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Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through the.
Speaker 1: Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
Speaker 1: tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not
Speaker 1: because I put my hand on a book and made
Speaker 1: a wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 3: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness. Truth,
Speaker 3: Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 3: Back when I was a video producer, I used to
Speaker 3: have this co worker this twenty something years ago. Her
Speaker 3: name is Tracy, and Tracy was a blast. Just a
Speaker 3: terrific person, huge heart, this sort of childlike, wide eyed
Speaker 3: wonder on her face all the time she's about it
Speaker 3: must have been upper twenties, around thirty years old. She
Speaker 3: was a Christian, just a casual Christian. I doubt she
Speaker 3: really knew anything about the Bible, but it was her
Speaker 3: thing right, which is typical I think of many people
Speaker 3: in the faith. And she was a talented producer. And
Speaker 3: I remember every time Tracy would open her mouth every
Speaker 3: time she would tell a story or ask a question,
Speaker 3: anybody who knew her would get nervous because Tracy had
Speaker 3: a gift, and I know that you know somebody in
Speaker 3: your own life who is like this. She could say
Speaker 3: the right thing in a tremendously awkward way, or she
Speaker 3: would say a not great thing, like an uncomfortable or
Speaker 3: even inappropriate thing, without any guy, without any malice, just
Speaker 3: so innocently, but she would say it and make you
Speaker 3: even more uncomfortable. And so you just never knew what
Speaker 3: was going to come out of her mouth. So whatever,
Speaker 3: we'd be with a client or in a meeting or something,
Speaker 3: and she'd be like, now I have a question, and
Speaker 3: we'd be like, oh God, no, what's she going to
Speaker 3: say next? What's what's she going to say? So, and
Speaker 3: I have a point to this story. We were on
Speaker 3: a video shoot. We were going. We were traveling. We
Speaker 3: used to travel back when I was a producer. We
Speaker 3: did fundraising and promotional videos for churches. Ironically, I produced
Speaker 3: hundreds of church videos for churches all around the country,
Speaker 3: and so we'd fly all around every weekend. And so
Speaker 3: me and a crew of two other people, including Tracy,
Speaker 3: we were going I forget to what church it was.
Speaker 3: I don't remember any of the details. I just remember
Speaker 3: the encounter. We're on a plane and Tracy ends up
Speaker 3: sitting next to a guy who was obviously practicing Muslim.
Speaker 3: And I don't think I'm profiling. I mean, you could
Speaker 3: tell by the dress he was middle Easter, and you
Speaker 3: just assumed this guy's almost certainly a Muslim. And so
Speaker 3: Tracy was sitting next to this guy and I'm like
Speaker 3: a row over or something. I can see and barely
Speaker 3: hear what's going on. And Tracy, Tracy, she has no fear,
Speaker 3: She had no fear. She's just gonna ask whatever question
Speaker 3: pops into her head. And so she strikes up a conversation,
Speaker 3: so where are you headed today? And the gentleman smiled
Speaker 3: and he said, I am going here. Where are you
Speaker 3: going today? He responded, and she said, I am going here.
Speaker 3: We're going on a video. Shoot, oh you shoot video? Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: we're going to a church, first Baptist Church of whatever,
Speaker 3: first Methodist church or First Assembly of whatever church. We're
Speaker 3: going and we're doing a video for their staff so
Speaker 3: that they can raise money. Oh, oh that's nice, that's nice.
Speaker 3: In a moment passed and I'm sitting more and more
Speaker 3: on the edge of my seat, waiting for something uncomfortable
Speaker 3: to come out of Tracy's mouth. And she says, you
Speaker 3: have a very thick accent. Where are you from? And
Speaker 3: I don't remember his country of origin? Obviously a Muslim
Speaker 3: majority nation, and it wasn't one of the ones that
Speaker 3: we hear about in the headlines all the time, like Iran, Iraq,
Speaker 3: Saudi Arabia. I mean, you know what, are there fifty
Speaker 3: some Muslim majority countries in the world. So it could
Speaker 3: have been Libya, could have been Jordan, could have been Nigeria,
Speaker 3: could have been Tunisia, whatever. But he was obviously from
Speaker 3: another part of the world where Islam is the dominant religion.
Speaker 3: And this is about five minutes after nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: Just been a few years. And you know that in
Speaker 3: this country, the American perception of the Muslim usually involves
Speaker 3: a vest made of dynamite. Now I'm really on the
Speaker 3: edge of my seat. Tracy is nodding and smiling in
Speaker 3: that naive way, not an ounce of bad intention in
Speaker 3: her heart. She says, she says, can you help me
Speaker 3: understand something about Muslims? Oh? Shit, here we go. Can
Speaker 3: you help me understand why so many Muslims are terrorists.
Speaker 3: This guy could have gone post a lot, he could
Speaker 3: have lost his mind and he could have just dressed
Speaker 3: her down and berated her and you know, but he didn't.
