Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

mmm silby i get what you’re saying (because the concept of obedience to god is important in my religion too)

but as a teacher my thoughts go toward academics

what if some students approached learning as “i have to do this to 1) get paid 2) not get my ass whooped or 3) because my culture demands it” ... and if i told you that people who approach learning for these reasons tend not to do very well when they transition between educational settings? i don’t want to belabor the analogy

maybe “tend not to do well” is too strong

but i have found, ime that students who approach things from the perspective of “accomplishing things feels good” or “doing my best feels good” or “challenging myself is fun” tend to do very well, over all

they regulate themselves better when they escape parental supervision, when expected rewards don’t materialize as expected, when they leave their communities, etc

maybe the counter argument is that you’re never estranged from god or out from under his watch?

I’m sure your otm tlg about the educational setting I was just tryin to add color to flopson’s remark abt Mordy, but I then xp’d with Mordy

Of the ~ 100 students who come through my classroom every year, there is at least a double digit percentage who don’t have home access to explicit instruction in manners, morality, citizenship (beyond the “stop hitting your brother before I hit you” variety) or kindness as a practice. Teaching empathy is a democratizing pedagogy, and brings social skills it to students who wouldn’t otherwise be able to directly discuss it with adults due to circumstances, uninvolved parents, or avoidance of “gooshy stuff” on behalf of th students themselves.

if the fact that the eventual “goodness” of these students is cheapened or insincere because it is academic is bothersome to you.... so what? It’s better than forcing students to figure out some empathy/moral/ethical judgment in the school of used knocks.

The argument against teaching empathy as a pathway to character education is essentially the argument against teaching phonics as pathway to literacy. “You’ll read when oI you’re meant to” or “I learned just fine without learning phonics” or “my kid was reading when she was three”

Sorry for the messiness I’d that post. Typing on Zing at the gym.

from the "against empathy" article, which i hadn't heard of before but which i enjoyed:

It is worth expanding on the difference between empathy and compassion, because some of empathy’s biggest fans are confused on this point and think that the only force that can motivate kindness is empathetic arousal. But this is mistaken. Imagine that the child of a close friend has drowned. A highly empathetic response would be to feel what your friend feels, to experience, as much as you can, the terrible sorrow and pain. In contrast, compassion involves concern and love for your friend, and the desire and motivation to help, but it need not involve mirroring your friend’s anguish.

this is pretty much the distinction i was trying to make. with regard to education, i mostly just was questioning why "empathy" is used so much in the discourse, especially around restorative practices, rather than more tangible virtues like conscientiousness, compassion, fairness, whatever. empathy is a feeling and you can't teach someone to feel something.

the kid with the scissors in the eye should stfu and empathise with the disruptive joys of the scissor thrower

xp cmon man did u even read the article there is a clear distinction between cognitive and emotional empathy

i should probably stay out of this argument

I have had the bloom book on top of the pile for a minute but an ex accused me of being 'incapable of empathy' and I just don't know if I can bring myself to read it

'there is a clear distinction between cognitive and emotional empathy'

this seems to be an indication that there's something to treeship's use-other-words-please attitude, doesn't it? that if we need to distinguish these concepts and often don't (as seems to be the case with the people around treeship) then continuing to deploy 'empathy' in an unquestioning way indicates we're sublimating some kind of thought. this isn't necessarily a bad thing -- mb there are evidence based studies that this results in students less likely to be violent than being given a different kind of ethics

i'm not saying the below is bad praxis:

in twelve years of teaching i have had literally hundreds of conversations that go like this

“Tell me what you did” / “how do you think that made your classmate feel”

― the late great, Friday, December 29, 2017 9:54 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

“Do you want to make other people feel like that?” / “how can you make it better” / “what will you do differently going forward”

― the late great, Friday, December 29, 2017 9:55 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but is the goal here 'teaching empathy'? or is the goal to get the kid to demonstrate 'emotional empathy' (or at least convince the adult they possess this quantity) and go through the workings of how it can be applied cognitively to arrive at something more utilitarian?

