status, it nevertheless is well-documented as being inborn. Yet it’s for that reason that the author raises the caveat that “If this [If I feel your pain but don’t know that it’s your pain—if I think that it’s my pain—then I’m not going to help you] is true for toddlers, then their kind acts cannot be driven by empathy.” But once we have equated empathy and imitation, we won’t be that easily let off the hook: the mature moral agent has a choice of models and his/her imitative faculty can be cultivated, which is important since raw imitation tends to switch polarity, our erstwhile model becoming our resented rival or obstacle.

It is here that Rene Girard’s mimetic theory might come in handy, especially if one is allowed to expand on it and draw supplementary conclusions concerning the political realm in particular. To summarize very shortly here the theory’s pertinent points: Girard is prophesying an apocalypse for a mankind that on the one hand is not satisfied anymore with sacrificing innocent victims for the sake of societal peace (due to Jesus’s, the ultimate innocent scapegoat’s, intervention in man’s history, and its shedding of light of truth on this practice, a realization that has only recently and belatedly started dawning on man, largely Western as yet),  but whose (individual and collective) mimetic capacity is prone to throw us into a state of rivalrous frenzy when our inborn mimetism tears itself away from pure empathy and instead starts reciprocally pursuing desires of one another (Girard’s mimetic theory focuses on desire). Apocalypse is in the making in modern democracies, premised as they in fact increasingly are on equality of outcomes, as opposed to that of chances, since our desires are becoming in them more and more, and on an ever-wider scale, mutually the exact mirror images of each other, thus leading us all into conflict, as they cannot all be satisfied at all times, thus leaving (most of) us envious and/or resentful. 

Girard muses whither we are going in our current state of escalation to extremes on every hand, including within liberal democracies, yet his theory stops on the verge of an impending apocalypse. But if social scientists in favor of rationality in the realm of morality throw up their hands in despair when it comes to politics, can an irrational, emotions-driven politics really help us avert it? Girard would say that nothing is predetermined, but politics certainly does matter—is relevant—and we, as always, should imitate good, moral models. But even if many of us do that, is this going to work on a societal level? In one of his last books he says that in the foreseeable future we—our tribal-like groupings—will continue clinched and will probably be evenly matched.  

It certainly is a far cry from a rational configuration, but is there any wisdom embodied in this dynamic situation? It may seem so, as disagreeable and precarious as it is, if we prefer that to a backsliding into a self-righteous state of societal peace continuously procured at the expense of sacrificed—victimized or excluded—scapegoats. At the present stage of human affairs they would have to be some of us, selected somehow out from the group that starts showing signs of weakening, isolated and eventually scapegoated for the sake of peace for all but them, as well as cohesion of a suddenly unified society, “big and strong” again. Chances are that it would have to be first of all the losing side’s leaders. At least that is how mimetic theory would see it.

So if, for whatever reason, there’s no rational course for us in politics, why not settle for this extreme polarization and reconcile ourselves to it, instead of obsessing about how bad and immoral it is? We don’t seem to have a choice anyway, having painted ourselves into this high-adrenaline corner.

But is that really so? It’s true that America is leading the way for the rest of the world, with Britain following shortly—with the last Presidential election and the Brexit vote, respectively. But even staying within this closed, present-bound perspective , seemingly admitting of no real, invigorating hope, it doesn’t have to be so. And rationality does have a role—in fact a predominant one.

That this can work is testified to by the recent presidential election in France, Girard’s homeland and a country that has given the world the precise formulation of separation of powers. It has also adopted, applying it to all elections, a single-member constituency two-round electoral system, one  that is more conducive to political diversity as compared to that of the U.S. or Britain, while eschewing the weaknesses of proportionality in political representation, the only such system in Europe. The whole combination has just produced a large majority vote and win for a candidate of reason and universalistic values, fully consonant with the main strands of the Western moral values, and a decisive defeat for the candidate of emotions, a throwback to empathy-relying (with one’s own tribe only), fear-mongering and nationalistic mores and times of a not-so-distant past.

But of course there is plenty of evidence that ostensibly rational ideologies, purporting to advocate nothing but fairness for particular nations or social classes, can lead us all astray, as can be seen throughout the twentieth century. Such morally corrosive ideologies are subsequently reinforced by appeals to narrowly-focused empathy, and emotions in general. This shows that in morality, public or private, just like in any other realm of human affairs, what counts the most is what we start with—what values really underlie this or that ideology, this or that set of policies. What our moral principles are, that is. And ultimately, at least for Rene Girard and his followers, who models our desires and values, who our true model in life is. For Rene Girard it is Jesus Christ, especially as interpreted by St Paul, Christianity’s de facto founder, and truly universalist religious thinker and moralist.