That little voice inside that is quietly telling you “You do not make a difference” is not your friend. High probability that voice is a hostile introject based on whatever it is that you had to survive – unreliable empathy, bullying teachers, problematic parenting, or out-and-out boundary violations and trauma. It must be the first target of transformation – that is, a conversation for possibility with a trusted other, including, but not limited to, a therapist. However, it (the voice) could also just be a bad habit. Don’t believe everything you think!

The recommendations in a world of tips and techniques for dealing with dis-regulated emotions and feelings of anxiety after looking at the news, include:

• Give up: “My actions do not make a difference.” This a copout and got us into this mess in the first place. Here is the ultimate criteria: what would it take, if the political situation really deteriorates and the USA becomes a third world dictatorship (unlikely but possible) for you to be able to say that you at least had done something against the flood tide of troubles? What would it take?
• Dial down the guilt, and yet: You had not even written your Congressman or donated ten dollars to your preferred political party or representative. You had not even voted (?), and if you’d don’t vote, then you don’t get to complain about the result. Of course, that does not stop the complaining! Make a resolution to do better – and follow through. Put a reminder in your scheduler!
• Step back from the news temporarily – that is why the off button was invented – check the headlines at most twice a day and not after (say) 8 pm if one goes to bed at 10 pm – if the world ends we are gonna hear about it – the news one needs finds you.
• Take some action – attend a town hall, express your concern in a civil way over coffee about community (including political) developments to your friends and frenemies of varying views – write congress – write every senator (as I did) using the web form (https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm) – or at least call or write the Senators and Representatives from your home state – donate to a worthy cause of interest – whether on the left or right. Whether your action makes a difference or not, one result is you will feel better [high probability].
• Put your stress and struggle into your day job – hopefully you still have one! Put your suffering into your work – expand your productivity.
• Other stress reduction activities – spa treatments (cost money) such as massage, time in a sensory deprivation tank, swimming, yoga, tai chi, martial arts. Notice that what many of these things have in common is that they are activities that get one out of one’s head, have a calming effect on the body, and  leave person feeling good, enhancing mood and spirit. This may also include getting a committed listener who is able to provide a gracious and generous listening.
• You may say that the previous two bullets do not make a difference to the community’s predicament. However, they do. One cannot be effective if one is too anxious to take action. Whether or not your action is a silver bullet and produces a breakthrough in the community, as noted above, one result of your action is that you will feel better and that you have done something to make a difference (high probability).
• With practice, one gets good at rhetorical empathy: speaking truth to power. The best short example of this I can find is Malcom-X’s statement to the mostly African American audience around Thanksgiving: “You did not land on Plymouth Rock; Plymouth Rock landed on you!” Malcolm’s zinger got a lot a Amens and knowing laughter, for it concisely expressed and gave back to the listeners the experience of struggle and accomplishment of the community.
• A longer example of rhetorical empathy (Blankenship 2019) is Bob Dylan’s early comments on climate change: “Come gather ‘round people / Wherever you roam / And admit that the waters / Around you have grown / And accept it that soon / You’ll be drenched to the bone / If your time to you is worth savin’ / Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone / For the times they are a-changin’”(1965: 81)

Defective empathy: A certain multi-billionaire advisor to the White House (hereafter known as “M:) says empathy is a defect of western civilization. Key term: defect. Presumably we should cancel it to avoid becoming uncivilized? (For the sound byte see: https://youtube.com/shorts/LWvOvgjNEds?si=GByQLE0yoFDyWtTr ). Of course, lack of empathy is a short definition of “uncivilized,” and more on that shortly. This is a sound byte; however, M has expounded at greater length as reported in the following CNN article:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-interview-empathy-doge/index.html

What M did not point out is that empathy does not work with bullies or abusers, who will take whatever vulnerability you may exhibit and use it against you. This is also the case with anti-social personality disorder – individuals with a defective conscience who struggle to tell right from wrong, though without interviewing M, one has no way of knowing M’s or any individual’s mental status. One distinct possibility is that the individual is projecting his own unreliable, defective empathy onto the community as an empathic defect. If ever there was a disqualifying statement by a would-be administration, M’s soundbite is it. However, a further agenda lurks nearby.

Presumably a statement that “empathy is a defect” would be a justification of the unempathic “slash and burn” bullying methods of the unelected puppet masters at Doge [pronounce: “dog”], showing up at the IRS and Social Security offices and so on and demanding to see confidential citizen data and/or seemingly randomly sending employees home (“firing” them).