Speaker 3: He was so freaking kind. And I don't remember the
Speaker 3: specifics of the answer, but the gist was is that
Speaker 3: Islam is a religion of peace and that we are
Speaker 3: not terrorists. Those people are very broken people. They are
Speaker 3: filled with hate. But Allah is a god of love,
Speaker 3: and we are a religion of love and peace. And
Speaker 3: so he was doing I think what a lot of Muslims,
Speaker 3: especially in this country, we're trying to do, which was
Speaker 3: to de escalate and to try to counter this American
Speaker 3: notion that Islam equals terrorism because we didn't know any Look,
Speaker 3: the truth is in this nation, when you ask somebody,
Speaker 3: a Protestant Christian American, you ask them to tell you
Speaker 3: what is Islam? Which nations practice the Muslim faith, How
Speaker 3: many of them are peaceful, how many of them are radicals?
Speaker 3: What is the overall vibe of Islam? If you ask
Speaker 3: an American Christian, they have no idea. All they know
Speaker 3: is Muslim equals terrorism. That's all they know, Alahu wakbar,
Speaker 3: you hit the red button, you blow yourself up, and
Speaker 3: you take dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people with you
Speaker 3: as you go off to get your virgins in heaven.
Speaker 3: All right, that's what we think about Islam. And I
Speaker 3: was just thinking about this exchange and the response of
Speaker 3: a guy who could have gone on the defensive, and
Speaker 3: who could have been really caustic and nasty and all
Speaker 3: those things, but instead he understood that Tracy was not
Speaker 3: an agent of hate. She was not an agent of cruelty.
Speaker 3: She was not an agent of bigotry, or at least
Speaker 3: conscious bigotry. She was just naive. She was ignorant. She
Speaker 3: was exhibiting a child like naivety about the world that
Speaker 3: she lived in. Now, I'm not excusing the religion itself.
Speaker 3: We know that Islam is just another superstition, and we
Speaker 3: know that it fuels some very bad ideas, and we
Speaker 3: know that fundamentalist Islam is responsible for a lot of
Speaker 3: suffering in the world. We know that. But those of
Speaker 3: us who see Muslims in three dimensions do understand that
Speaker 3: Islam doesn't mean terrorism, and that the vast majority of
Speaker 3: people who are persecuted by the hardliners and by the
Speaker 3: radicals and the Islamic regimes. Those people who are suffering
Speaker 3: and just want to be free and live in peace,
Speaker 3: those people themselves are Muslims. They are human beings. Islam
Speaker 3: for them is a framework for their lives. They don't
Speaker 3: hate anybody. They don't want to blow anybody up. They
Speaker 3: don't want to see anybody tortured in whatever hell there
Speaker 3: might be. They don't want Alla to come over and
Speaker 3: strike everybody. Muslims, casual cultural Muslims, are so similar to
Speaker 3: casual cultural Christians, Christians who ignore whole sections of their
Speaker 3: genocidal Bible and they just sort of have Christianity as
Speaker 3: an esthetic. They got a Bible on the no nightstand.
Speaker 3: They don't really care much what's in it. They pray
Speaker 3: and thank God before meals that somebody else prepared and served.
Speaker 3: They ask for God's protection and healing as they pay
Speaker 3: their insurance premiums and buckle their seatbelts and lock their
Speaker 3: doors and turn on their security systems and load their handguns.
Speaker 3: They live mostly secular lives, but Christianity for them is
Speaker 3: like the window dressing. It is structure. It is part
Speaker 3: of their identity, and I am convinced that a great
Speaker 3: many Muslims are very much this way, and they are
Speaker 3: good people who want peace. This guy responded to Tracy
Speaker 3: by explaining much of this stuff in his own way,
Speaker 3: defending his faith. But he did so with tremendous empathy
Speaker 3: and humanity. I really, at the time got the sense
Speaker 3: that he was kind of seeing the question through her eyes.
Speaker 3: He was thinking, Okay, this is what our mindset is,
Speaker 3: this is probably how she was raised, and I'm just
Speaker 3: going to try to go with it. Given that understanding, right,
Speaker 3: he really approached her with goodwill. I mean, there was
Speaker 3: a lot of humanity there, which is so ironic because
Speaker 3: in this country our perception of the Sharia law crowd
Speaker 3: is that they just want to come in and dominate
Speaker 3: and crush and hates everybody else, all the infidels. He
Speaker 3: was a human being first, and I was struck by that.
Speaker 3: We had a conversation afterward. I think I said something like,
Speaker 3: you know, Tracy, Tracy, I as a representative of the company,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that asking a total stranger why his
Speaker 3: religion is so loaded with terrorists, and doing so on
Speaker 3: an airplane is the best idea. It's not that you
Speaker 3: shouldn't ever have the conversation, but context and timing are
Speaker 3: very important. Just keep that in mind next time. I
Speaker 3: really wanted to try to to not discourage her from
Speaker 3: learning about the world. But why are so many of
Speaker 3: you bomb carrying murderers? Might not be the question to
Speaker 3: ask right off the bat. Okay, that might not be
Speaker 3: the question to ask, But this guy was so kind
Speaker 3: and it made me think again about humanity and empathy
Speaker 3: in a time when there is a war on empathy.
Speaker 3: It's been called toxic empathy. And that's the conversation I
Speaker 3: want to have today. Of course, I guess we finally
Speaker 3: have to define empathy the abilities to see something from
Speaker 3: another's point of view and to share their thoughts or
Speaker 3: their feelings. We can kind of get what they're going through.
