“The fundamental weakness is empathy,” Musk recently told radio podcast host Joe Rogan. “There is a bug, which is the empathy response.”
As Musk has established himself as at least the second most powerful person in an administration seeking a wholesale remaking of institutions, rules and norms, what he said matters, because it encapsulates a political plan. What the Project 2025 report set out in over 900 turgid pages, Musk’s remark captures in a simple pithy mantra for the social media age.
I would recommend reading the quote in context, and not just headlines. It is not quite as insane as it seems at first glance, although just slightly. Transcript from Yahoo Fact Check:
Musk: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. So, I think, you know, empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.
Rogan: Right, understand when empathy has been actually used as a tool.
Musk: Yes, like, it’s weaponized empathy is the issue.
The point, as I understand it, is that empathy lets people manipulate you into making short-sighted decisions based purely on feelings, without properly investigating the facts. This is true. However, I strongly disagree that this is the fundamental weakness of Western civilization. I think that greed and selfishness are way bigger problems, and this is also what leads to people taking advantage of people’s empathy.
Who is “They”?
The empathetic ones literally just got removed you fucking moron.
No, that’s bullshit.
As a pretense: You have boundaries and you understand that others have agency.
If someone tries to guilt you into doing something, you enforce your boundaries. If you feel someone you know is being forced into doing something, you make your case and you back the fuck off. Their agency guides the choices they make, up to and including making choices that you, yourself, would not make.
Claiming that civilization is being manipulated by ‘weaponized empathy’ is horse shit designed to dismiss the agency of the people who made choices to help others. It’s sociopathy wrapped up in reasonable enough sounding psychobabble.
Musk is a sociopath so convinced of his own greatness and so desperate for a tax cut that he’s willing to let people starve and say it’s because he knows better.
The part you linked was very interesting. It started to make more sense in his context, but then I went to go look at what he was actually referring to.
I feel that made it just as bad as the original out of context bit though.
He was referring to a phrase coined by one of his buddies, suicidal empathy, which sounds like it equates helping people to when someone tries to rescue a drowning person and is then drown themselves. It doesn’t seem to narrow the focus very much, and is more of the same BS that being “woke” is ruining the world. Here’s his friend in his own words:
I feel this is a dangerous way of spreading hateful ideology. It frames it as a common sense argument, but it is based on falsehood. Where are the “victims of wokeness” and are the examples really victims, or people that just didn’t get away with what they wanted to get away with? It is the same anti-migrant, anti-trans BS in better wrapping.
Relevant comic shared today
There are many sketchy people hiding their right-wing ideology behind that discipline. This is an entertaining video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31e0RcImReY
Wow, what a video!
You initially had me scared of starting a 3+ hour video, but from the first few seconds I was invested. This lady is funny!
I can’t do the full thing at once, as entertaining as she’s making it, everyone in it is a combo of Musk’s “I don’t reproduce for love of my partner or child, it’s just the world needs my DNA if it’s going to survive,” the charming dating strategy of Ron Densantis and his “Thigh-land” bit, and wanna be biologists explaining how genes work as accurately as Hideo Kojima writing another Metal Gear script. 🤯
I hope we get to a future where these people are either forgotten to time completely, or remembered alongside phrenologists and other nonsense peddlers.
‘Ideological neo parasite’ is just another way of saying thought crime which is pretty funny coming from Mr ‘ethos of freedom’.
My issue is the framing of those who disagree with the opposing in-group as sub-human or a disease. It sounds a lot like Agent Smith in the first Matrix wanting to get rid of the last of humanity so the tech can run rampant.
I have yet to hear an “anti-woke” argument that amounts to anything other than “I think I’m superior and I need society to reflect that.”
The argument of caring for others can lead you to getting screwed over happens. I’ve gone out of my way for people who have not returned the favor, lent people money they never repaid, or had people try to get one over on me for no reason. I’m sure we all have. But if the way to avoid that is to have every relationship be transactional, I’m not interested. To say society is literally in danger by people caring to much is such a sociopathic idea.
Up until recent events, I felt it was rare to see anyone of a progressive nature calling for things like extrajudicial violence, or any kind of differential treatment of those that disagreed with them. Most of us just want to see right wingers act like decent human beings. But the alt-right types have never once stopped calling for segregation, discrimination, and immediate violence or removal of people they disagree with. We’re an unrepairable threat to them.
Musk and Saad can dress up what they’re saying in better language than Trump and your common red hatter, but it’s the same message. It’s anti-intellectualism and hate dressed up in fancy clothes. Treating people equally and with respect is not something to look down on, even if you don’t come out ahead every time. “Winning” isn’t the goal, equality is. People that treat humanity as a zero sum game are the ones with the problem, not the rest of us.