In addition, one must not overlook the power of top down, cognitive empathy in thinking like one’s opponent in order to overcome him. “Top down,” cognitive empathy is detailed in Mikah Zeno’s Red Team! (Basic Books 2015) according to which taking a walk in the other’s shoes (the folk definition of empathy) provides advantages in relationships, business, politics, and building communities that are thrive on inclusiveness. Notwithstanding M’s assertions of support for humanity, empathy is usually interpersonal, one-on-one, and, according to the report on CNN and Joe Rogan interview, we are unlikely to get any empathy from this guy. If one were looking for a short disqualifying reason to sideline unelected puppet masters such as M and fellow traveller Stephen Miller (see more on him below), this is it. I leave it to the reader to figure out who is the puppet.

To say that empathy is defective is like saying that carpentry is defective because Roman soldiers used hammers and nails to execute criminals and political prisoners by crucifying them. Like every human knowledge and capacity, empathy can breakdown, go astray, and go off the rails as projection, emotional contagion, conformity. communications getting lost in translation. You wouldn’t be any good at mental arithmetic if you didn’t practice it. Though vastly different than arithmetic, empathy requires practice and improvements based on learning from one’s mistakes.

Unelected puppet masters: As regards Stephen Miller, a common name, the reference is to the Deputy White House Chief of Staff. According to the Southern Poverty Law Project, which tracks hate groups: “Stephen Miller is credited with shaping the racist and draconian immigration policies of President Trump, which include the zero-tolerance policy, also known as family separation, the Muslim ban and ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Miller has also “purged” government agencies of civil servants who are not entirely loyal to his extremist agenda, according to a report in Vanity Fair” [. . . .] In response to seeing photos of children being separated from their parents at the U.S. border with Mexico as a result of the zero-tolerance policy, an external White House adviser, in a Vanity Fair report, said, “Stephen actually enjoys seeing those pictures at the border” (see: https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/stephen-miller/). On further background, in case you haven’t heard of the Southern Poverty Law Project, these are the guys (attorneys) who were wearing bullet proof vests while going to the trial(s) that bankrupted the KKK (granted hatred is a many-headed monster and some version was reborn).

The uncontrolled burn: What are you talking about? This is a description an approach to cost cutting. As in forestry, the forest rangers sometimes undertake a “controlled burn” to clear away the underbrush that accumulates and might result in a truly catastrophic forest fire – for example, an uncontrolled forest fire that burns down a whole town or suburb. It has rarely happened that a controlled burn got out of hand and resulted in a major forest fire. This is a description of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s (Doge’s) approach to cost cutting. Uncontrolled burn. My take – who else’s would it be? – is that the cost cutting “wizards” are undertaking an uncontrolled burn. Think: slash and burn.

It will be purely accidental if major damage does not occur before a combination of judicial, legislative, and law enforcement actions puts the brakes on this run away trolley car (which seems to have lost its brakes). In other words, what we are seeing in the daily drumbeat of extralegal, illegal, and provocative executive orders is an uncontrolled burn. Unfortunately, unless the citizens step up and communicate with their legislators at a volume and degrees we have not yet seen, we will know the burn is uncontrolled when social security checks to get deposited/mailed; a major terrorist attack (God forbid!) on the scale of Sept 11 occurs because law enforcement is chasing undocumented workers with families who have lived here for decades; another pandemic due to gutting the CDC and FDA. Another negative scenario (please do not shoot the messenger) is that worldwide tariffs contribute significantly to triggering another Great Depression as occurred with the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930. I am cynical enough to think that is what some misguided individuals in the current administration in Washington, DC, are trying to accomplish for their own misguided reasons. [The trade fight worsens: https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/trade-war-explodes-across-world-at-pace-not-seen-in-decades-0b6d6513?mod=hp_lead_pos3 ]

Regarding Social Security Administration (SSA), it is widely know (but perhaps not widely enough) that social security is a self-funded retirement plan operated by the US Government. People pay money into the trust fund in the form of social security taxes on their earnings; and the same people are entitled to get money out at retirement age. So no one is giving anyone charity or welfare here. It is a further challenge that the fund has become something of a political football through creative accounting, which has used it to subsidize the overall budget. Though I hope a breakdown of the SSA does not occur, if it does, and payments are missed, the howls across this nation will be loud enough to hear in the deepest bunker in government. We seem to be heading in that direction: https://tinyurl.com/2v85hwdr [SSA under stress – a lot of stress]

The challenge with social networking (e.g., Facebook (FB)) is that an inaccurate statement gets multiplied a hundred times, a thousand times, a hundred thousand times and a million times. Back in the days (1776-ish) of Sam Adams Committees of Correspondence, it took five days for a letter to to get from New York to Philadelphia. One had time to think about the consequences of one’s proposed actions.If one said “The British are combining!” and they were not coming, then one had time to correct one’s errors and minimize the damage.