Speaker 3: And yet, for some reason, for many people in this country,
Speaker 3: empathy has been painted as our tent is so wide
Speaker 3: open that we're going to allow in every bad idea,
Speaker 3: every bad ideology, every dangerous person or culture. Our empathy
Speaker 3: will be literally the death of us. Let me get
Speaker 3: into Elon Musk. Elon Musk goes on Joe Rogan last year,
Speaker 3: and he's waging war on empathy. He says, we've got
Speaker 3: civilizational suicidal empathy going on. I think you should care
Speaker 3: about other people, but you need to have empathy for
Speaker 3: civilization as a whole and not commit to a civilizational suicide.
Speaker 3: And he draws a lot of this thinking from a
Speaker 3: guy named doctor Gad Sod. He is a Canadian marketing professor,
Speaker 3: and he has casually applied evolutionary psychology to the American
Speaker 3: culture war. In fact, Gadsod has a book out. It's
Speaker 3: called Suicidal Empathy Dying to be Kind. On the cover
Speaker 3: is a quote by none other than Elon Musk. Western
Speaker 3: civilization is doomed unless the core weakness of suicidal empathy
Speaker 3: is recognized and actions are that are hard but necessary
Speaker 3: for survival. Now many of us are thinking an endorsement
Speaker 3: by Elon Musk is not the flex that you think
Speaker 3: it is. But Gadsod's take is essentially this irrational altruism, gripping,
Speaker 3: suffocating our culture. Suicidal empathy the mind parasite which hijacks
Speaker 3: the good empathy module in our brains, and it makes
Speaker 3: us do bad things. We coddle violent criminals, we protect rapists,
Speaker 3: and we brand those who are practicing self defense as
Speaker 3: toxic and violent people. We prioritize the feelings of marginalized
Speaker 3: groups over what is true. We advocate for criminals and
Speaker 3: ignore the victims. We demonize the strong and the successful.
Speaker 3: Then we celebrate the week and the destructive. We prefer
Speaker 3: illegal immigrants over our our own citizens and our veterans.
Speaker 3: We let drug addicts threaten our kids and parks. Common
Speaker 3: sense is dying, and it's because of suicidal empathy. Now
Speaker 3: I'm going to attempt at nuance, and I know I
Speaker 3: can get away with it with this audience. Okay, and
Speaker 3: we'll start with this reference to the violent criminals and rapists.
Speaker 3: I'm guessing this is a riff on Trump's thing about
Speaker 3: Mexico sending murderers and rapists across the border. They're not
Speaker 3: sending their best. They are shoving into this country the
Speaker 3: worst of the worst, and they are coming after your
Speaker 3: kids and your family, and your God and your nation
Speaker 3: and the world and your whatever.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: That's how we see it, And in my own mind
Speaker 3: have had this conversation about documentation.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 3: I understand the border is a problem. But I'll tell
Speaker 3: you I myself would rather live next to a hardworking
Speaker 3: person of good character who came here legally without documentation.
Speaker 3: This is true for me. I see something like I
Speaker 3: don't know what it's like to have been born under
Speaker 3: the boots of a Mexican cartel. You worry and you
Speaker 3: fear for your life every single day. I don't know
Speaker 3: what that's like. I don't know what it's like to
Speaker 3: worry about the water that I drink because a parasite
Speaker 3: might kill me. My world is not one where I
Speaker 3: am targeted with racial slurs left and right. I don't
Speaker 3: know what it's like to be part of a police
Speaker 3: traffic stop and worry that the color of my skin
Speaker 3: is potentially going to get me shot. I don't know
Speaker 3: what it's like to be a Muslim trying to get
Speaker 3: permits to build a mosque in my hometown. And this
Speaker 3: is happening in my home state of Oklahoma. We got
Speaker 3: seven thousand Christian churches in this state, and about twenty
Speaker 3: minutes for me, there is a group of people Muslims
Speaker 3: trying to build a mosque. They just want to build
Speaker 3: a house of worship that represents their faith in a
Speaker 3: nation that's supposed to be all about religious liberty, and
Speaker 3: yet they have been denied permits and are now filing lawsuits,
Speaker 3: discrimination lawsuits because everybody around them who's talking about religious
Speaker 3: liberty seems to mean Christian nationalist supremacy. I don't wake
Speaker 3: up in the morning and think, you know, I wonder
Speaker 3: if my own government is going to invalidate my marriage
Speaker 3: this month. I'm not a trans military service member who's
Speaker 3: been told all right, fine, you got to quit the
Speaker 3: military in this amount of time, or else we're going
Speaker 3: to put you on the hook for six figures of
Speaker 3: student loans, right to be blackmailed out of the opportunity
Speaker 3: to serve my own country simply because I don't fit
Speaker 3: into this extremely tiny model for what's pete Hegseth thinks
Speaker 3: the American soldier ought to look like, which is apparently
Speaker 3: six foot plus, straight, conservative flag waving, probably Republican male
Speaker 3: who gets an erection at the smell of gunpowder. I've
Speaker 3: never felt the frustration of someone who's trying to navigate
Speaker 3: a world that seems to have been designed only for
Speaker 3: people who don't have a disability in terms of being
Speaker 3: able to see or hear or feel. You know, everybody
Speaker 3: in that world. They can use the stairs, and they
Speaker 3: can access the entrance, and they can find their way
Speaker 3: from point A to point B, and there's a chair
Speaker 3: for them at the table, but not for me. I
