In 1988, the movie Twins came out. It was a one-joke comedy. Here's the trailer. See if you can spot the joke.
This year, Gad Saad's book, Suicidal Empathy, came out. It, too is a one-joke tragicomedy. Here's Gad's 5-minute summary of the book. See if you can spot the joke.
Spoiler: the joke is that when the progressives use the word "empathy" it is deliberately misleading to the point of fraud. Gad pounds that point into the ground on every single page.
To be clear, I'm a big fan of Gad Saad. I consume most of his content in various forms. On the whole, including in this book, he is a large force for good in the world.
Getting back to the book, what Gad is noticing is that none of what he describes and what else we can observe is empathetic. If a system is designed to maximize empathy or, to put it better, minimize suffering, it will self-correct as it evolves and move to improve its model so it can better reduce suffering.
The progressive experiment, which is the never-ending effort to destroy and replace Western Civilization, never does this. It doubles down on what it was doing before. Here in San Diego, the progs have been expensively "working" to fight homelessness for over a decade. Our diocese has been "lifting up the marginalized" as well. In all that time, the number of homeless has increased. The filth and decay has only gotten worse.
A system designed for the purpose of remediating suffering would adapt to new data. This one hasn't at all. Ergo, empathy is in no way related to what the progs are doing.
Dittos for the open border. When it became obvious that the language of the blue collar jobsites was changing to Spanish and American blacks were more solidly locked out of those jobs than they had been under the Southern Democrats' Jim Crow, the system should have adjusted. It did not.
When the importation of Muslims into England led to the gang raping of 100,000 white, English girls, the system should have adapted. It did not.
The progs' system did not adjust because it is not in any way guided by empathy. However, most of its adherents are. All of the AWFLs I know are empathetic to their cores.
The problem I have with the book is that for it to do any good at all, it needs to be read by the people who want to be empathetic, read: AWFLs, but are now following the progs' playbook. Instead of snarking about empathy being suicidal, it should have embraced Thomas Sowell's maxim, "There are no solutions, only trade-offs." Similarly, the Church should embrace and preach a tragic yet noble view of life instead of their current notion that Man is redeemable through social justice, which, ironically, is a heresy.
Perhaps a better theme for the book could have been, "What is empathy? Whatever it is, this isn't it."
Still, I understand Gad's focus being what it is. A Lebanese Jew, Muslim migration chased him first out of Lebanon under duress and by a narrow, harrowing escape and now out of Canada to Mississippi. He's been a Casandra for several years now, one we should heed.
Gad's right, we are being suicidal, but the self-destruction is coming from ideological capture, not empathy. There's no empathy in any of this.
"... the system should have adapted. It did not."
ReplyDeleteAs other have said before: "The purpose of a system is what it does." If, for instance, a system allows, and indeed abets, the wholesale rape of (white) minors by persons of diversity, that *that* is the system's purpose, irrespective of what its bureaucrats claim is the purpose.
So, I got to wondering what alternatives were being proposed to address homelessness in California, and found this from the California Senate Republicans:
ReplyDeletehttps://src.senate.ca.gov/issue/actonhomelessness
And, what they propose sounds pretty reasonable to me. To the point that I am kind of astounded at the thought that the current policy is something different? Is there some reason why the mentally ill people on the street *aren't* already being picked up and put into some sort of treatment?
As Garage Logic aptly puts. The progressives believe that the "marginalized" people are less than us privileged whites. There for they cannot be expected to do anything. Learning in school is impossible for them, so we lower the standards for what it takes to pass. But that's still oppressive, so we just pass them to the next grade regardless. To the point that Governor Cockwomble is bragging about all time high graduation rates. That the kids can't read isn't the the Education System's fault; they did everything they could to not hold anyone responsible or accountable to actually learn.
ReplyDeleteThe progressives are teaching people to be irresponsible for their life, and that the state will provide everything they "deserve".
Meanwhile, punish those trying to make their own way through life. Daring to produce something and expecting to be paid for that service or product. Here progressive put excessive regulations on building badly needed housing, and then rent control, guarantying that housing remains scarce.
As is clear, much of homelessness is all about drug addiction. Which the Progressives solve by giving out free needles.
There was a great story on how this spiraling cycle of death can be dealt with from 2019 out of Seattle.
https://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-is-dying
Destroy the American way of life, destroy freedom, destroy free will, then the masses are easier to control, and the elites can rule from their gated communities. That is what the "Democratic Socialists" are peddling.
Did you see how Mamdani "balanced" the cities budget? He's "delaying" funding the city employee pensions until after he is out of office. Making up a $2 million shortfall, and only costing the city $7 million in interest owed down the road. What leadershit (that was a typo, but well...)
Victor Davis Hanson has harrowing accounts of how the California state bureaucrats deal (i.e. they don't) with the colonies of illegals in his rural town who are breaking other laws and/or safety and/or health regulations compared to how they harass law-abiding "privileged" whytes.
ReplyDelete