1866 || compassionate empathy

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2:08A daily motivation podcast designed to help you get out of bed every morning with a little company from me, Drulli America. If you struggle with consistency, let's build a little momentum together, whether you make your bed or not. Good morning, Sutton Shine. Welcome to another day of the Make Your Damn Bed Podcast. In 2016, Paul Bloom, a psychologist, wrote a book titled, Against Empathy, the Case for Rational Compassion, where he draws on the distinctions between empathy and compassion and moral decision-making. Bloom argues that empathy is not the solution to problems that divide people and is a poor guide for decision-making. However, he's obviously not completely against empathy. He believes it can motivate kindness to make the world a better place. And though the book has a lot of controversy and a lot of people that pushed back against it, I do think there really is an important distinction to make between compassion and

3:11empathy. But it's important to note that Paul Bloom, the author of the book, actually defines empathy as sympathy. So for Bloom, empathy is the act of coming to experience the world as you think someone else does. He describes it as a spotlight, directing attention and aid to where it is needed. Empathy is an emotion that people mistake as a moral guide for their decision-making, but Bloom suggests it can blind our morality. empathy is limiting because it directs people's attention to individuals or individual events, which can misguide certain acts of kindness. Therefore he suggests that we overcome the problems created by empathy through the use of conscious, deliberative reasoning in everyday life. And through this he develops his case for rational compassion. He discusses kindness and altruism through these acts of compassion rather than being led by individual empathy. Bloom believes that people can make decisions based on considerations of cost and benefits,

4:15and he analyzes why and how people act altruistically and explains that oftentimes empathy motivates people to act for self-serving reasons. Bloom explores the neurological differences between feeling and understanding, and these are central to demonstrating the limitations of empathy. Now something I definitely agree with him on is the way he describes compassion, which is compassion is simply caring for other people and wanting them to thrive, whereas empathy is actually feeling what others feel. And like I mentioned yesterday, and a lot of experiments we've found that empathy does highlight certain biases. It is well known that some acts of kindness do come from a place of empathy, but those acts have the potential of resulting in unintended consequences. Part of this is because people's moral evaluation of the people and events around them determine whether people feel empathy towards them, so it's very subjective. You feel more empathy for someone who's cooperating with you than someone you're in competition

5:21with. So if you only feel empathy towards people who have been kind to you, then you are missing out on a bunch of people who are under duress or had other reasons not to be kind. And so this is where Paul Bloom argues that empathy can actually advocate or merit bad behavior, because you don't feel empathy for the people who have wronged you or not as kind to you or you don't relate to as much, you can justify not being as empathetic towards those people. And so Bloom describes effective altruism and its relationship with a cost-benefit analysis in decision-making. He explains that rationalizing our acts of kindness is usually a more effective guide for moral decisions than empathy can be. But people are always going to make decisions using our empathy over our rationality. But we must be careful to not allow our empathy to dehumanize or objectify other people.

6:24A lot of people, a lot of bad people in the world commit evil acts in support of their morality, which can be blinded by empathy for themselves. He's not saying that people are stupid or make bad decisions. It's just that we make thoughtful decisions that we rationalize through things that are very subjective and don't always have the full perspective, the full picture. It said, we do make rational decisions about big stuff in our everyday lives. When we have to make big life decisions, we do critically assess the outcomes, the consequences, the alternative options, and where our life would be in five years if we continued on this path. But Bloom argues that we don't usually use the same utilitarian approach to our acts of altruism and kindness. We usually only rely on our empathy, on our being able to relate to others. And because some people do lack objective empathy or like an ability to be empathetic towards people they don't relate to, it can cause problems.

7:28It can cause a whole section of people to be ignored because these other people don't empathize with them. And if you're like, Julie, I'm so empathetic, I can empathize with anybody. I don't have to relate to them. Then you, like me, might benefit from a utilitarian approach to altruism because of your extreme empathy. You empathize too much with the world around you, so it makes you unable to do anything about it. Being able to look at and assess and move from a more objective place that actually has results will make us feel more morally aligned with our values. It will make us feel better about the things we're doing because we are empathetic to the world around us, but we don't know where to start. Now, I think Paul Bloom is kind of a douchebag because he says empathy is a bad idea and I have to disagree. I actually think a lot of the powers that be lack empathy and it's a big reason for most of our fucking problems, but I do agree with the concept of adding some moral reasoning

8:33into our compassionate acts, putting more emphasis on seeing the bigger picture rather than just assessing for how much empathy we feel can actually lead to more empathetic outcomes. Where I don't agree that empathy is bad, I do agree there are limits to it. I find Paul Bloom's argument to be really misguided. And similarly to a lot of people who have problems with this book, it does polarize the discussion about empathy. And so in 2024, philosopher Manuel Camasa wrote a book called On the Power and Limits of Empathy. And he talks about how misguided Paul Bloom's view of empathy is. And in his book, Camasa aims to find a middle ground between extremely positive and extremely negative accounts of empathy, a position which empathy is not at the base of morality, but it does play a central role in it. And honestly that's where I stand.

9:35Like most things in life, it comes back to balance. If we're being far too empathetic, we're probably not being compassionate to everyone else in the picture. If we're blocking ourselves from all of our empathy, we are probably incapable of moral reasoning that is objective as well. We need to stay somewhere in the center, somewhere more grounded in our humanity, in our ability to empathize, but also be able to act from a more compassionate and reasonable place that takes our empathy into account, but also takes into account the parts of empathy that may be blocked from us, the perspectives of people that we might not understand or be able to see. I have to admit that there are some anti-emathy warriors out there that have created an absolute nightmare of a world to live in. Those are not who I'm encouraging you to follow. But I am encouraging you to open yourself up to the idea that empathy may cause some bias, or it may block you from being able to act at all.

10:37And in that case, you can use some more moral reasoning to help with your decision-making. Compassion itself is a social emotion that motivates us to go out of our way to relieve the pain, whether it's physical, mental, or emotional of other people. Compassion is not just recognizing, but relating to and responding to the emotional aspects of the suffering of others. In compassion, we have to have empathy, but we also have to be willing to notice, feel, and respond. The word compassion means to suffer together with, and it is simply a variation of love, or sadness, but it's not a distinct emotion itself. You can feel compassion for a lot of different people, a lot of different feelings, and a lot of different things. So I'm not telling you to have less empathy or less compassion. I'm just telling you to incorporate more reasoning and altruism into your consideration

11:39when you are trying to behave more compassionately. When you are actually making empathetic and kind decisions, it can be helpful to make sure you're making them from a more objective place, which may take some more reasoning than we've previously been taught about empathy. As always, you can access any of the resources I've referenced in the show notes, if you're interested. In the meantime, just know I love you so much. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and I'll talk to you tomorrow while you make your damp bed. Goodbye, cutie. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Make Your Dan Bed Podcast. Forget to subscribe so you don't miss tomorrow's episode. You can follow on Instagram and TikTok at mydbpodcast for occasional updates. And if you could rate and review this episode five stars wherever you're listening, it genuinely helps the podcast at its core. And if you have anyone in your life you think might be interested in hearing what I have had to say, it also makes a huge difference in the sustainability and my ability to make

12:41this something worth sharing. So if you have questions or want specific advice, you can email me at mydbpodcast.gmail.com. In the meantime, I've been your host, Julie America. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and I'll talk to you tomorrow while you make your damp bed. Instead of AI tools, stop overthinking. Start building. AWS AI is how. Blood donation is now more inclusive. More LGBTQ plus individuals are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross due to FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross, including you. The Red Cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential

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