Speaker 3: don't know what that's like. I've never been accused of
Speaker 3: abducting and eating dogs and cats because of the country
Speaker 3: that I immigrated from. I've never had my reproductive choices mandate
Speaker 3: to me. And I've never been punished, penalized, or even
Speaker 3: fired from a job because I took too much maternity
Speaker 3: leave after the birth of a baby. Don't know what
Speaker 3: that's like. How many people right now were born into
Speaker 3: or found themselves drowning in a situation of financial disadvantage,
Speaker 3: Working one two three jobs at poverty wages in a
Speaker 3: world or at least in a nation where the cost
Speaker 3: of everything is going through the roof, they make less
Speaker 3: the world costs more. And then people in this government
Speaker 3: than elsewhere, certainly in the corporate world, look at them
Speaker 3: and blame them for their own financial disadvantage. And then
Speaker 3: they point around to someone who overcame near insurmountable circumstances
Speaker 3: to become successful, a millionaire, even a billionaire, And then
Speaker 3: they say, well, if you're poor, if you can't pay
Speaker 3: the bills, if you can't make something of yourself. It's
Speaker 3: your own fault. Talented enough, you're not motivated enough, you're
Speaker 3: not working hard enough. Your poverty is your fault. I
Speaker 3: don't know what that's like. I mean, I think we've
Speaker 3: all or most of us, have experienced financial struggles living
Speaker 3: on a shoe string, but I mean the extreme or
Speaker 3: more extreme versions of that. I've been very fortunate in
Speaker 3: my life, and you may feel the same in a
Speaker 3: world where empathy is the enemy. If you're poor, if
Speaker 3: you're homeless, if you're under the boot of someone else,
Speaker 3: if you are disadvantaged and struggling, I can just write
Speaker 3: you off and I can call that moral. Elon Musk
Speaker 3: talks a lot about empathy, usually attaches it to whatever
Speaker 3: pet project he is a part of. Evs are going
Speaker 3: to help us with our energy situation, which may be true,
Speaker 3: but he frames it in terms of empathy. We have
Speaker 3: to help humanity through electric cars. Oh, space X, and
Speaker 3: the billions of dollars were blowing up on the launch pad.
Speaker 3: That is going to make humanity interplanetary, and that's good
Speaker 3: for humanity. That's empathy. The whole thing about going to Mars,
Speaker 3: our planet is becoming uninhabitable. I think he may have
Speaker 3: at one time said that we are not reproducing enough.
Speaker 3: So he's like, well, I have to spend obscene amounts
Speaker 3: of money to get us to Mars in a plan
Speaker 3: that will never work because I care so much. He
Speaker 3: goes into doge and he just wipes out He and
Speaker 3: the hacker bros go in and wipe out critical, critical
Speaker 3: programs that help I don't know how many millions of people.
Speaker 3: Strikes usaid causes the death of I don't know how
Speaker 3: many people. And he says, you know, smaller government means
Speaker 3: more individual freedom. I'm doing this because of empathy. He
Speaker 3: buys into white replacement theory. He says, I'm protecting the
Speaker 3: integrity of the United States and our core values when
Speaker 3: I say that there's a focused, concentrated conspiracy by those lefties,
Speaker 3: the radical left, the progressives, the Democrats. They want open
Speaker 3: borders so they can cart in the immigrants, the illegals.
Speaker 3: Then votes and they vote out all of the white people.
Speaker 3: It's white replacement. By the way, undocumented immigrants cannot vote.
Speaker 3: Mister genius, how do we listen to this guy, a
Speaker 3: man of tremendous privilege, who was preaching to the rest
Speaker 3: of us about what he calls civilizational suicidal empathy. How
Speaker 3: do we take him seriously on the subject, And how
Speaker 3: in the world is Elon Musk lecturing anybody about the
Speaker 3: American dream. He comes here overstays a student visa. He
Speaker 3: is an illegal immigrant. It's the ultimate irony. And then
Speaker 3: he uses the system. He abuses the system to become
Speaker 3: a wealth hoarder. And that is called the American dream.
Speaker 3: And it's especially true in conservative circles, this idea of
Speaker 3: the American dream. And I used to buy into it,
Speaker 3: but I looked at it sort of through the looking
Speaker 3: glass the other way. Have you noticed that when people
Speaker 3: talk about the American dream, it's almost always about money.
Speaker 3: The American dream? What is that? Well, if somebody ends
Speaker 3: up getting rich, they make a lot of money in
Speaker 3: the stock market, or they have a successful business, or
Speaker 3: they inherit money and they get a mansion and bank
Speaker 3: and boats and cars and planes and shit like that,
Speaker 3: they become world famous. Well that's the American dream. You
Speaker 3: hardly ever hear someone say are they just happy? Are
Speaker 3: they safe? Are they surrounded with loved ones? Are they
Speaker 3: filled with purpose and doing what they feel like they
Speaker 3: should be doing? And living the kind of positive life
Speaker 3: that ripples outward to benefit everybody in their orbit. Does
Speaker 3: anybody ever.
Speaker 2: Talk like that?
Speaker 3: No, it's always about bank. Well, if you look in
Speaker 3: that context, if you frame it that way, Elon Musk
Speaker 3: should be the happiest guy in the universe. The things
Speaker 3: he says and the things he does, I mean, these
Speaker 3: should be joyous, positive, wonderful things every day, a party
Speaker 3: every day, a celebration every day, an expression of gratitude
Speaker 3: for the vast resources that he has quote unquote achieved.
