Do Double Standards Ruin Empathy?

[Purple Knight]

Question for Debate: Do societal double standards, to any degree, destroy the ability for us to put ourselves in another's shoes?

I've been thinking about this for a while. And I'm not saying there isn't a perfectly good reason to have double standards. The easiest one is between law-abiding and criminal - these people are treated completely differently. The extension of this to aggressor class versus victim class, is perfectly logical if this distinction exists. You may believe it doesn't and the claims of the progressive side are false, and believe it or not I fully respect that, but if they are true, then the distinction makes every bit of sense that the distinction between victim and criminal does.

However, what's been on my mind is that if someone never gets to say to themselves, "This is also wrong when it's done to me," then they don't actually get to think in a way conducive to human empathy. A white person who doesn't get to think about microaggressions toward themself (because there aren't any, but that's beside this point) is hardly going to understand why those things are wrong in the first place. Forget about where I got this from.

Imagine someone going through life as a non-person, having every nasty thing said to them simply not count. Maybe there's a perfectly good reason it doesn't count but that might not affect the bottom line, which is that they're going to develop a dulled sense of what is hurtful, and why that is wrong, if they never get to apply it personally. What is wrong if they do it, to another, can never be learned innately, but only by rote, situation by situation. They can learn a rule that they should not namecall another person, but it's an extraneous thing, and they now need another rule for every situation from namecalling to physical hitting and everything in-between, because they're not allowed to simply consider that, "This would hurt me, so it shouldn't be done to me, therefore I won't do it to others either."

This may be why so many criminals reoffend. All they learn in prison is that aggression done to them is fair. They thus unlearn the natural empathetic response, and have to replace it with a literally endless array of rules that they shouldn't do X, Y, or Z to others. This is not to say it isn't necessary to put them in prison! It probably is necessary.

That's what I'm trying to emphasise. Societal double standards may BOTH be necessary AND destructive of the empathetic response. So what do we do if it is? What do we do if the reason for most or even all of the nasty, racist, rude, mean, disgusting and otherwise unacceptable behaviour of white people, is that because of the real offence and the ensuing natural and logical consequences, they have unlearned empathy?

I'm for a sort of pretend-person status for criminals and whites. (I'm not saying they're not people, just that they've justifiably lost some of the rights and privileges thereof, and I don't have a more accurate, good way to succinctly express this.) In other words, as long as they qualify that they understand it doesn't count, they can express exactly what others may express against real racism, against reverse racism. And then, the person guilty of the reverse racism can admit that if the power structure didn't exist, this would be a genuine slight, but not dismissively - genuinely. Criminals would get the same. It might function as patronising or even stupid to have to constantly tell people that if they hadn't committed a crime, they wouldn't deserve imprisonment, and it might even be impossible to emphasise the latter in that kind of statement, but if you could successfully play pretend like this, it might allow people to keep their empathy. And since in prisons we have the luxury of everyone there being a non-person in this regard, inmate on inmate violence could actually be treated reasonably instead of the idea that it doesn't matter because the victim is a criminal. Treating it reasonably involves punishing the aggressor. What baffles me is that human rights could prevent this, but not adequately protect the rights of the victim.

In other words, we may need to pretend everyone has all the rights and privileges of a person for them to act as a person. This is independent of why they lost those privileges or whether it was justified. (Not in the sense of actually granting those lost privileges back, but allowing and encouraging people to develop a pretend self that still has those rights and privileges, and expressing that self, and we have to refrain from being dismissive of that self-expression.)

I posted this in the science section because I think there are multitudes of studies about empathy. Perhaps there are even studies about unlearning it.

https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-an ... ansmitted/

This is the closest I could find, but it's not exact. This one shows that someone can become more or less empathetic socially. So, shown a person experiencing distress and then shown a more or less empathetic response, they will mirror that. It doesn't say what happens when a person is trained that their own pain doesn't count.

[1213]

....This may be why so many criminals reoffend. All they learn in prison is that aggression done to them is fair. They thus unlearn the natural empathetic response, and have to replace it with a literally endless array of rules that they shouldn't do X, Y, or Z to others. This is not to say it isn't necessary to put them in prison! It probably is necessary.
...

But is the penalty not fair? I think it is, if everyone gets the same punishment for the same crime. And also, if one does wrongly to others, why should he expect others to treat him any better? Criminal had no empathy for the victim, otherwise he would not do the crime, so why would he expect any empathy from others?

But, I think prison is not the best choice, because it is like a reward for the criminal, free food and place to live. Better would be for example to have either death penalty, or the criminal would have to compensate the loss for the victim. That is, if we would have any empathy for the victim.

[Purple Knight]

But is the penalty not fair? I think it is, if everyone gets the same punishment for the same crime. And also, if one does wrongly to others, why should he expect others to treat him any better? Criminal had no empathy for the victim, otherwise he would not do the crime, so why would he expect any empathy from others?

But, I think prison is not the best choice, because it is like a reward for the criminal, free food and place to live. Better would be for example to have either death penalty, or the criminal would have to compensate the loss for the victim. That is, if we would have any empathy for the victim.

I actually agree with this. And I would phrase it in the second-order, and ignore the victim, because there are some human rights types about who will insist that no matter what, a criminal has the right to be treated humanely and that an eye for an eye is wrong.

So I would say, fine, no one may ever retaliate. It's absolutely wrong to retaliate. Primitive. Horrible. Evil. So be it. So when I pluck out that guy's eyeball (because he plucked out mine but that's not important) I have the same absolute right to be free from consequences, riiiiight? He violated my rights, he deserves to be treated like a king and shielded from all. Okay then. I violated his rights. I deserve to be treated like a king and shielded from all.

