Photo by Kayla Gibson
We now have nonsense wars on pretty much everything, in particular, notions of wokeness, DEIA, the list goes on and on, but perhaps the most damaging new war-front would be the shots fired against the very notion of empathy. It is being framed as a trait to be eradicated in a quest for some kind of evolutionary advancement. In short, it needs to be excised for civilization to progress by oligarch accounts. Elon Musk has been quoted as saying “the fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy”.
Those advancing such deranged notions seem to have a vision of future society that will bring happiness to no one, including themselves. They claim empathy is a bug present in Western Civilization that is inherently suicidal. It’s a sick and twisted path, to come to these conclusions– that somehow having empathy will lead to a collapse of civilization. It’s a heady blend of racism, eugenics and internal woe that brings one to such ideas. They know the destination they want to arrive at, that is, wealthy white men such as themselves need to be in charge, and they step over whatever carnage is necessary to get them to that destination. The flagrant irony is that allowing these mentally unsound individuals to guide policy and even the reality we reside in will likely lead the planet to an unsustainable collapse of ecosystems and perhaps even the extinction of humans. These are not the people to allow to have free reign over our destinies. It is framed that nods to equity, inclusion and even empathy will cause some kind of downfall, when in fact the exact opposite is true. It’s as if we have all thrown our lot in with the most insane, foaming at the mouth individuals and have ceded all common sense.
It starts with an outrageous statement, like empathy is wrong, then the pathetic national media runs soft hit pieces against commonly held notions of decency. Muscular Jesus makes an appearance and the notions of golden rules and do unto others are thrown to the side as these guys get their doses of testosterone, plastic surgery, hair transplants and steroids. Because these are the completely well-balanced men of learning we need to trust, right? They certainly aren’t insecure piles of psychosis who have gotten lucky numerous times. Decisions made by them could have easily landed them in prison (getting government contracts by saying you have pre-existing financing, and simultaneously getting financing by saying you have government contracts)…….behavior like that– if it works, leads others to believe you are a financial genius, but one flap of a butterfly wing in a different world, and that behavior could have landed such individuals in prison. Audacity and arrogance are the traits they value, of course they attack empathy. And Nikola Tesla would have probably loved Elon Musk about as much as he loved women wearing pearls (seriously, look that one up, it’s bizarre). These are not genius inventors; they are charlatans and hoarders.
Elon Musk and others will likely continue the rampage against the human emotions and connectedness that have allowed our survival this long. Musk is a man of astounding thin skin, who seems to have difficulty making normal connections with his many children. But he keeps on, in an almost hoarding manner, producing more children he won’t get to know. At one time two of his baby mommas were fighting it out with him on social media at roughly the same time. This is trashy behavior. Why on earth would anyone take him seriously about anything?
Idiocy peddlers like Joe Rogan have him on to broadcast that the notion of empathy is not a sound one. This freakishly wide chested bellowing of nonsense finds receptive ears on those who have hollow souls in need of mending. It’s so much easier to find a “philosophy” of malevolence and avarice than to look inside oneself to figure out what is truly missing. It’s not material goods or power they are lacking– these people have that in spades. What they lack is empathy, so instead of looking to that internal deficiency, they try to sell it as a value. Old school types looked to Ayn Rand, a notoriously popular “writer” who, if one looks into her background, was a fan-girl of a child murderer and famously took Medicare assistance to pay for her cancer treatment. Ayn Rand was yesterday, today it’s Curtis Yarvin or Peter Thiel they look to for apologetics in regard to their ICD10 psychiatric diagnoses.
Armed with these frameworks, they try to infect others with the sickness as well. Ironically railing about the “woke mind virus” they are the ones trying to seed the illness of their souls onto others. People at risk for contagion, that is, those with underlying racism, sexism—it’s easy for them to take up the “no empathy virus”. Racism and sexism are their pre-existing conditions that make this philosophy take root in their systems. Every accusation from them is a confession, and they aren’t truly satisfied until others have the same affliction.
Demonizing others from neighboring nations–those coming here to perform difficult work for low wages is a spot of easy pickings. Those doing the demonizing are often from other countries themselves and have truly been the ones to come to the US to plunder and take advantage. Conditions for Nazism waned in those spots they hail from, so they arrived in the US to try to find fertile ground for peddling fascism. Yet we are to look at the farm workers and other laborers as being the ones here to take something from us………incredible.
If one takes the aerial view of this situation, it’s appallingly clear what is going on, but incredibly most don’t fathom what this push to distract us from decency is all about. It’s simply very sick individuals trying to justify their rot and to not feel any qualms about the behavior. They want to steer society to a place where others, even the lowly serfs they lord over, do not show empathy to each other either. There’s no need to look at your sobriety when the whole place is drunk and violent. We have built up a system that rewards this kind of filthy behavior—the halls of Congress, the offices of CEOs……. we have let the most toxic control the narrative, and surprisingly the story the tell is that they are the heroes in all this. They see themselves as brave captains at the helm of ships, never mind the ship is plowing directly into an iceberg. And an iceberg they could have missed if they steered the boat slightly to the left in an attempt to help others.
I suppose the real fear from the oligarchs—the stuff that keeps them up at night, is that true empathy will lead to a society that they are not the lords of, that the type of consumptive frenzy they covet will come to a grinding halt. They exploit the true “bug” in western society, and that is that the accumulation of power and wealth actually stems more from a lack of empathy and having a willingness to exploit the earth and fellow citizens.
Ingesting the philosophy of these people—well, it’s a lot like the recent Supreme Court decision that came down 5-4 in favor of allowing San Francisco to continue with discharging high human waste in their surrounding waters. Evidently there was a philosophy advanced that all of the male Supreme Court members agreed with and that was that the EPA needed to get out of dictating water empathy—that is feeling bad if you put shit in the water people need to drink from.
So, the next time one hears ideas bandied about that empathy is a terrible thing, well consider the current paradigm— that we are literally being encouraged to ingest shit. Move forward wisely and protect your mind and body. Never concede that these rabid oligarch ramblings have any merit.
Source: Counter Punch