# as the empathy bubble bursts, the bull market in duty and honour commences? **URL:** \ **Category:** Lounge\ **Created:** [October 1, 2011, 12:38am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/as-the-empathy-bubble-bursts-the-bull-market-in-duty-and-honour-commences/52616 "2011-10-01T00:38:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![PheroQuirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@PheroQuirk](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/PheroQuirk)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2011, 12:38am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/as-the-empathy-bubble-bursts-the-bull-market-in-duty-and-honour-commences/52616/1 "2011-10-01T00:38:57Z")
[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/brooks-the-limits-of-empathy.html?\_r=3&src=ISMR\_HP\_LO\_MST\_FB](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/brooks-the-limits-of-empathy.html?_r=3&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB) > [@](#): > > Think of anybody you admire. They probably have some talent for fellow-feeling, but it is overshadowed by their sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code. They would feel a sense of shame or guilt if they didn’t live up to the code. The code tells them when they deserve public admiration or dishonor. The code helps them evaluate other people’s feelings, not just share them. The code tells them that an adulterer or a drug dealer may feel ecstatic, but the proper response is still contempt. > The code isn’t just a set of rules. It’s a source of identity. It’s pursued with joy. It arouses the strongest emotions and attachments. Empathy is a sideshow. If you want to make the world a better place, help people debate, understand, reform, revere and enact their codes. Accept that codes conflict. ---
**Author:** ![Warren](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/97f17d/32.png) [@Warren](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Warren)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2011, 6:19am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/as-the-empathy-bubble-bursts-the-bull-market-in-duty-and-honour-commences/52616/2 "2011-10-01T06:19:48Z")
A code of honour is more of a strategy to live by, whereas empathy is more appropriately a tactic to ensure that positive intentions don’t go awry. A naive following of the Golden Rule has one giving unto others what oneself wants rather than what is actually good for the other person. Without the tool of empathy, the narcissistic goal of feeling good about doing good may be achieved without necessarily having done actual good. As used by politicians, of course, feigned empathy is just a ploy to hide their cold, reptilian intentions. ---
**Author:** ![PheroQuirk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@PheroQuirk](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/PheroQuirk)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2011, 11:39am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/as-the-empathy-bubble-bursts-the-bull-market-in-duty-and-honour-commences/52616/3 "2011-10-01T11:39:58Z")
v much agree, Warren. It is just that in our time empathy has been elevated to be almost the whole of morality. “Just because I killed him, doesn’t mean I’m not a good person” - paraphrase of recent quote from a murderess. ---
**Author:** ![Warren](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/97f17d/32.png) [@Warren](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Warren)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2011, 4:52pm UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/as-the-empathy-bubble-bursts-the-bull-market-in-duty-and-honour-commences/52616/4 "2011-10-01T16:52:51Z")
When I was a kid there was a lot more guilt and a lot less empathy. Teaching empathy in the 1960s was an important and valuable thing to do. If you look at your traditional Freudian psychoneuroses, you are looking at overwhelming guilt based pathology, which was seriously debilitating. You don’t see that anymore. What you see is leaning more toward the psychopathic, like your murderess who is not a bad person just because she killed someone. (?!) According to Strauss & Howe the Boomer generation is idealistic, but disinclined to make tough decisions. Quesions such as “How can we afford better schools?” become questions of “How can we afford not to?” which sidestep the tough decisions and eventually lead on to ruin. The Revolutionary War days began with a similar generation. I have heard that, for more than a third of all marriages in the 1770s, the bride was already pregnant. It is hard for me to think of these powdered wig dudes as being sexy! An excessive sense of duty giving way to a complete lack of duty and honour is not a trend so much as it is a cycle. On one extreme you have crippling neurosis and slavish obedience to (not always rational) morals, on the other you have rebellion and the threat of sociopathic chaos. I am always amazed at the hypnotic quality of the evening news, always implying helplessness over rabbel rousing and dependence over initiative. Call 911 and stay on the phone, don’t confront the burgler… I read about a guy who starved to death in his car waiting for help to arrive. He was only a hundred yards from the next town. The empathy-above-all-else approach discourages judgementalism. What could be more disruptive than the slaves fighting amongst them selves – unless it would be their realizing their masters were corrupt and rebelling! Better not to judge, just feel for each other. Thinking itself is based on making judgements as is initiative. It is easy to see how the ruling class would benefit from their subjects cowering in fear of the all seeing eye of the god of the state sponsored religions. They would soon internalize the state’s injunctions as a voice of consience. It is the story of _Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents_. But what to do when the slaves rebel against this oppression? Empathic ideals and communal property take the place of religion and fear of crime (or terrorism) induces the people to give up their liberties and wallow in empathic learned helplessness. The oscillations between the two cyclic extremes do not reach a happy balance during the transitions because both extremes exist together in different generations at the same time and it is the old game of “Divide and Rule”. When I was a kid they called it the “generation gap”. Just as a pendulum eventually settles stationary at the bottom of the arc, so it would seem that the oscillations between moral rigidity and empathic promiscuity would eventually reach a happy medium. What we need is an empathic sensitivity to our neighbors without giving up the ability to make sane judgements based on a moral code which benefits humanity as a whole (as opposed to a moral code based on politically biased mistranslations from ancient texts). I suspect that what keeps us from settling into such a golden age is an external force which benefits from exaggerating the extremes in the oscillations. ---
**Author:** ![Butterfly](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/pheromonetalk.com/butterfly/32/1942_2.png) [@Butterfly](https://pheromonetalk.com/u/Butterfly)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2011, 8:53am UTC](https://pheromonetalk.com/t/as-the-empathy-bubble-bursts-the-bull-market-in-duty-and-honour-commences/52616/5 "2011-10-02T08:53:30Z")
> [@Warren](#): > > The Revolutionary War days began with a similar generation. I have heard that, for more than a third of all marriages in the 1770s, the bride was already pregnant. It is hard for me to think of these powdered wig dudes as being sexy! As an aside, in most of Northwest Europe, many brides got impregnated during engagement on perpose. This was especially a common tradition among those owning family businesses. Say if a smithy arranged for his top apprentice to marry his daughter and give him a grandson to inerit the family business, it would be pretty disastrous if said apprentice was firing blanks. This was practically rather than immorality. Some farms even have a room with a window for the fiance to come in at night.