sure

i would argue that for a child understanding compassion is much more difficult than empathizing emotionally

what we’re doing is teaching compassion using empathy (something kids already possess) as the hook (in constructivism there is always a hook)

imo kids who have trouble empathizing often just haven’t thought about it very hard, or had a calm, supportive environment to do it in (see the point up thread about being around adults that escalate quickly to yellin, intimidation or violence as behavior management tool)

hence the restoration room

this is becoming reveal yr uncool mushy liberal beliefs

welp, fair enough

my mistrust of 'empathy' isn't motivated by its use in pedagogy but i. ways people deploy it interpersonally as a shield from analysing their own behavior ii. apparent problems with scaling it to members of an outgroup

i think mordy is actually on the right track re ii -- beyond a certain level of abstraction 'well, how would you feel' isn't a sufficient ethical code

yes, I would say empathy is a good foundation rather than an end point

i've been reading gk chesteron's "the everlasting man" (1925) that supposedly turned c.s. lewis from atheist to christian and this graf feels apposite:

What is the psychology that sustains the terrible and wonderful thing called a war? Nobody who knows anything of soldiers believes the silly notion of the dons, that millions of men can be ruled by force. If they were all to slack, it would be impossible to punish all the slackers. And the least little touch of slacking would lose a whole campaign in half a day. What did men really feel about the policy? If it be said that they accepted the policy from the politician, what did they feel about the politician? If the vassals warred blindly for their prince what did those blind men see in their prince?

but i have found, ime that students who approach things from the perspective of “accomplishing things feels good” or “doing my best feels good” or “challenging myself is fun” tend to do very well, over all

― the late great, Saturday, 30 December 2017 00:55 (twelve hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they regulate themselves better when they escape parental supervision, when expected rewards don’t materialize as expected, when they leave their communities, etc

― the late great, Saturday, 30 December 2017 00:58 (twelve hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I feel these posts

But it doesn't lead us to a way to be good or do good in the world. It's a path towards achievement and happiness in a pretty specific field (and agreed you could swap fields eg career, romance, card games, whatever)

Tho I'd argue that to achieve and be happy (with an occasional concern that your chosen achievements are in a reasonably harmless area) is as unmuddy and safe a way to be good and do good as there is without coming up against the idiocy of Kant so if that was wrapped up in your posts then fair enough.

As a sidebar from the empathy convo, my uncool conservative belief is that "what if she was your mother/sister/daughter" is a reasonable starting place for getting men to consider how their actions affect women. I see this idea shouted down on social media every once in a while with "men should just treat women with respect because they are individual human beings and their relationship to a man shouldn't matter". I see what they're trying to do, but our family relationships do matter.

with respect not everybody has family relationships that matter to them

See, I disagree with how’s life. Family relationshios matter but the principle of human equality is the salient thing in discussions about feminism.

Cool hows that message selling

a lot of really interesting ideas in that bloom piece

this whole bit here:

It is no accident that Baron-Cohen chose a woman as his example. In a series of empirical and theoretical articles, psychologists Vicki Helgeson and Heidi Fritz have explored why women are twice as likely as men to experience depression. Their results suggest that this divergence is explained in part by a sex difference in the propensity for “unmitigated communion,” defined as “an excessive concern with others and placing others’ needs before one’s own.” Helgeson and Fritz developed a simple nine-item questionnaire, which asks respondents to indicate whether they agree with statements such as, “For me to be happy, I need others to be happy,” “I can’t say no when someone asks me for help,” and “I often worry about others’ problems.” Women typically score higher than men on this scale; Hannah would, I bet, score high indeed.

Strong inclination toward empathy comes with costs. Individuals scoring high in unmitigated communion report asymmetrical relationships, where they support others but don’t get support themselves. They also are more prone to suffer depression and anxiety. Working from a different literature on “pathological altruism,” Barbara Oakley notes in Cold-Blooded Kindness (2011), “It’s surprising how many diseases and syndromes commonly seen in women seem to be related to women’s generally stronger empathy for and focus on others.”

The problems that arise here have to do with emotional empathy—feeling another’s pain. This leads to what psychologists call empathetic distress. We can contrast this with non-empathetic compassion—a more distanced love and kindness and concern for others. Such compassion is a psychological plus. Putting aside the obvious point that some degree of caring for others is morally right, kindness and altruism are associated with all sorts of positive physical and psychological outcomes, including a boost in both short-term mood and long-term happiness. If you want to get happy, helping others is an excellent way to do so.

