32 | Does Empathy Have a Future? The Sin of Empathy, the Challenge of AI

Welcome to the Cow Behind the Barn: A podcast exploring humanity, the world, and the divine, as experienced and interpreted by an artist. I’m Kevin Caldwell, a co-finder of the Table Collective.

Here’s my opening thought: There’s something wrong. The world I see, and the history I read, tells me things are painfully, and brutally broken. The world. Us.

But now, like a series that switches to scenes labeled by captions with a phrase like “three years ago…”, or when something opens with “previously on…”, let me go back to where I was prior to that opening statement, to things I said in the last Episode.

 

“Previously on Cow Behind the Barn…”

“My journey of seeking to answer the question “where and when did I begin” has opened my eyes to see that Empathy, with a big E, in some way stitches everything together. The cosmos, and all of us, and everything, is entangled, pulsing as it were, in and with and from Empathy.” 

But that is not the way we normally experience things. I don’t walk around “feeling” like I am entangled with trees or the person handing me my receipt at a store. However, that does not mean it isn’t true. I mean, I am not aware of breathing, except when something causes me to pay attention. I am not aware of aging except, again, when something makes me realize it (like getting up off the floor after playing with my grandchildren!).

Our lack of awareness of breathing and of aging do not mean those things are not real. And the fact is that the awareness of those two realities can be actively cultivated.

It is the same, I believe, with the fundamental reality of our natures as entangled, interconnected, beings. 

That reality just is. Whether we think about it or not. And if I am right, then that reality just is whether we agree with it or not. It is “ontological.” The things are.

And the awareness of that reality can be experienced. Sometimes we do experience it. Most of us can recall times we felt a transcendent connection, a sense of being overwhelmed by beauty, or an almost mystical euphoria, etc.  

And this experience, this awareness of our interconnection or entanglement, can also be cultivated. The contemplative traditions of the world’s religious heritages have all developed ways of enabling us to be attentive to this reality of what physics calls entanglement, religions often speak of as union, some call interconnection, and which I am now suggesting is big E Empathy.

Where, and the cosmos, everything, all things and beings, seen and unseen…. 

When, and time, and past and present, and future…. 

I, and we, and they, and consciousness, and Consciousness….

Entangled, interconnected, in union with Empathy.

That is true ontologically. That can be cultivated existentially. It is what we are, and it can be what we experience, how we live.

It has taken me 31 Episodes to get to the point of articulating things that way, but here I am.

And yet…

What about my opening comments? Something seems really wrong. And that raises lots of questions. Perhaps the biggest question, bigger than “where and when did I begin.” In some ways bigger than “how did the cosmos come to be.”

 

Big Questions

For me a bigger and deeply troubling question is: If empathy is the fundamental nature of reality, why is the cosmos so cold and callous and cruel? Why do humans do such terrible things to each other and to animals and to our planet? It is the age-old, intractable question of evil.

Before I directly tackle that one, there are at least two other questions that have arisen while I have been working on these Episodes, both related to my conclusions about empathy, and in some ways related to my question about evil as well, though they are related in different ways.

There is a trending conversation, at least in my country, inspired by the suggestion in some circles, especially Christian circles, that empathy is a problem. Or, more precisely, that too much empathy is part of the reason our country is in such a shambles. Adherents of this view see empathy, not as a solution to the evil of the world, but as part of the evil, part of the problem that needs to be fixed. Proponents of this view refer to it as “the sin of empathy.”

The other question is related to AI. I am not one who fears that AI will lead us inevitably to doomsday. But, given that AI is ultimately the result of the collective pooling of human knowledge, consciousness, and cognition, then whatever it is that makes humans so cruel, whatever might be “the fault in our stars” (borrowing the title of a powerful novel and film), will be woven into the fabric of AI and whatever we use it to create.

For proponents of “the sin of empathy”, empathy is part of the evil.

In the case of AI, it may well propagate the evil that is already somehow part of the cosmos. And might propagate it better than humans!

I will take up the bigger question of evil in the next Episode..

In this session I am going to focus first on whether empathy is part of the problem.

 

The Sin of Empathy?

The whole idea of empathy being a “sin" has emerged primarily within certain Christian circles. I am not sure what word I should use to describe my reaction to that: ironic, sad, disappointing, scary? Granted, it is not a widely accepted concept, and it may be that the phrase itself, "sin of empathy," is used more as a way to attract attention, or spark a discussion, something provocative and catchy. Regardless, the point of view represented in the phase is presenting a challenge to traditional notions of empathy and compassion. 

