Empathy Epidemic

The negative side effects from this new way of living are too countless to list. We don’t have the patience for anything, let alone the slow unfolding of human emotion. Ask anyone on a dating app how that looks up close, how it plays out over time. Pundits lament that the global populace is enduring a plague of psychobabble that adds up to elaborat

Heather Havrilesky • The Rise of Emotional Divestment

Yes, you could argue that many Trump fanatics lack basic human empathy (or at least, are ambivalent to the suffering of others). But let’s be honest — the rest of us have been struggling with empathy for some time now.

Discomfort aversion - because facing this people, dealing with people, adds back friction into the equation. Friction we’ve become accustomed to solving away

But the secondary problem is American individualism, which compels bourgeois Americans to focus what small amount of energy we have either on optimizing ourselves (exercise, skin care, “self-care”) or on our very close familial circle (that amorphous, ever-expanding activity known as “parenting” that includes everything from making Spirit Week cost... See more

The Loneliest Decades of Our Lives

It stuns me that ~50% of people under 30 say that Mangione was justified in that murder. (The best take on this: An Astonishing Level of Dehumanization, from Peter Wehner in the The Atlantic .)

25 Predictions for 2025 (Part II)

There’s clearly something in the air because The Atlantic just published Derek Thompson’s cover story on “the anti-social century,” which explores why Americans are spending more time than ever alone. And last week The Guardian published a piece about the rise in flakiness, with one person interviewed saying, “I have adjusted my mindset so I almost... See more

It’s me. I’m the person you’re canceling on

Our around-the-clock overexposure to global human suffering, our daily feed of what we once considered catastrophic events — political, ecological, cultural — when combined with diminished attention spans, smaller and smaller chunks of content, and baked-in cross-platform imperatives to remain emotionally removed from any given person, place, or ev... See more

Heather Havrilesky • The Rise of Emotional Divestment

In his first press briefing back in the White House, President Trump, who has long been criticized for an “empathy gap,” quickly moves from mourning the victims to political attacks. He assails former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as “a disaster,” blaming him for diversity objectives at the F.A.A. The inference is that diversity by defini... See more

Live Updates: No Survivors After Plane and Helicopter Crash Near Washington, Officials Say

We have manicured out of our lives and our feeds and our day-to-day existence the need for any and all interactions with anyone who has not been hand-picked by us, who is not of the same class or race or political position. We have found more and more ways to avoid engaging with others of our species. And in doing so, we have eroded our empathy.