No, Elon, empathy is not a weakness

Elon Musk on Joe Rogan this week

Empathy is the reason we are still here.

In school, we all learned about Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest.” It might surprise you, then, to discover that he didn’t coin that term. That was Herbert Spencer, who came up with it five years later:

As you likely also know, Spencer was interested in implementing hierarchies of human beings, and his ideas were used to justify eugenics.

Over the years, the idea of “survival of the fittest” has been widely interpreted to mean that the most selfish and the most aggressive will survive. (I’ll explain more about why that is below.) When you look at Darwin’s actual writing, though, you will see something quite different: he emphasized that it’s the sympathetic who survive and flourish.

Sympathy is used here by Darwin to mean something akin to empathy or compassion, inspired by Adam Smith’s use of the term in The Theory of Moral Sentiments:

“The word sympathy, in its most proper and primitive signification, denotes our fellow-feeling with the sufferings, not the enjoyments, of others.”

It’s true that, in a one-on-one interaction between a selfish person and a compassionate person, the selfish person may win. They’re willing to do things that hurt other people and to sacrifice their morals (i.e. blunt their empathic response.)

But in groups, everything changes. Compassionate groups win against selfish groups.

The compassionate survive because they work together. Through using their empathy, they are able to build relationships; in those relationships, they care for each other, share resources, and tap into unique strengths. The well-being of the group is their goal, and they will work courageously and cooperatively to achieve it. The selfish can’t do any of these things, because they are in it for themselves alone. A group of selfish individuals will quickly break down, turning against each other and collapsing from within.

The compassionate also flourish because those activities that promote their survival—practicing empathy, building relationships, and caring for each other—are also what lead to happiness. The selfish cannot flourish because no one can be happy alone. Their misery compels them to behave even more selfishly, leading to even more harm towards others.

As described by the eminent biologist E.O. Wilson, “Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.”

When I first came across this research in grad school, I was shocked. It was one of the first moments where I realized that my ‘lay beliefs,’ as academics call them, were not only shaped by Old Happy culture, but fundamentally distorted by it. Why has survival of the fittest come to be conceived as ‘the selfish win’? Because of the forces of capitalism, individualism, and domination, all of which center the self above others. If you believe that the natural state of the human being is a selfish one, then these societal structures are not only necessary, but desirable. It benefits Old Happy to conceive of ourselves as rotten to the core.

But as I dug further into the research, I learned that every major leap in human development is the result of becoming more and more cooperative, caring, and helpful. By leaning into our connections and our sense of service to others, not away from it. By viewing others as similar to us, connected to us, cherished by us. I believe this is the sentiment that underpins Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote, that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” It does so because our deepest nature is compassionate.

As we face another pivotal moment in human history, we are being called to evolve into an even more compassionate version of ourselves. I believe this is the only way we will make it through what comes next.

When I look at the Make America Great Again movement, I see a group of people who are against our collective evolution. They not only want us to halt the deepening of our compassion—they want us to unlearn our progress and dismantle what we have built. By convincing us that empathy is a weakness, they try to silence our most human gift in favor of their agenda. They want to go back to a time when people in marginalized communities didn’t have rights and opportunities. They want to be free to harm others to get more for themselves. They want to strip away the wins in compassion that our ancestors fought so hard for.

This is why I know that they will never succeed. Their actions are not aligned with our deepest human nature. Progress can only be achieved by becoming more caring, and they are, day by day, becoming more hateful.

They might achieve wins in the short term, yes. They might be able to overpower individuals, it’s true. But if we, as a group of people, come together in compassion, then we can trust that we will win.

Our biggest challenge now lies in creating that group of compassionate individuals. Right now we are fractured, disconnected, separate. Most everyone is still operating under their Old Happy worldview, believing that their personal happiness is more important than other people’s happiness, and that helping other people is anathema to well-being. This is the lay belief that must topple to ensure our collective happiness.

We must learn to love ourselves and each other again, by recognizing that love is an action, a practice, a discipline. We must look deeply at ourselves and ask, where am I refusing to extend compassion to others, and how can I overcome it? We must gather with those who share our goal of building a world where everyone can be happy, and build a real, meaningful community that helps us to become the most empathetic, compassionate version of ourselves.

It won’t be easy. That makes sense, too. Who said evolving as a species would be easy? Yet, I would argue, it is the single most worthwhile thing we can devote ourselves to. A life spent deepening in our compassion would be a life well-lived, and would create a legacy that extends for generations to come. Maybe that’s why we are here. Maybe we should get started right now.

Send this email to someone who wants to evolve. Thanks for being a part of the New Happy movement. Learn more here.

Note: In this piece, I didn’t focus on the ways in which even ascribing empathy as a quality of western culture is also incorrect, given the numerous ways in which we have harmed so many billions of people in our quest for domination. I hope to tackle that in another piece in the future.