
The empathetic humanities have much to teach our adversarial culture - Vigier
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-empathetic-humanities-have-much-to-teach-our-adversarial-culture
======
westoncb
> _They do, however, foster a prosecutorial attitude among academics and
> public intellectuals. As a colleague once told me: ‘I am always looking for
> the Freudian slip.’ He scours the writings of his peers to spot when they
> trip up and betray their problematic intellectual commitments. One poorly
> chosen phrase can sully an entire work._

Interesting how operating routinely in a certain 'mode' like this ends up
spreading into other areas of your life.

I wonder how many programmers can relate who've found their tendency toward
problem solving extending beyond the computer screen.

~~~
watwut
> I wonder how many programmers can relate

The thing non-programmers commented on was tendency to spot and comment on
special cases in social situations where it is unusual. When someone says
generic statement, a programmer tends to bring up that one case where generic
statement fails. A programmer can even agree with that generic statement in
general and has no malicious intent, but has fun finding out those special
cases.

Once I was told this, yeah, it is true. It is even sometimes like bonding
among programmers, but non programmers can be unsure why are you derailing.

~~~
afarrell
This tendency is has particularly glaring and tragic effects in discussions of
how communities should handle reports of and design systems to prevent sexual
assault.

Myself, when I want to take something seriously, it means I:

\- Try to spot special cases so I can be explicit about whether or not they
should be handled.

\- Try to be precise in my language, to ensure I'm not (for example)
conflating two issues with a subtle but meaningful difference.

\- Try to check my understanding of things, even in cases where I'm 80% sure
I've understood someone correctly. I want to get to 97%.

\- Try to nail down unambiguously which things we are concluding as we go
along.

If I don't do these things, it feels like I'm _not_ taking the issue
seriously. If someone says something and I spot an ambiguity in their words
which seems relevant, I feel an urge to ask about it--both to convey that I'm
Actively Listening and to ensure I really understand them. The less confident
I am in a subject, the more likely I am to judge an ambiguity is worth asking
about--maybe its minor, but I don't know if I don't ask! When I notice a
special case, my intuition starts loudly blaring "Risk ahead! Risk ahead! If
you're putting this risk out-of-scope, be explicit about it."

All of these habits, when applied to conversations about sexual assault, are
generally interpreted as being pedantic. This arouses suspicion in other
people: "why are you bringing this up?" "why are you trying to be so cut-and-
dry?" "why are you trying to rules-lawyer consent?" The conclusion which
normal people naturally answer that question with go: This person is trying to
create social space for abusers to operate.

The lesson is: avoid conversations about sexual assault unless you know you
are first aligned on broader conversational norms like like "How do we
establish that we've agreed on something?" and "How do we talk about a nonzero
probability of system failure?"

~~~
krageon
The lesson is actually not to be pedantic. It is okay for things to feel a
certain way _to you_ but it's not okay for you to not recognise that in some
subjects you need to operate from a position of empathy and sympathy to the
party you are conversing with. Social situations need you to be delicate
sometimes, and that goes way beyond "conversations about sexual assault". It
applies to every part of your life.

~~~
monktastic1
It sounds like your parent is explaining why their version of empathy _looks
like_ pedantry to others. I'm not sure "be empathetic, not pedantic" is
helpful. S/he already has enough self-awareness to recognize that that is what
others expect from him/her.

~~~
Espressosaurus
The parent's version of empathy _is_ pedantry and solely focused on forcing
the person they're talking to to explain themselves and their thought process.
It's pretty off-putting when done in the wrong way and especially at the wrong
time. Understanding someone's thoughts is but one part of empathy however.
Another, arguably more important part of empathy (at least when talking about
interpersonal relationships) is identifying how the other person feels, and in
that, meticulously picking apart their opinions is probably not helping. In
fact, it's probably hurting.

That the parent is highlighting sexual assault as where this line of
questioning breaks down is indicative they haven't fully internalized the
lesson: it applies everywhere, to everyone. There are times and places and
people and topics for whom picking apart the argument is a good thing. There
are also times and places and people and topics where that doesn't apply. It
differs person to person and topic to topic.

It means we need to empathize with the people we're talking to and recognize
the boundaries and when we're getting into non-productive territory.

I occasionally hang out with non-engineer hippies, and they don't get in these
kinds of arguments (they get into different arguments). They're much more
about feeling what the other person feels, and supporting them in their
feelings, with maybe some edging around on solutions.

I still struggle with the need to pick apart the problem and try to solve it.
Frequently, that is _not_ what the other person is interested in at that time.
Often enough, they've already attempted most of those lines of attack and
they're just venting.

Sometimes we just need to be empathetic, sympathetic, and supportive.