It is worth expanding on the difference between empathy and compassion, because some of empathy’s biggest fans are confused on this point and think that the only force that can motivate kindness is empathetic arousal. But this is mistaken. Imagine that the child of a close friend has drowned. A highly empathetic response would be to feel what your friend feels, to experience, as much as you can, the terrible sorrow and pain. In contrast, compassion involves concern and love for your friend, and the desire and motivation to help, but it need not involve mirroring your friend’s anguish.

Or consider long-distance charity. It is conceivable, I suppose, that someone who hears about the plight of starving children might actually go through the empathetic exercise of imagining what it is like to starve to death. But this empathetic distress surely isn’t necessary for charitable giving. A compassionate person might value others’ lives in the abstract, and, recognizing the misery caused by starvation, be motivated to act accordingly.

Summing up, compassionate helping is good for you and for others. But empathetic distress is destructive of the individual in the long run.

It might also be of little help to other people because experiencing others’ pain is exhausting and leads to burnout. This issue is explored in the Buddhist literature on morality. Consider the life of a bodhisattva, an enlightened person who vows not to pass into Nirvana, choosing instead to stay in the normal cycle of life and death to help the masses. How is a bodhisattva to live? In Consequences of Compassion (2009) Charles Goodman notes the distinction in Buddhists texts between “sentimental compassion,” which corresponds to empathy, and “great compassion,” which involves love for others without empathetic attachment or distress. Sentimental compassion is to be avoided, as it “exhausts the bodhisattva.” Goodman defends great compassion, which is more distanced and reserved and can be sustained indefinitely.

This distinction has some support in the collaborative work of Tania Singer, a psychologist and neuroscientist, and Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk, meditation expert, and former scientist. In a series of studies using fMRI brain scanning, Ricard was asked to engage in various types of compassion meditation directed toward people who are suffering. To the surprise of the investigators, these meditative states did not activate parts of the brain that are normally activated by non-meditators when they think about others’ pain. Ricard described his meditative experience as “a warm positive state associated with a strong prosocial motivation.”

He was then asked to put himself in an empathetic state and was scanned while doing so. Now the appropriate circuits associated with empathetic distress were activated. “The empathic sharing,” Ricard said, “very quickly became intolerable to me and I felt emotionally exhausted, very similar to being burned out.”

One sees a similar contrast in ongoing experiments led by Singer and her colleagues in which people are either given empathy training, which focuses on the capacity to experience the suffering of others, or compassion training, in which subjects are trained to respond to suffering with feelings of warmth and care. According to Singer’s results, among test subjects who underwent empathy training, “negative affect was increased in response to both people in distress and even to people in everyday life situations. . . . these findings underline the belief that engaging in empathic resonance is a highly aversive experience and, as such, can be a risk factor for burnout.” Compassion training—which doesn’t involve empathetic arousal to the perceived distress of others—was more effective, leading to both increased positive emotions and increased altruism.

This brings us to the targets of empathy. As I write this, an older relative of mine who has cancer is going back and forth to hospitals and rehabilitation centers. I’ve watched him interact with doctors and learned what he thinks of them. He values doctors who take the time to listen to him and develop an understanding of his situation; he benefits from this sort of cognitive empathy. But emotional empathy is more complicated. He gets the most from doctors who don’t feel as he does, who are calm when he is anxious, confident when he is uncertain. And he particularly appreciates certain virtues that have little directly to do with empathy, virtues such as competence, honesty, professionalism, and respect.

here's an uncool conservative belief:

history is not an arc that bends towards justice. it's pockets of temporary civility spread amidst a maelstrom of chaos. prepare accordingly.

Not sure what about that is uncool or conservative

but your habit of branding yourself and your personal attitudes as both is definitely tiresome so I guess there’s that

i think you can figure out what is conservative about that statement. and uncool! not sure what your incivility is about though esp on this thread.

