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.