Speaker 3: And yet when's the last time Elon Musk was kind
Speaker 3: to anybody who couldn't benefit him? Right back, more on
Speaker 3: the subject, including the perspective of a Stanford psychologist on
Speaker 3: the subject of empathy. We'll do it next. There's been
Speaker 3: a kind of ideological civil war that's been going on
Speaker 3: in Christian circles. So you've got the hard liners and
Speaker 3: they're talking about toxic empathy, and then you've got the
Speaker 3: progressives who are looking at the others, going, what the
Speaker 3: hell's wrong with you? My Jesus or the Jesus that
Speaker 3: I have in my mind or in my heart or
Speaker 3: that I feel as the true version of Jesus is
Speaker 3: all empathy and love and light and kindness, and feed
Speaker 3: the poor, and be meek and blessed are the least
Speaker 3: of these, and come to me, you little children kind
Speaker 3: of Jesus.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So you got one side going, hey, quit being so empathetic,
Speaker 3: and the other side is saying, please be more empathetic.
Speaker 3: And there's a tug of war as we watch this
Speaker 3: faction fight between fellow Christians. Well have you heard of
Speaker 3: Ali Beth Stucky. She is a Christian influencer. She's all
Speaker 3: over TikTok. If you've never seen her face, that's okay,
Speaker 3: because you've seen it, because she looks exactly like almost
Speaker 3: every other female Christian influencer of her ilk. She's in
Speaker 3: I guess her low thirties. She's got the long blondish hair,
Speaker 3: she's airbrushed to the hilt. She's got that voice that's
Speaker 3: not quite Michelle Dugger, but it's got that sort of high, compassionate.
Speaker 3: We just need to channel the Holy Spirit and experience
Speaker 3: the love of Jesus. Thing as I give you the
Speaker 3: wisdom that has been imbued into me.
Speaker 2: By the Lord.
Speaker 3: Ali Beth Stucky she makes me crazy. She wrote a
Speaker 3: book a few years ago called You're Not Enough and
Speaker 3: that's okay. And I played the clip a while back
Speaker 3: or heard it online. I'm gonna play it for you.
Speaker 3: Here runs thirty forty five seconds. It was on TikTok,
Speaker 3: so I grabbed it. She is telling her audience, Hey,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, fellow Christians, don't you start thinking too
Speaker 3: much job yourself.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: I know I probably sound like a broken record to
Speaker 5: a lot of you, But because this is a message
Speaker 5: that keeps on showing up in Christian women's circles, I
Speaker 5: feel like I need to say it again.
Speaker 3: You are not enough. You're not enough.
Speaker 5: Nowhere does the Bible say that you are sufficient. Nowhere
Speaker 5: does the Bible say that you're perfect the way you are.
Speaker 5: And that is good news. It's actually great news, you
Speaker 5: know why, because you're not enough.
Speaker 3: You never will be.
Speaker 2: But Jesus is all right.
Speaker 3: So that's Ali Beth Stucky helpfully informing her audience and
Speaker 3: everybody else that hey, you ain't enough, and good for you.
Speaker 3: It's an amazing thing when you realize that you have
Speaker 3: a void that can only be filled by Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: Ali Beth Stucky has a new book or releative actively
Speaker 3: New about toxic empathy. How progressives exploit Christian compassion. I
Speaker 3: saw Jordan Peterson do a riff on this, the late
Speaker 3: Charlie Kirk talked about it, and others. They're all over
Speaker 3: TikTok and YouTube, etc. Here is Ali Beth Stucky.
Speaker 4: Elon Musk said the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.
Speaker 4: And yes, that is true, because we are fundamentally, whether
Speaker 4: we acknowledge it or not, a Christian nation. But as
Speaker 4: we've become less Christian and trying to hold onto Christian values,
Speaker 4: we've perverted them. So we've let go of this truth
Speaker 4: and love dichotomy that we are actually called to that
Speaker 4: Jesus embodied himself, and we've taken on this superficial form
Speaker 4: of feeling, which is empathy. I mean, it's the same
Speaker 4: thing like we want to hold onto the generosity that
Speaker 4: Christians are called to, but we don't want to do
Speaker 4: the hard thing of actually voluntarily emptying out our pockets,
Speaker 4: and so we support a welfare state and we call
Speaker 4: that Christian love. But again that's just a perversion of
Speaker 4: Christian love. And it's the same thing with toxic empathy.
Speaker 3: Okay, I know your rate arm is up, and I
Speaker 3: know you caught it. You caught, you caught welfare state. Right,
Speaker 3: she threw that out and progressives, in fact, if you
Speaker 3: go to the book description for toxic empathy, it says,
Speaker 3: we are told that empathy is the highest virtue. The
Speaker 3: key to being a good person is that true or
Speaker 3: has empathy. Like so many other words of our day, tolerance, justice,
Speaker 3: acceptance been hijacked. And then further down she really starts
Speaker 3: to expose her hand abortion, gender, sexuality, immigration, social justice.
Speaker 3: Progressives use catchy mantras to present their perspective as empathetic.
