Why Compassion is Important in the Defense of Objectivity

Those who trample on others' feelings risk falling into a subjective rabbit hole

Welcome to a new series, where I attempt to build a philosophy of compassion, and to robustly justify and defend the concept of compassion. I believe that compassion is the driver of a reformist politics, and it is the best way to prevent a movement from turning impractical or reactionary. Today, I'm going to talk about why compassion is fully compatible with rationality and objectivity.

In recent years, there has been a trend towards pitting compassion and rationality against each other. This trend was set into motion by two developments in the previous decade: firstly, there was the hijacking of social justice by the postmodern critical theory movement, which led to the false association of anti-objective philosophical theories with justice for oppressed minorities. This led to the misguided view among some people that compassion and social justice requires less commitment to free speech and objectivity. Secondly, there was the so-called anti-SJW movement, which popularized slogans like 'facts don't care about your feelings'. This led to another misguided view: the more callous one is about feelings, the more factual and objective one gets.

However, both the aforementioned views have no basis in reality at all. There is no incompatibility between being compassionate on one hand, and being committed to objectivity and rationality on the other hand. One can remain committed to the objective truth, and to the values that support this commitment, like free speech and intellectual freedom, without giving up on compassion and empathy. Indeed, I would argue that being compassionate enables one to become even more objective, or at least less prone to culture war-style biases and distortions. This is because, if you are truly compassionate, you would care about people's lives, and you would therefore truly listen to what they have to say. This way, you wouldn't be missing out on important facts, or important sides to a story, as culture warriors living in an echo chamber would, for example. Compassion, empathy and the willingness to listen allows bridges to be built, which allows the whole picture to be seen, and true objectivity and rationality to be achieved. It is the best antidote to the echo chambers that tribalism and the culture wars have created.

On the other hand, it is often the willingness to be callous, the willingness to disregard others' feelings, that enables the loss of objectivity and rationality. I have seen this happen with culture warriors on both sides. On the left, I've seen people get brainwashed by their philosophy, to believe that some people are 'oppressors' because of their immutable characteristics and/or opinions (often taken out of context). On the right, I've seen culture war and moral panic narratives used to demonize certain groups of people, painting them as bad or crazy with a broad brush. Either way, the effect is the dehumanizing of the other, the willingness to automatically dismiss what they have to say, and the willingness to ignore their plight. All this, by definition, leads to loss of objectivity and rationality, because you are no longer seeing the whole picture, and taking everything into account on balance. This, of course, also means that any order arising from this kind of attitude would not be a good order. Indeed, it is likely to be a bad, oppressive order. Someone who refuses to be callous, who is committed to being compassionate towards every fellow human being at all times, would never fall into this trap.

In conclusion, compassion is not only compatible with objectivity and rationality, compassion actually helps ensure we stay objective by making us truly listen to all sides of an argument. On the other hand, it is the decision to forego compassion that allows people to fall down the rabbit hole of subjectivity, via a willingness to trample on others' lives and voices.

Left and Right are Arbitrary Terms that Mean Nothing

Seeing that the tribes are meaningless is one step closer to ending the culture wars

Welcome back to my series of Ideas to End the Culture Wars. Last time, I talked about how the factions involved in the culture war are like the various churches and denominations vying for political power in Europe several hundred years ago, and we could only resolve this conflict by extending the classical liberal separation of philosophical worldview and politics to non-religious cultural issues. This time, I will talk about one way in which the culture war tribes are not exactly like the churches and denominations: they don't even have a coherent, internally consistent worldview.

What do the words 'left' and 'right' actually mean, in the context of our time and place, the early 21st century West? By the standards of objective reality, they actually mean nothing at all. The 'left' tribe has very contradictory elements, like class-first old school socialists who base their whole politics on the working class, as well as elite academia-based postmodernists, whose worldview and beliefs are totally alien to the working class, and they don't even care. Hence the 'left' is pro-working class and anti-working class at the same time. The 'right' tribe is arguably even more contradictory. I once had a friend who told me that the 'right' was for freedom. The further 'right', the more freedom, she argued. How then would you explain 'postliberal' thinkers like Patrick Deneen, Ron DeSantis's War on Disney, the book bans and the drag bans? I don't think you can seriously argue they are not part of the 'right'. Hence the 'right' is both pro-freedom and anti-freedom.

