The following is an essay/sermon from the Executive Director of the American Humanists Association.

 

A Message from Executive Director Fish Stark

EMPATHY IS WHAT SAVES US (March 21, 20250

We’ve got a new big lie to fight.

People are being thrown into economic chaos – they don’t know what’s happening to their student loan repayment programs, their retirement savings are being tanked and it seems increasingly likely that Social Security is on the chopping block. Israeli theocrats are once again raining down missiles on civilians in Gaza, other theocrats have responded with rocket attacks in kind. People are being thrown in prison with no criminal charges.

The radical right – the unholy alliance of bishops and billionaires – has turned on the firehose of cruelty.

And they’re telling us that the real problem is that we care too much.

“The fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy,” Elon Musk said on Joe Rogan’s podcast. The right-wing intelligentsia has been talking louder and louder about suicidal empathy recently. Their allies on the religious right are piling on further: empathy is a sin, we’re told, because its focus on human suffering distracts us from heavenly commands.

It’s horseshit.

I don’t just mean it’s morally bankrupt – although that’s true.

But it’s completely counterfactual. It is an intentional lie, obscuring or misrepresenting facts of neurobiology, psychology, and history.

They want us to believe that empathy is killing us. The truth is that empathy is what saves us.

There’s no way for the billionaires and the bishops to get what they want – a society where they’ve consolidated economic and cultural power, where the Musks of the world can amass unlimited profit from our increasing productivity and the Timothy Dolans of the world can force us to structure our personal lives according to their parochial dictates – without doing things that are offensive to human consciousness.

They cannot enforce the economic order they want without cruelty towards the poor, sick, and old. They cannot enforce the social order they want without punishing people who have done nothing wrong but defy their made-up commandments.

And they cannot get away with it unless we let them. So they tell us to turn off the part of ourselves that is naturally wired to be attuned to injustice, to care about the pain and safety of others, to be repulsed by cruelty.

Cognitive empathy – being able to understand and relate to the feelings of others – is proven to improve emotional regulation. We feel better – we are better – when we feel connected to others, when we care about them.

Dr. Kristin Neff at UT-Austin does work on the theory of common humanity – the idea that by realizing the ties we have to other people, our common failings and frailties, we are more forgiving of them and ourselves. Seeing ourselves as more connected to others, rather than isolated within smaller and smaller circles, improves mental health.

There’s also a clear, science-based link between empathy and prosocial behavior. People with empathetic instincts help other people. And prosocial behavior is a positive feedback loop – kindness engenders kindness, generosity sparks generosity.

We have built civilizations not because we followed the dictates of the most self-interested among us but because we created social contracts – systems of laws and rules and ethics that allowed us to keep competing human needs in balance, driven by the recognition that we cannot survive if we don’t trust our neighbors.

Sure, there is such a thing as getting too wrapped up in the concerns of others, of sacrificing one’s own needs too readily. But this is a problem with reasoning and judgment, not empathy. The presence of empathy informs reasoned decision-making, but doesn’t guarantee it. But that’s not what this is about.

The truth is that the billionaires and the bishops don’t want us to be mentally healthy. They want us crying out in desperation, lacking purpose and meaning, so they can tell us to fill the hole with God. And they don’t want prosocial behavior. They want us to be dependent on them, not each other, so they can work us for lower wages and longer hours.

And so they wage a war on empathy.

It seems to me that in doing so, they sow their own downfall. Caring about people is an evolutionary instinct. We are wired to have concern for others in our species, and balance that with their own self-interest.

When you turn one of the most natural human impulses into an act of revolution – well, good luck with that, Elon.

As for me and my house – we will serve humanity. We will not turn inward and ignore the missiles aimed at civilians and the social security checks ripped away from the elderly and indigent.

We won’t look at our empathy as a sin or a weakness, but a tool. A tool that helps deepen our own humanity and ensure the humanity of others is respected and uplifted. A tool that keeps us close to our neighbors when those in power would rather pit us all against each other.

They talk about “suicidal empathy” because they want us to fall into suicidal apathy. But we’re smart enough not to take the bait.

For humanity,

Fish