Speaker 3: So now we are seeing that it's really a culture
Speaker 3: war battle where she says the good stuff first of all,
Speaker 3: is owned by Christian entity. Secondly, progressive values, egalitarian values.
Speaker 3: Living in a world where Christians are not the master
Speaker 3: race and they have to share the world with people
Speaker 3: of different races and colors and cultures and religions and
Speaker 3: sexual orientations. They don't see that as love. No, true
Speaker 3: love is a top down Christian pyramid scheme. And if
Speaker 3: you are empathetic and look for equity and tolerance, justice, acceptance,
Speaker 3: those are a watering down of what Jesus's true message is.
Speaker 3: Ali Bethstucky and this woman is immensely popular, and she's
Speaker 3: filling her pockets and she just just makes me crazy.
Speaker 3: But tell me, this kind of talk is not a
Speaker 3: trojan horse for cruelty, justified cruelty. So if I go
Speaker 3: out and I deny you rights, if I go out
Speaker 3: and deny you access, if I dehumanize you, if I
Speaker 3: tell you you are not enough, you are not worthy.
Speaker 3: Somehow this is aimed now as Christian love or at
Speaker 3: the very least Christian justice. Jesus, we live in a
Speaker 3: top down society where the president of the United States,
Speaker 3: his entire person is defined by a lack of empathy,
Speaker 3: and it's celebrated by tens of millions of Americans. The
Speaker 3: more nasty, the more cruel he is, the more he
Speaker 3: crushes the week, the more he dismisses out groups, the
Speaker 3: more they love him. There's a war on empathy in
Speaker 3: the United States. Well, as I was sort of researching
Speaker 3: and reading up on this war on empathy and getting
Speaker 3: different perspectives, I stumbled upon a ted x talk from
Speaker 3: several years ago by not a Christian influencer on TikTok,
Speaker 3: but an actual Stanford psychologist. All right, psychology professor Jamiel Zaki.
Speaker 3: He spoke to a crowded TED and he was talking
Speaker 3: about social cognition and behavior, how we respond to each
Speaker 3: other's emotions, how we can better understand each other. The
Speaker 3: talk is about thirteen minutes. I thought it was good
Speaker 3: enough that, Hey, I'm not proud. I'll stand on the
Speaker 3: shoulders of giants. You know, I'll lean into an expert.
Speaker 3: I will link the TED talk video in the description box.
Speaker 3: This was published October the eighteenth, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: I'm going to read you a couple of statements, and
Speaker 2: I want you to tell me how well each one
Speaker 2: describes you through a show of fingers. A show of fingers, Yes,
Speaker 2: a show of fingers. If it doesn't describe you at all,
Speaker 2: hold up one finger. If it fits you to a
Speaker 2: t hold up five, somewhere in between, two, three or four?
Speaker 2: Got it? All right? Let's try I often have tender,
Speaker 2: concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me. How well
Speaker 2: does that describe you? All right? Let's try again. I
Speaker 2: tried to look at everyone's side of a disagreement before
Speaker 2: I make a decision. How about that one? Wow? Impressive.
Speaker 2: The more you agree with statements like these, the more
Speaker 2: you experience empathy, a simple word for a complex idea.
Speaker 2: Think back to the last time that a friend of
Speaker 2: yours was upset. Maybe you caught his emotion and became
Speaker 2: upset too, but maybe you also tried to piece together
Speaker 2: what it is he felt and why. Empathy comprises both
Speaker 2: of these abilities to share and also to understand what
Speaker 2: other people are going through. The empathy in this room
Speaker 2: very high, maybe not surprisingly, and people's collective empathy is
Speaker 2: like the human equivalent of a natural resource. It's a
Speaker 2: precious one. Empathic people benefit in all sorts of ways.
Speaker 2: They are happier and attract friends more easily than their
Speaker 2: less empathic peers. They excel at work, especially if their
Speaker 2: work involves people like sales or management. Empathies benefits ripple
Speaker 2: outward too. Patients of empathic doctors report less depression, Employees
Speaker 2: of empathic managers are less stressed, and empathic people's romantic
Speaker 2: partners are more satisfied in their relationships. But the news
Speaker 2: is not all good. For one. Our collective empathy is
Speaker 2: eroding over time. Take the questions like the one I
Speaker 2: just asked you. People have been answering questions like these
Speaker 2: for decades. Allowing psychologists to map our collective empathy over time.
Speaker 2: Here is the average empathy score in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: and here it is thirty years later. In that time,
Speaker 2: empathy had decreased so much that the average person was
Speaker 2: less empathic than three quarters of people thirty years before.
Speaker 2: And even people who try to be generally empathic can
Speaker 2: find it difficult in some circumstances. Think back to a
Speaker 2: conflict that you had with someone in the last month,
Speaker 2: or week or day. Many of you told me just
Speaker 2: now that you're extremely empathic, But in that moment, did
Speaker 2: you do everything you could to listen, understand, and connect. Oftentimes,
Speaker 2: when our ideas or values or feelings clash, empathy becomes
Speaker 2: too hard and we abandon it all together. Right now,
Speaker 2: politics is America's empathic black hole. We've retreated into ideological silos,
Speaker 2: tuning out people who we disagree with, or even worse,
Speaker 2: savoring their pain. This is a fractured time. Compassion feels endangered.