I said the conversation seems to primarily take place within some Christian circles, but the origins seem to be inspired by the work of Edwin Friedman, a therapist, and rabbi. Friedman was one of the early framers of family systems theory. In his book “A Failure of Nerve” he includes a chapter titled, “The Fallacy of Empathy.” 

Friedman’s focus is on unhealthy expressions of empathy. Expressing his viewpoints in my own words, here are some examples:

 + loss of boundaries: becoming enmeshed in another to the extent that one’s own self disappears.

+co-dependence, leading to “over functioning,” trying so hard to help or even fix something or someone that we, again, lose ourselves.

+numbing and avoidance: making any type of pain equal to “harm,” and so pain should be avoided, our own pain and the pain of others. That can devolve to unhealthy versions such as “any sort of distress needs to be fixed, avoided, eliminated.” 

These all seem to me to be rooted in abuses of empathy or unhealthy expressions of empathy. And if that were the only argument being made against empathy, it would be an easy thing for me to conclude this discussion and move on. In fact, were this the only concern I would not have even included this topic.

What concerns me is not that some say we need to be careful to avoid unhealthy expressions of empathy. What concerns me is that there seems to be a more fundamental criticism of empathy at the level of values and virtue, a point of view that sees empathy as part of what some Christians, at least, have called a “false Gospel of kindness.”

And in the American context, it has also become a political issue, and here I will make a generalization with the full realization that every generalization contains truth but also breaks down when one encounters the nuances of a generalization in the form of an individual human being.

The generalization is this: that the “sin of empathy” criticism is largely living within an environment that combines political conservatism and Christianity and is thus largely a product of Republican Christians among whom the concerns seem to include the worry that empathy leads to caring for people who should take care of themselves, and thus to so-called liberal social programs for the poor, unhoused, immigrants, and minorities. Recent attacks on DEI can be traced to this approach. Since empathy is seen by some in this camp to represent weakness, the “sin of empathy” viewpoint seems to me to be motivated at least in part by a desire to affirm values rooted in power and control.

My point is not a critique of Republicanism per se or of Christianity per se, but of how some are currently melding those two and then also finding fault with advocating empathy as a crucial value.

Having said all of that, let me wrap this section up by first affirming that raising concerns about potentially unhealthy empathy is important, and if that were all that the “sin of empathy” conversation is seeking, then I would applaud it.

 

Virus in the machine, and is there a cure?

The way I have presented empathy in previous Episodes grounds it in ultimate reality, and thus in a deeper soil than just the existential questions of empathy as an ethical question. 

If empathy is ontological, woven into the very fabric of reality, then to NOT cultivate empathy will eventually result in a profound disconnection, an estrangement within our identity as human beings, akin to a psychic computer virus that eventually shuts down the machine, as it were.

Here I will present a poem, which is in some ways an exploration of the psychological, interior dynamics of not engaging empathy, and the resulting consequences relationally between us and other human beings. I have shared it before. It is a poem I called, Eclipses.

 

Eclipses

Planets come between each other,

Tousle headed playground waifs jostling for the front of the line.

 

There are patterns:

 

Some rare:

An event marked on calendars, making headlines, 

In between news of sunken boats of refugees,

The kidnapped child,

Two actors’ PDA.

 

Some with every dawn:

The moon,

Ignored and alone,

Shunned to the backside of the demanding earth.

 

Some with the daily downing of the sun:

Earth,

Clamored and abused, 

Relegated to the silence when moon claims the light.

 

Moon, you seem oblivious!

Even pushed behind you, 

The missing sun is the point of all this,

And returns to shame you back into your corner,

Nursing your embarrassed wound,

The eyes of everyone shifting, 

The sun sucking all the air out of your room.

 

Sitting at coffee with friends

Our words are in orbit,

Awaiting the brief shimmering tick of time

When we shine at the center.

Our slender moments, not in the sun,

But to be the sun.

 

Stirring my cup, smiling, nodding,

I have one eye on the solar system.

I time every turn of phrase among us.

I am desperately afraid to miss my entry,

Bounce back into space,

Unheard, alone.

 

My body postures to everyone my sincere attentiveness,

While I conjure a moon of words

To fill the space between us.

 

Yesterday I looked hard at a picture of an eclipse.

A dark center.

The moon.

A thriving, irrepressible envelopment of fire

Circling all around it.

The sun.

 

And I saw.

I, you, we, them:

Wanting to be, but never being, 

The sun.

 

I saw that we, I, can be moon and earth.

 

Moon shimmers, speckled in silver mists,

Painted by a tender feathered fingerprint.

Moon reflects.

 

Earth swims, greened in yellow rain,

Warmed like a sown seed in humus-riched soil.

