Over the last few years, right-wingers have finally started to realize that what they’re missing is empathy. Several decades’ worth of “I didn’t realize how bad this policy was until it hurt someone I know personally!” statements had already made that clear to the rest of us. “I didn’t think the leopards would eat my face!” as a meme goes back a decade now. But instead of realizing they should develop some, they’ve decided empathy must be bad, much like they previously decided that being aware of systematic injustice must be bad, and turned “woke” into a pejorative.
*sigh*
No, “Western Civilization” is not doomed by “suicidal empathy.” That people like Musk and Saal think “not treating people like garbage just because they aren’t like you” is an existential threat does not make it so. As Myers says, that tells you more about them than it does about society.
And if some aspects of our culture are threatened by empathy, such as the belief that certain types of people deserve to dominate others and other types of people deserve to be abused, then we should throw out those aspects, not cling to them even harder.
There are people who exploit vulnerabilities in society. But those people act a lot more like Elon Musk and a lot less like some random non-gender-conforming person who’s just trying to use the bathroom without getting beaten by a mob for picking the “wrong” one.
If our civilization is destroying itself, it’s not the people asking for empathy and inclusion who are doing it. It’s the reactionaries who insist on “taking back” their ability to treat others like garbage without consequence. They’re the ones tearing us apart.