But good excerpt, that article sorta got lost in the shuffle yesterday. If nothing else the distinctions it draws are useful for having a better discussion than the one this started out as

Sorry I’m grumpy

re that statement tho to see why it's conservative consider what it does to the word "progressive." for why it's uncool, consider what you have to do + feel to prepare for those pockets' inevitable close.

another note on the empathy tangent that i don't remember being brought up is that empathy is morally indiscriminating. lots of literature exists that asks you (and succeeds!) to empathize w/ all kinds of moral criminals and their behavior. but just because you understand what the protagonist felt while he sinned doesn't mean you've learnt anything about how to either avoid or ameliorate the conditions that led to those feelings. some ppl (*not i*) even believe that literature is dangerous for this very reason - it can bring you into close communion with affect that can damage your morality. and that's why my rabbis searched my dorm room while i was out celebrating my seventeenth birthday and stole all my english literature novels (inc faulkner's as i lay dying + two kosiński novels which def goes to the morally questionable question). fwiw i can easily empathize with them - as a father† i deeply feel the anxiety of making sure my children are exposed to things that improve their character and not debilitate it and i know how easy it is to err in such determinations. but they were still v wrong imo to do it; my personal liberty to read what i wanted was more important. and it can actually be good for you to empathize with bad ppl in non-moral ways. it can develop your intellectual imagination for example which isn't inherently moral but can be used towards moral ends. †lol yes i know i know.

good post

Exposure to fictional or actual moral ambiguity does not influence the character of any person of any age

Just broadens the palette

i'm pretty sure i agree or at the v least i'd like to believe it's true for my own sake but i'm not 100% convinced. i've met enough ppl who have constraints on their moral consumption who have more refined character than me. i'm pretty vulgar by comparison. nb that discussing refinement/vulgarity in moral terms is a whole other conversation in itself but i do see moral value in refinement fwiw.

Of course, you can sympathize plenty and then do exactly nothing about it.

I feel sad about the victims of the Kalapana earthquakes in 1975, and the St. Batholomew's Day Massacre, but I didn't do anything about either one. Lots of people felt sad about the 2004 tsunami and Sandy Hook, but haven't done anything about those either.

I think compassion (or empathy or whatever) is an important first step, but there is an argument to be made that to believe a moral judgement is to be disposed to act on it.

RIP

I'm reading the bloom essay now and there's a lot of fascinating stuff here, though I'm a little skeptical of some of the science he cites regarding the downsides of emotional empathy

Well it’s not as if we’re in the midst of a replication crisis in social sciences

though as others have said, the distinction between "cognitive" and "emotional" empathy is not one I'd come across before and seems pretty useful

tbf that cuts both ways and i intentionally didn't bring it up above xp

xp yeah I basically glossed over the couple of paragraphs starting with "in a series of studies using fMRI brain scanning..."

I really enjoyed the discussion of psychopathy, though I think bloom elides an important point toward the end of that discussion, when he mentions that

Finally, one decisive test of the low-empathy-makes-bad-people theory would be to study a group of people who lack empathy but also lack the other traits associated with psychopathy. Such individuals do exist. Baron-Cohen notes that people with Asperger syndrome and autism typically have low cognitive empathy—they struggle to understand the minds of others—and have low emotional empathy as well. (As with psychopaths, there is some controversy about whether they are incapable of empathy or choose not to deploy it.) Despite their empathy deficit, such people show no propensity for exploitation and violence. Indeed, they often have strong moral codes and are more likely to be victims of cruelty than perpetrators.

while it may be true that these people are unlikely to engage in manipulative/exploitative antisocial behavior, aggression and other behavioral problems are highly comorbid in this population. I would intuit that this relates in some way to their incapacity for empathy

That is not my general experience from 20+ years of working with autistic people. And like everybody working in the field Baron-Cohen's theories are not uncontested.

to be clear I was referring not to criminal behavior, but to maladaptive behaviors like tantrums, outbursts, and (mild) aggression, which are very well described

children are really bad at two things, among others

1) projecting their actions into the future
2) putting themselves in someone else’s shoes

imo teaching these two things is a good thing to do, and critical for helping give kids a moral compass

I feel like this is something that should be done by a child's family or church or girl scout troop, or soccer team, and classroom time shouldn't be spent on teaching them how to act like a decent human being.

idk, maybe the kids that suck at it can get assigned to some sort of special ed remedial class for "non-asshole studies".