Earth grows.

 

Sun sits, a lover, impassioned, in heat,

Burning in all directions.

Sun waits.

 

For earth is turning and moon circling,

Cycling time and again into the embrace

Of the inflamed unceasing verdant center,

Uneclipsed.

 

Coming back to the question of healthy, versus unhealthy, empathy. The religious traditions we have looked at provide wisdom for the cultivation of healthy empathy, and for facing and “curing” the dynamic described in the poem. 

I am thinking for example of Jesus’ teaching, “love your neighbor as yourself”, which he applied even to enemies, and to people of ethnic heritages with whom there may be long standing hatred (in his story of the Good Samaritan).

And I am thinking of the four Brahmaviharas in the Buddha’s teaching which roots empathy as one of four qualities to be cultivated, and which grounds all four in the reality that we are interconnected with all others, with all things. 

Both of these examples lead to seeking what is good for each of us, for all of us, collectively. 

I will transition from the reminder of the ontological reality of empathy to the question of AI.

 

And What About AI?

I am not the first to say that it seems like we are on the precipice of a future in which AI will take on, indeed is already taking on, “godlike qualities” as we develop human-engineered intelligence, and even human-engineered life. The technology baselines driving such changes seem to get reset daily. Many who work in the field of AI are suggesting that we will reach the “singularity” soon, which is the point at which the intelligence of “machines” surpasses that of humans.  Most say in a few decades, some say in less than one decade. 

Every technology we rely on for what seems to be emerging as our primary medium of human connection, social media, is AI driven. So are innovations in agriculture, industry, and much more, including the increasing use of AI in the creative arts. 

The computer revolution, which seems already on the verge of going the way of the rotary phone, was embedded in the machine learning revolution. The machine learning revolution, and with it, AI in its earliest expressions, was enabled by our ability to mimic, and learn from and apply to new technologies, various biological designs; biology which developed over billions of years, and now can be re-engineered rapidly.

There are good things about this. For example, instead of health care based on population averages, we’re moving toward a world where treatment is based on who we are as individuals, on a discreet molecular level. That requires data. A lot of data about you and about me. Which will make healthcare far more precise; it will enable the development of drugs that are more tailored to your or my genetic make-up. 

And these developments will also potentially enable medicine to shift to more preventive strategies and methods because the influx of data and the ability to mine it effectively will enable medical professionals to identify patterns. 

These are all good things. 

I have only focused on medicine and healthcare, but similar developments in other fields could be added. But there is another side of the coin with AI.

Before I say more, I just want to repeat that I am not anti-AI. Apart from the rapid pace of changes with AI, and apart from the scale and scope of the “side effects”, as it were, AI is like every other technological development, going back to fire and the wheel. The potential for good, and the potential for harm, largely depend upon human users.

And that is the main point I will make here. Or rather, two related points.  

First, let me use agriculture as an example.

One reason for the dramatic population growth of the past 100 years (actually thousands of years, but most dramatically in the past 100), has been developments in our ability to grow food for so many more people. Of course, other developments have also assisted in population growth, but I will limit myself to agriculture.

More recently AI has been an asset in agriculture in many of the same ways as I described for health care (especially biological applications). The problem is that if we try to continue to scale the capacity of agriculture to feed more (and the population is anticipated to grow to as many 10 billion people in the foreseeable future),  it will require us to utilize all of our empty, wild spaces, which will inflict side effects upon the environment that we cannot anticipate and likely won’t be able to reverse. 

Can advances in biotechnology keep up with all of that enable us to mitigate the unforeseen side effects I am citing? Maybe. Maybe not.

My agriculture example is really intended as an example of how almost everything we do technologically has potential butterfly effects, unintended consequences and side effects. In Episode 1 I focused on the positive aspects of butterfly effects, and I still believe in those! But every technology has at least potentially, the dark side of that dynamic.

Of course, that applies to so much of life, not just technology, and not just AI!

I am sure there will be unintended side effects of this podcast, maybe this Episode, perhaps this section in fact!

What does this have to do with consciousness, and empathy, and with the “problem of evil” that I said AI was in some way connected with? 

That brings me to my second point.

 

Garbage In, Garbage Out: AI and Inputs

So far, I have focused on the effects of AI. The outputs, I might say.

But AI did not emerge out of thin air. There are inputs. And those inputs are not neutral, amoral, objective “things” or facts. 

There’s a familiar adage, “garbage in, garbage out.” 

I know that the ethicists I have come across who are wrestling with the matter of ethics and AI are all in agreement that “we need to be careful.” And there needs to be “values.” One I came across even said there need to be “values, values, values.”