Speaker 2: Being a psychologist studying empathy today is a little bit
Speaker 2: like being a climatologist studying the polarized caps. We discover
Speaker 2: the value of something just as it disappears all around us.
Speaker 2: Does it have to be this way? That depends on
Speaker 2: how you think empathy works. For centuries, philosophers and scientists
Speaker 2: have told us it's a trait inherited through our genes,
Speaker 2: hardwired into our brain, something that you either have or
Speaker 2: don't have. I call this the roden Berry hypothesis because
Speaker 2: gene Roddenberry enshrined it into the characters of the greatest
Speaker 2: television show of all time, Star Trek. The next generation
Speaker 2: know that it's not up for debate. Thank you. I'm
Speaker 2: glad to have so many fellow Trekis here. On one side,
Speaker 2: we have the USS Enterprises Ships councilor Deanna Troy, known
Speaker 2: throughout the galaxy for her empathy. She catches other people's
Speaker 2: feelings and can read their mind. On the other side,
Speaker 2: we have the android Data, who doesn't feel emotions himself
Speaker 2: and can't tell what other people are feeling either. According
Speaker 2: to conventional wisdom, each of us has a level of
Speaker 2: empathy somewhere between these two, and like our adult height,
Speaker 2: we're stuck there for life. So that means if empathy
Speaker 2: is too hard for you, there's nothing you can do
Speaker 2: to overcome your limits. And if our collective empathy is dwindling.
Speaker 2: We can't do anything about that either. This is all
Speaker 2: pretty fatalistic. Thankfully, it's also wrong. I want to tell
Speaker 2: you about a new view of empathy that for me
Speaker 2: is actually not new at all. In fact, it defined
Speaker 2: much of my childhood. In nineteen seventy two, Washington State
Speaker 2: University offered scholarships to students from the world's poorest nations.
Speaker 2: My mom got the one from Peru, and my dad
Speaker 2: the one from Pakistan. They traveled from Lima and Lahore,
Speaker 2: each city bigger than New York, to the sleepy town
Speaker 2: of Pullman, where they fell in love, looking very seventies
Speaker 2: in the process, I might say for them, though, it
Speaker 2: was not meant to be. The biggest thing that my
Speaker 2: parents had in common was their foreigness to the US,
Speaker 2: and as they grew more comfortable in their new home,
Speaker 2: they grew less comfortable with each other. They realized that
Speaker 2: their personalities were as far apart as their hometowns. They
Speaker 2: began divorcing when I was six, but didn't finish until
Speaker 2: I was ten. For years, I was shuttled back and
Speaker 2: forth between their houses, but I might as well have
Speaker 2: been zipping between distant worlds. My mom is quintessentially Peruvian,
Speaker 2: full of warmth and nerves. She values family above all else.
Speaker 2: My dad prizes intellect and ambition. Where he came from,
Speaker 2: the student who scored highest on an exam would end
Speaker 2: up in college, and the student who scored second highest
Speaker 2: would end up on the streets. I'm an only child,
Speaker 2: and I was the only bridge between their worlds. When
Speaker 2: I was with my mom, I had to learn the
Speaker 2: rules that governed her heart and mind and make them
Speaker 2: true for myself. But when I reached my dad, those
Speaker 2: rules didn't apply anymore, and I had to recalibrate to
Speaker 2: his very different reality. This was hard emotional labor for
Speaker 2: a six year old, and sometimes it felt like I'd
Speaker 2: give up and I'd have to choose between my mom
Speaker 2: or my dad. But I knew that for the sake
Speaker 2: of all of us, I had to keep trying, and
Speaker 2: eventually it got easier. I learned to tune myself to
Speaker 2: their different emotional frequencies, and that allowed me to maintain
Speaker 2: a strong bond with each of them, even as their
Speaker 2: connection to each other disintegrated. Empathy saved me, but not
Speaker 2: because it came easily. My parent's divorce was like an
Speaker 2: empathy gym for me forcing me to work at care
Speaker 2: and understanding, and that experience of stretching myself and the
Speaker 2: benefits that it caused is part of why I study
Speaker 2: what I do in the first place. Over the years,
Speaker 2: I found lots of evidence that contradicts standard wisdom but
Speaker 2: jibes with my own experience. It turns out that empathy
Speaker 2: isn't really that much of a trade at all. It's
Speaker 2: more like a skill. We're not stuck at one level
Speaker 2: of empathy throughout our lives. Certain experiences, like a hateful
Speaker 2: political climate, can atrophy it. Others like having to manage
Speaker 2: two very different parents, can grow it. And we can
Speaker 2: grow our empathy on purpose. Through practice, you make choices
Speaker 2: about whether to practice empathy or not all the time.