Indeed, if a political concept can mean both one thing and its opposite, this would inevitably invite double standards, hypocrisy, sophistry, and the worst kind of charlatanism. And this is exactly what is happening in both the 'left' and 'right' tribes. After all, what is 'left' or 'right' is always up for redefinition, as long as you have the influence, money and power to do so. 'Left' and 'right' are ultimately social constructs with no meaning, and no purpose except for making people believe and support things they wouldn't otherwise have, and ultimately help certain dishonest actors gain political power. This is why neither the 'left' nor the 'right' is honest or intellectually consistent these days.

The best way to overcome this is to resist the temptation to join the 'left' tribe or the 'right' tribe, or indeed any other tribe. Instead, we should determine what is most valuable to us, and assess each idea and policy with our own conscience. For example, what I'm most concerned about, in the context of the 21st century West, is the erosion of freedom and independent thinking by culture warriors from both sides. Therefore, whenever a new idea or policy comes up, my first instinct is to ask, is this good or bad for freedom? Sometimes 'left' ideas are good for freedom, but unfortunately these days more often than not they are likely to be bad for freedom. Sometimes 'right' ideas are good for freedom, but again, unfortunately these days more often than not they are likely to be bad for freedom too. This means that, effectively, most of the time I'm either opposing the left or the right. I guess this is the inevitable stance of the classical liberal, in an era where freedoms are being eroded from every direction. By refusing to join either tribe, and relying on my own independent thinking instead, I can take an honest stand for freedom each and every time.

Only the Truth can Deradicalize the Culture Warriors

Therefore, the question should be, what will bring people back to the truth

Welcome back to my series of Ideas to End the Culture Wars. Last time, I discussed how the two main tribes in the culture wars, the 'left' and the 'right', are ultimately meaningless and incoherent social constructs, and when we see through them, we are a step closer to ending the culture wars. Today, I want to turn to why so many people can't see this at the moment. I believe it's because they have lost sight of the objective truth. As it's commonly described, people on both sides of the culture wars have lost all common ground because they have lost a shared understanding of the reality that is rooted in the objective facts. Therefore, the only way to deradicalize them would be by bringing them back to objectivity. To do this, we have to identify things which are the enemy of objectivity, and oppose these things consistently.

The first enemy of objectivity is emotion. During the 2010s, a new style of left-wing activists, often associated with identity politics, tried to teach us that it is wrong to 'tone police'. I respectfully but strongly disagreed then, and I stand by my words to this day. The reason why we need a calm and rational discourse is because an emotionally charged discourse can't get us to the objective truth. We can't really discuss things rationally and get closer to the truth if one or both sides are emotionally worked up, because it would just descend into an emotional shouting match, with both sides reflexively rejecting all that the other side has to say. While the identity left has openly encouraged a politics of grievance in the past decade, the right are no better when it comes to being rational and avoiding getting emotional. The organized political right has been promoting moral panic after moral panic in recent years, and right-aligned culture warriors have become just as angry and irrational as their counterparts on the left.

The other important enemy of objectivity is tribalism. People are social animals, and we love to make friends. More importantly, we are evolutionary adapted to trust those we are familiar with more. However, when it comes to ideas and facts in the modern world, this kind of bias is actually counterproductive to getting us to the truth. Therefore, we have to actively work to overcome it, by trying to listen to all sides of a story, and think for ourselves independently. In particular, we should be very wary of talking heads on TV and influencers in the new media trying to sell us a particular worldview. They often have a particular political agenda, and it is usually not a very nice agenda.

Finally, if we are to embrace objectivity, we need to be brave enough to demand evidence for the things people claim, especially if those claims could have a significant effect on politics. Postmodernism has normalized the subjective, philosophy over fact method of argumentation, but the right isn't immune from this either, with fact-free conspiracy theories increasingly being entertained. To counter both the postmodern left and the conspiracy theory right, we need to consistently demand solid evidence from people making unusual claims, especially if the claim is likely to have an impact on our politics. This is the only way we can push back on the trend away from arguments being rooted in the objective truth.