But that raises the question: from where will we draw those values? And of course, even if we agree on a source of values, and even if it is the “right source,” if we are honest, we are all aware that we act and think and feel in ways that are not in keeping with our values.  

And that, right there, that point about us, surfaces the thing I am trying to get at here:

Given that much of what goes into the cosmic data pool of AI is like a cognitive blood donation drawn and collected from humanity’s veins, isn’t it inevitable that the AI cognitive gene pool will be contaminated by our samples?

Our character flaws, our ability to lie to ourselves, the cruelty that is so prevalent throughout human history, our self-preservation, our racism, genderism, sexism, ageism, nationalism, intolerance, and on and on. You can add to my list. Make your own list.

With AI are we just generating a bigger faster more efficient version of ourselves? Especially when and if the singularity arrives, and AI becomes more intelligent than humanity.

It is like Frankenstein’s monster, but on a scale and speed we cannot imagine. Or control.

 

Into the Metaverse

Earlier I mentioned in passing that AI is driving the way social media works, and social media is increasingly a primary means of human connection (to use that term loosely). I recently worked on a project in which I wrote 15 songs, each 15 seconds long, all exploring the good, the bad, and the ugly of social media. I released them all separately in TikTok, and Instagram, and on my YouTube channel (Kevin Caldwell Music). I also compiled them into one “song” with 15 sections, plus a 15 second introduction.

It seems fitting to include it here, as an artist’s way of trying to reflect on how we as humans can face the shadow sides of AI, at least in this arena of human connection.

Here is my work, Life in 15 Seconds.

 

Life in 15 Seconds

This album is 15 songs, each 15 seconds long, trying to fit within the framework of a certain social media framework that tells us that our lives need to be told in stories....15 seconds long.

15 seconds, the clock is ticking. A window into a tiny part of me. The truth is that maybe 15 seconds is all that you’ll want to see of me.

15 seconds of glory or 15 seconds of shame, what’s the point of telling your story if nobody knows your name? If nobody knows your name.

Sometimes dawn floats down like lace, sunshine wraps round my finger.

I scroll the 15 second stories of friends, wishing I had more time here to linger.

Me inside my story and all of you inside of yours, melded into one another, pieces of the metaverse and now we’re searching for our way home.

A reel of mine went viral, one I made way back when, but I’m not that man today, not who I was way back when. But no one wants the real me, they just want that reel again and again.

A 15-story building, and she has climbed them all. How could someone’s 15 second story make her want to fall?  

A suburb full of model homes lost within conformity, identical and all alone, punish individuality. I’m here inside my bedroom window, nursing dreams of flying.

Thumb scrolling, dumb scrolling, slum scrolling numb scrolling soon I’ll be done…wait, not yet. Scrolling…numb. Scrolling…numb. Scrolling…

Momma my thumbs in a cast my eyes super- glued to the screen of that last nasty thing that I just viewed. In the end I can only conclude I’m ‘social-medially’ screwed.

We’re all trapped and wrapped inside the algorithm’s prison, thumb scrolling numb and drunk upon the metaverse’s poison. Will emoji’s, likes, and follows really be the reason to drink the Kool Aid?

I log in to watch somebody else feel the things I wish I could have felt. The bots will chat more the more I’m paying but I’m not in the game, not really playing. All alone here in the stands, a lonely only fan. 

The door that lets the monsters in won’t let me send them out again. Today I’ve decided to begin and give names to all of them and try to turn them into friends. So go ahead, send the monsters in. 

There’s a love that’s deeper than the universe, that can heal the ancient curse and heal even me. Even me. 

From my heart to my hands to my phone to your phone to your hands to your heart, from your heart to your hands to your phone to my phone to my hands to my heart, from my heart to my hands to my phone to your phone…

Today I opened the list of all my followers, said each and every name out loud to embrace you in the sound of a tender human voice.

 

I know that project only addresses the social media application of AI, but I think it is possible that those songs contain seeds that could suggest ways to counter the “garbage in, and garbage out” issue I have raised, or perhaps they contain seeds for recycling our garbage. If nothing else, cultivating self-awareness and facing our monsters are crucial. 

I have looked at the “sin of empathy” and AI, and now turn back to the big question I opened with.

 

Back to the Biggie

If empathy is an ontological ingredient in reality, and in particular in the divine, and thus is part of our fundamental and essential nature as well, then why is the world so bloody and broken? And why are human beings capable of such cruelty, capable of inflicting such pain on others? I have expressed my concerns about how we might infect AI with our “virus”, but why is this capacity within us to begin with, so that it is even possible for it to infect AI?

That is now the destination to which I need to go…Next time.