Empathy and Musk: Ignorant or Inhuman

Society would collapse without the brain's ability to empathise with others; but maybe that suits Musk just fine.

Having to address the ignorance and divisive rhetoric of Musk and his minions is tiresome. As most of us have already realised, his “insights” into humanity and the human condition say more about his own internal state than it does about the rest of us. Nonetheless, countering such drivel is important. Also, as is the intent of this newsletter, I will try and extract something civil and useful from the latest regurgitated drivel of our oligarch overlords.

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It is no exaggeration to say that without empathy, there would be no human civilisation. All the aspects of life that we love depend on or have developed from the human ability to empathise with others. Relationships, exploration of the environment, watching movies, listening to music, and even our sense of individuality would all disappear if human empathy were eradicated. Human evolution - moving us from animals fending for ourselves, constantly consumed by survival considerations, to beings capable of life-long relationships and friendships, eating Thai food and watching Netflix -was made possible by our ancestors honing and developing the ability to empathise with each other, which led to forming groups, clans, and eventually the global civilisation we are all now part of.

There is no scientific debate about this. There is no evolutionary scientist who would be foolish enough to claim that being able to relate to the emotions of others (i.e. empathy) was not a vital part of human evolution.

It was then a bizarre position for the self-proclaimed genius to spout “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit… There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.” This comment, that went unopposed by Rogan, could only come from a person who a) is an idiot, b) has a gross and pathological absence of empathy, c) has no one in his life to whom he cares more for than he does himself, and d) has an agenda to weaken the sense of civility that binds us together. It is equally possible that Musk got confused and meant sympathy, not empathy; abhorrent, nonetheless.

I found it particularly hilarious (in the kind of tragic, eye-gouging sense) when Musk tried to sound clever and that his rhetoric was in some way scientific “We’ve got civilisational suicidal empathy going on,”. I mean, what is he talking about? “Civilisational suicidal empathy”? Sounds serious. Or perhaps it’s simply made up nonsense.

But given that Musk has raised the issue, perhaps it’s useful to arm ourselves with some facts about empathy; after all, we certainly could do with cultivating a bit more empathy in our world of increasing inequity.

The Neuroscience of Empathy

Empathy is a cognitive function, much like reasoning or decision-making. It involves a number of brain regions (see below diagram). In particular, empathy involves the Prefrontal Cortex (the area which has greatly expanded over human evolution, and the same area that is inhibited by authoritarian and fascistic rhetoric). Empathy is a basic function of the brain that is present in many animals. It is the ability to sense what someone else is (likely to be) feeling and to understand why they may be feeling that way.

[Image from https://www.empathyset.com/guide-neuroscience]

To find a time when humanity did not depend on empathy for forming the relationships necessary to maintain families and groups you would have to go back well beyond 5 million years ago. Indeed, it is very likely that our ape ancestors had a quite advanced level of empathy. They could tell what their fellow apes were feeling and often understood the reasons for such feelings.

As good as some other animals are at empathising, humans are at a whole new level (at least most of us are). Large parts of our large brains are taken up with the function of empathy. Indeed, it was the development of these areas of the brain that helped fathers become more involved in their kids’ upbringing (a key aspect of the survival of the human species), the formation of pair bonds (romantic relationships), and the development of larger and larger groups (that eventually led to a relatively feeble ape (humans) becoming the most dominant species on the planet).

In neuroscience, empathy can be divided into three key components. Firstly, there is “affective empathy” - the ability to feel what someone else is feeling. This isn’t simply guessing what someone else is feeling - they are shouting therefore they are angry. When we activate our affective empathy pathways we actually generate the same emotion as the person we are empathising with; almost like we are experiencing that emotion ourselves. It is an incredible level of “mind reading”.

The second aspect of empathy is “cognitive empathy” - the ability to know why someone is feeling a certain way. As you can imagine, the better you know someone the easier it is to cognitively empathise with them. Again, while somewhat distant from the actual experience of the other individual, when we activate the cognitive empathy network in our brains we mentalise (or create) the possible scenarios that could have led to the emotion the other person is experiencing and then choose which experience and reason is relevant. Again, it is a remarkable achievement, way beyond the most sophisticated computer simulation.

The final aspect of successful empathy is the action that ensues. For example, if the other person is suffering then the move would be to try and alleviate that suffering to some degree. Sometimes that is simply acknowledging their suffering, sometimes it is providing food or shelter. Many have termed this '“compassion” (although I am conscious that such a concept may be too much for Muskians to process).

The overall empathy process is summarised best by Ochsner: “First, the tendency to take on or share the feelings of others; second, the ability to cognitively understand those feelings; and third, the tendency to act pro-socially based on those feelings”.

Successful Empathy

Two important factors are necessary for ‘successful empathy’. Firstly, there must be emotional maturity. That is, one must be capable and comfortable sitting with someone else’s feelings (particularly if unpleasant). This is a hallmark not only of emotional maturity but also of adequate neurodevelopment (brain maturity). Such healthy or more complete brain development is almost entirely (in a physiologically healthy brain) dependent on one’s upbringing. Sorry to the fellow parents, but it is mainly down to us, and as our children get older, it becomes the product of the society in which they develop.

The second important factor that is necessary for successful empathy is that there is an avenue available to address or respond to the reason for the other’s emotion. This is vital to prevent empathy from having negative effects on one’s own cognitive state. Interestingly, if one does not have the emotional maturity to sit with another’s feelings, then displaying compassion - i.e. moving to help - protects against any negative affect response. Indeed, acting compassionately activates the advanced reward pathway of the orbitofrontal cortex.

I think it is best summarised by Stevens and Taber “It appears self-compassion may be an emotional regulation strategy that both maintains one’s emotional well-being while keeping their affective empathy intact.” In real life: simple acts of kindness when one empathises with others keeps your mind healthy. There is nothing wrong with feeling good about helping others, even if you can’t fix their problems fully.

It is notable, particularly when rich folk start talking about there being too much empathy in the world, that empathy is much stronger when one is interacting with someone whom we feel is a fair person. Singer et al have shown that when playing an economic game, “fair players elicited more empathy than unfair players”. Yeah, not so strange that the greediest person on the planet finds empathy a bit inconvenient.

It gets worse (for the wealthy). The vast majority of people activate their empathy pathways more when the other person is from a low socioeconomic status and less when they are from high socioeconomic status. Again, not a surprise that billionaire Musk would rather we stop this pesky thing called humanity.

Closing Remarks

It is truly remarkable that we have created an environment whereby someone so devoid of the very characteristics that allowed humans to survive and succeed can gain such a significant influence on human civilisation. Whether or not Musk and his fellow Muskians are genuinely ignorant or merely inhumane is probably largely irrelevant; either way, they should be nowhere near positions of influence (I am loathed to attribute any ‘school of thought’ to Musk - as there are certainly no tangible insights behind his commentary -, but I think Muskian as a way of describing the often warped logic used to tear down the civility that has glued civilisation together may be an accurate depiction of Musk and his followers).

For me, Musk merely represents a reminder of what happens when you measure worth based solely on the ability to accrue wealth. Just as Hitler sponsored the appreciation of diversity and the respect for ordinary people, so too will Musk soon only serve as a reminder that all wealth belongs to the people and we must protect it from the least civil-minded of us.