No punishment ever, actually reduces right back to an-eye-for-an-eye, when you realise that the second eye-plucker may not be punished either.

In short I agree that justice is justice. What I wonder is if even so, inflicting justice can ruin somebody's empathy. If it can we need to decide between just forgiving everyone, or a way to substitute something else for empathy.

[brunumb]

No punishment ever, actually reduces right back to an-eye-for-an-eye, when you realise that the second eye-plucker may not be punished either.

My understanding of "an eye for an eye" is that it does not mean that the punishment should be the equivalent of the original offense, but that it should never exceed the original offense. We are seeing the emergence of ridiculous punishments where, for example, misgendering someone is punishable by a term of imprisonment.

[1213]

... What I wonder is if even so, inflicting justice can ruin somebody's empathy. If it can we need to decide between just forgiving everyone, or a way to substitute something else for empathy.

I don't think justice can ruin empathy, because injustice is the result of lack of empathy.

[Purple Knight]

No punishment ever, actually reduces right back to an-eye-for-an-eye, when you realise that the second eye-plucker may not be punished either.

My understanding of "an eye for an eye" is that it does not mean that the punishment should be the equivalent of the original offense, but that it should never exceed the original offense. We are seeing the emergence of ridiculous punishments where, for example, misgendering someone is punishable by a term of imprisonment.

Imagine if the punishment for misgendering someone was being misgendered.

But let's look at how "should not exceed the original offence" reduces to "equivalent to the original offence" in a fair world, which is just any world that the same crime is always treated the same.

Let's say you steal $100 from me. And let's say the official punishment for stealing $100, is that you pay your victim $50. Well, you just made $50. (...is what a nasty regressive who believes in punishment and isn't enlightened would say.)

So my totally rational response is going to be to steal $100 from you. Then, I have to pay you $50 as my punishment. I just made $50 - the same $50 you made off me. And now we're even.

Any punishment that allows the aggressor to become better off than the victim by committing the crime, makes the rational response from the victim, to commit that same crime against the aggressor.

Our world says no, then we must have unequal punishment, because we want this system that recognises the aggressor as rightfully dominant over the victim, but we don't want to expose that, so we treat a crime of retaliation as if it is worse than a crime that had no cause whatsoever.

... What I wonder is if even so, inflicting justice can ruin somebody's empathy. If it can we need to decide between just forgiving everyone, or a way to substitute something else for empathy.

I don't think justice can ruin empathy, because injustice is the result of lack of empathy.

I'm only wondering about it, in the case that justice reduces someone to a non-person, in the way that wrongs against him no longer count.

I'm not talking about, say, inflicting a fine on a thief and taking back the money. I'm not even talking about taking the life of a life-taker.

I'm talking about sticking people in prison where it's dog-eat-dog and nobody is really a person (because they do not have a basic right to freedom, or to justice if someone attacks them) or defining racism as the most horrible wrong in the world, but it can only go one way.

I'm not saying these things aren't necessary. In fact I think they both probably are. But even if every last tenet of Critical Race Theory is true, that doesn't mean that what would be racism if done to a Black person, doesn't still hurt if done to a white person. There may be perfectly good reasons not to address it, but all it's going to do to the white person, is to teach him to ignore his own pain, and thus dull his sense of empathy.

[brunumb]

Imagine if the punishment for misgendering someone was being misgendered.

But let's look at how "should not exceed the original offence" reduces to "equivalent to the original offence" in a fair world, which is just any world that the same crime is always treated the same.

Let's say you steal $100 from me. And let's say the official punishment for stealing $100, is that you pay your victim $50. Well, you just made $50. (...is what a nasty regressive who believes in punishment and isn't enlightened would say.)

Why is it necessary to punish misgendering? That said, I believe that we don't get to choose our sex/gender and that self-identification should not be permitted. Role play to your hearts content, but don't consider it as any form of reality. You are not what you pretend to be.

As to your example, I think it is a bit silly but more importantly you miss the point. The punishment does not have to be the same form as the original offense or it becomes an offense in itself. The main point is that the punishment meted out should not be harsher than the original offense or it becomes an injustice.

[Purple Knight]

Why is it necessary to punish misgendering?

It's not necessary to punish misgendering. But I pointed out how equal punishment to the crime would bring this to light.

Maybe I'm just barking at the wind though, because every time I point out that calling an ugly cis woman a dog is deliberately robbing her of the gender she identifies as - human female - people act like I'm an insensitive monster.

That said, I believe that we don't get to choose our sex/gender and that self-identification should not be permitted. Role play to your hearts content, but don't consider it as any form of reality. You are not what you pretend to be.

I don't consider there to be reality for humans outside of what people define. I don't think humans are even capable of experiencing reality that way. Animals maybe, but humans probably cannot. If an animal wants to know if something is good to eat, it wordlessly tests reality without any definitions imposed. But if a human wants to know if something is good to eat, it looks it up online, and even if it is explained that the matter in question has nutrients and is not poisonous, if it is said that it is not generally considered edible, then it isn't edible.

But I also don't think the idea that there are two sexes is hurting anybody. Just as trans people wanted freedom from the objective truth that they were the sex they were born as, if you want freedom from the new objective defined reality I think you should have that. In other words, you should be allowed to say the world is flat. Especially if it really was flat up until 10 years ago when they redefined the shape it has to be called round.

As to your example, I think it is a bit silly but more importantly you miss the point. The punishment does not have to be the same form as the original offense or it becomes an offense in itself. The main point is that the punishment meted out should not be harsher than the original offense or it becomes an injustice.

Why? If the aggressor suffering more than the victim is an injustice, why is the victim suffering more than the aggressor not an injustice?