~~~
zozbot234
> I still struggle with the need to pick apart the problem and try to solve
> it. ... Often enough, they've already attempted most of those lines of
> attack

Yeah, I could see how that might be rather annoying - "dude, I've already
_tried_ those things you're telling me about - why the f--k would you assume I
_didn 't_? Now you've hurt my feelings, too! Please, just go away."

------
knzhou
Over time I've gotten completely disenchanted with "empathy" as a slogan.
Growing up, I thought it meant striving to see things from multiple sides. In
practice it is a demand that you see things from only one side -- offering
empathy at all to the other side is apparently the most unempathetic thing you
can do. Like so much else, it started as a grand principle and ended up as a
tribal bludgeon.

I'm with the author here, but the battle he's fighting has long since been
lost.

~~~
dbspin
Online 'culture' is not the world. It doesn't represent anything like a
majority of human culture, and it's been demonstrated time and time again the
even those who heavily participate in online communities have radically more
subtle and contradictory opinions offline.

Lets not give up on humanity just yet, merely because online social media is
reactive and polarised.

------
gumby
Marc Bloch has been a hero of mine since I first encountered him in my late
teens. He was an early practitioner of a movement away from the “great man”
view of history, studying everyday medieval life and then teasing from that
surprisingly significant insights.

Then with war brewing he engaged in the resistance, as what is the point of
the study of history if you don’t learn from it and act?

His writing on contemporaneous events towards the untimely end of his life was
so sympathetic just as his historical work had been.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Bloch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Bloch)

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
It makes me think of Socrates's old thing about how static writing is, and how
the back and forth of dialogue is so important

>Writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have
the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a
solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that
they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to
one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have
been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or
may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not:
and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them;
and they cannot protect or defend themselves.

I think a lot of what we're learning in this new era is that the pub/sub model
of talking to each other has some real weaknesses compared to immediate
dialogue (which has its own weaknesses). Unfortunately, twitter, facebook,
blogs, reddit, the news, and really all social media I'm aware of is more
pub/sub than dialogue. Without dialogue, you have to interpret and assume.
With what I'll define as "real" dialogue here, you'd just ask for
clarification until you're on the same page.

------
ptah
> Does the lack of charity in public discourse – the quickness to judge, the
> aversion to context and intent – stem in part from what we might call the
> ‘adversarial’ humanities?

There is no way to know the answer to this

~~~
Nasrudith
We may identify potential contributors and give relative rankings at least
though. Although it is fuzzy we are pretty certain that it isn't because of
say changes in underwear technology.

I suspect tenure may be a bigger factor personally - especially for those
whose careers are mainly academic instead of industry where they can always
leave for greener pastures if they get fed up with it.

There are toxic incentives to try to tear down rivals under any pretense so
that sort of sniping may easily get embedded in the culture. It is just a
theory of course.

------
kwoff
"His most recent book" \- does anyone read beyond that?

~~~
danharaj
The article has little to do with his book.

------
booleandilemma
Hitler painted and Stalin wrote poetry...just throwing that out there...

~~~
krageon
What is the point you are trying to make with this?

~~~
jalla
Stop being so adversarial.