Speaker 2: Will you cross the street to avoid a homeless person
Speaker 2: or pay attention to their pain. Will you dismiss someone
Speaker 2: who disagrees with you, or try to figure out why
Speaker 2: they feel the way they do. When we practice engaging
Speaker 2: over and over again, we build an empathy that is deeper, broader,
Speaker 2: and more muscular. There's all sorts of examples of this,
Speaker 2: but I'll just give you two. The first pertains to
Speaker 2: the question that I get asked most of all, which
Speaker 2: is are women more empathic than men? It certainly seems
Speaker 2: that way. Sometimes maybe we have stories and there are
Speaker 2: cases where women outperform men, for instance, in tests where
Speaker 2: they're supposed to guess what other people feel. If empathy
Speaker 2: is a trait, then men just might be all thumbs
Speaker 2: when it comes to emotion. We might be forever stuck
Speaker 2: in a Venus Mars problem. But if empathy is a skill,
Speaker 2: then maybe these differences are circumstantial. Two psychologists put this
Speaker 2: to the test in a classic study. They first found,
Speaker 2: as others had, that women outperform men on an emotion
Speaker 2: understanding task. But then they told both men and women,
Speaker 2: guess what will pay you for being accurate about what
Speaker 2: other people you might guess what's coming next. But this
Speaker 2: completely eliminated the gender gap in empathy. So it turns
Speaker 2: out we're not totally hopeless. If we have reason to
Speaker 2: practice empathy, we do and we get better in the process.
Speaker 2: I think we can all practice empathy. Ironically, though simply
Speaker 2: believing that it's a trait can get in our way.
Speaker 2: Decades of evidence demonstrate that when people think they can't
Speaker 2: change something about themselves, like how smart or open minded
Speaker 2: they are. They shy away from challenges. When they think
Speaker 2: they can grow, they open up instead. Recently, my colleagues
Speaker 2: and I tested whether this was true of empathy as well.
Speaker 2: We had people read articles suggesting either that empathy was
Speaker 2: a trait which is pretty stable over time, or that
Speaker 2: it was a skill which is changeable and can be developed.
Speaker 2: Then we ran them through an empathy obstacle course full
Speaker 2: of situations that make caring tough. Over and over, we
Speaker 2: found that when people believed that empathy was a skill,
Speaker 2: they worked harder at it. They spent more time listening
Speaker 2: to the struggles of someone of a different race, They
Speaker 2: spent more energy trying to understand the perspective of political outsiders.
Speaker 2: When we empowered them, they stretched their empathy past its
Speaker 2: typical boundaries. As a kid, I was lucky to have
Speaker 2: an empathy gym. Now my lab provides that opportunity for
Speaker 2: other people. We've worked with hundreds of college freshmen and
Speaker 2: thousands of middle schoolers throughout the Bay Area. We instill
Speaker 2: in these students the idea that empathy is a skill
Speaker 2: and encourage them to practice it even when it feels hard.
Speaker 2: Because we believe that Over time, empathic practice turns into
Speaker 2: empathic habits and eventually empathic people. We're not the only
Speaker 2: ones in the empathy building business, and I want to
Speaker 2: tell you about some people who inspire me. Sue Rarr
Speaker 2: had police training for the State of Washington. He's brought
Speaker 2: empathy front and center. Cadets in her program like this one,
Speaker 2: go through mock crime scenes and practice diffusing tense situations
Speaker 2: by slowing down, asking questions and paying attention to what
Speaker 2: other people feel. Since Arar took over, officer's use of
Speaker 2: force has declined all over Washington, especially towards people with
Speaker 2: mental illness. In a dark moment for American policing, she's
Speaker 2: cast a light. Life After Hate was founded by Angela King,
Speaker 2: Tony mcallere and their colleagues, all of whom were once
Speaker 2: white supremacists, but now have reformed and work to extract
Speaker 2: other people from the dark place they once inhabited. Hundreds
Speaker 2: of Hate group members contact Life After Hate each year. Tony, Angela,
Speaker 2: and their colleagues teach them that although hatred buries empathy,
Speaker 2: it doesn't kill it, and that even people have lost
Speaker 2: their way can get it back. Tony and Angela embody
Speaker 2: this in their own stories. They call themselves formers to
Speaker 2: acknowledge their past, but also to acknowledge the idea that
Speaker 2: we're all still forming, able to choose new paths and
Speaker 2: forge new connections. Tony, Angela and Sue tackle some of
Speaker 2: the hardest issues of our time, and they teach us
Speaker 2: that empathy can bloom even in bear in soil. We
Speaker 2: should all take a page from their book. Earlier, I
Speaker 2: told you that when people know empathy is a skill,
Speaker 2: they work harder at it. Hopefully, by now you know
Speaker 2: empathy is under your control. I challenge all of us
Speaker 2: to empathize with purpose, especially when it's hard. Let's point
Speaker 2: our care at the voiceless, the homeless individual or refugee
Speaker 2: who we might otherwise ignore. Let's point our curiosity at
Speaker 2: people who anger us, even when ignoring them feels easier.
Speaker 2: If more of us can make choices like this, we
Speaker 2: can begin to regrow our collective empathy and mend the
Speaker 2: tiers in our social fabric. And that's the good news here.
Speaker 2: Empathy is not just a precious resource, it's also a
Speaker 2: renewable one. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Thanks for letting me play that for you. I just
Speaker 3: thought it was an interesting nothing else. It gives us
Speaker 3: something to chew on, to comment and talk about, to
Speaker 3: challenge each other about. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: I just think living in a time when empathy is
Speaker 3: the enemy tells you everything we need to know about
Speaker 3: the culture of this country where cruelty is celebrated and
Speaker 3: empathy is the enemy. How upside down have things become.
Speaker 3: Don't lose your empathy out there, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: work on me and try not to lose mine as well.
Speaker 3: I will see you back here next time. You take care.
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