With social networking, there is something about the anonymity, fake neutrality, and misleading disinterestedness that stand in strong contrast to previous media channels. Radio and television as used by FDR (President Franklin D Roosevelt) and Hitler (master-minded the killing of millions of people; the good guy and the bad guy!), but, when a falsehood was stated, one could eventually figure out who uttered it. With the proliferating fake identities of social media, the entire context becomes fake. As Mark Zuckerberg is reported to have said of FB: “We are no longer fact checking.” I take that to mean: A new sign over the Facebook portal: “Abandon facts all ye who enter here”? Like the inscription over the entrance to Dante’s version of hell.

Critical thinking going forward: Let us conclude with a positive proposal: Teach critical thinking. This is the empathic educational moment. Absent a rigorous and critical practice of empathy, I am cautious about engaging current political clichés in a highly polarized political world and “rhetoric” in the negative sense.

Critical thinking includes putting oneself in the place of one’s opponent—not necessarily to agree with the other individual—but to consider what advantages and disadvantages are included in the opponent’s position. Taking a walk in the Other’s shoes after having taken off one’s own (to avoid the risk of projection) shows one where the shoe pinches. This “pinching” —to stay with the metaphor—is not mere knowledge but a basic inquiry into what the Other considers possible based on how the Other’s world is disclosed experientially. Critical thinking is a possibility pump designed to get people to start again listening to one another, allowing the empathic receptivity (listening) to come forth. 

In our day and age of fake news, deep fake identity theft, not to mention common political propaganda, one arguably needs a course in critical thinking (e.g., Mill 1859; Haber 2020) to distinguish fact and fiction. Nevertheless, I boldly assert that most people, not suffering from delusional disorder or political pathologies of being The True Believer (Hoffer 1953)), are generally able to make this distinction.

A rigorous and critical empathy creates a safe zone of acceptance and tolerance within which people can inquire into what is possible—debate and listen to a wide spectrum of ideas, positions, feelings, and expressions out of which new possibilities can come forth. For example, empathy and critical thinking support maintaining firm boundaries and limits against actors who would misuse social media to amplify and distort communications. Much of what Jürgen Habermas (1984) says about the communicative distortions in mass media, television, and film applies with a multiplicative effect to the problematic, if not toxic, politics occurring on the Internet and social networking.

The extension to issues of politics, climate change, and community struggles follows immediately. Insofar as individuals skeptical of empathy are trying to force a decision between critical thinking and empathy, the choice must be declined. Both empathy and critical thinking are needed; hence, a rigorous and critical empathy is included in the definition of enlarged, critical thinking (and vice versa). (Note that “critical thinking” can mean a lot of things. Here key references include John Stuart Mill 1859; Haber 2020; “enlarged thinking” in Kant 1791/93 (AA 159); Arendt 1968: 9; Habermas 1984; Agosta 2024.) 

In conclusion, a positive alternative to abandoning facts and skipping critical thinking is suggested by Bob Dylan’s song about empathy. One has to push off the shore of certainty and venture forth into the unknown. We give Dylan the last word (1965: 185) : “I wish that for just one time / You could stand inside my shoes / And just for that one moment / I could be you” [.] 

References

Lou Agosta. (2024). Empathy Lessons. 2nd Edition. Chicago: Two Pears Press. 

Hannah Arendt. (1952/1958). The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2nd Edition. Cleveland and New York: Meridian (World) Publishing, 1958. 

________________. (1968). Men in Dark Times. New York: Harvest Book (Harcourt Brace). 

Lisa Blankenship. (2019). Changing the Subject: A Theory of Rhetorical Empathy. Logan UT: 

Bob Dylan. (1965). Bob Dylan: The Lyrics: 1961–2012. New York: Simon and Schuster. 

Jonathan Haber. (2020). Critical Thinking. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 

Jürgen Habermas. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 1, Thomas McCarthy (tr.). Boston: Beacon Press. 

Eric Hoffer. (1953). The True Believe: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. New York: Harper Perennial.

Immanuel Kant. (1791/93). Critique of the Power of Judgment, Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (trs.). Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013. edition. 

(c) Lou Agosta and the Chicago Empathy Project

Image Credit: Wikimedia: Peter Trimming: ‘The Scream’ – geograph.org.uk – 3200603.jpg / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0

Categories: a rigorous and critical empathy, empathy and politics, empathy training, empathy trends, fake empathy, talk therapy