Thomas Horan has produced an engaging, even eye opening, treatment of five dystopian novels including – Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1908), Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1931), Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night (1937), Ayn Rand’s Anthem (1938), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1986). The leading thread, knitting together what these five works have in common is the transgressive relation between an individual representing the repressive totalitarian regime and a would-be revolutionary. The transgression is not the sex as such, which is pervasive even under totalitarian domination. The transgression is that the pair – sometimes master and slave – get romantically involved, “fall in love,” aspire to a “meaningful relationship,” in diverse combinations and permutations. 

Review: Desire and Empathy in Twentieth-Century Dystopian Fiction by Thomas Horan (London and New York: Palgrave Publishing, 2018: pp 212

One of the benefits of engaging with Horan’s even-handed and concise reporting is that the reader is given a bird’s eye view of the complex and entangled dynamics of all of these dystopian novels. That saves the reader a lot of work, allowing the reader to return to the novel(s) in which she or he sees the most value. A definite strength of Horan’s contribution is to call out the aspects of desire – from impersonal sexual coupling to aim-inhibited sublimation of  desire into love poetry. Therefore, this review will not attempt to provide more than an oversimplified paragraph of each of the novels as such to highlight the role of desire. 

The revolutionary potential, limitations, and dynamics of desire (including its aim-inhibited transformation into love) are illuminatingly explicated. However, such is not the case for empathy. I read every word in this book, and there are 14 occurrences of the word “empathy” (or its derivative such as “empathetic” in the book), and “empathy” is nowhere defined. This is not a softball review, and this will be discussed in detail below. However, the reader should be made aware that this review has to speculate as to what the author (and/or editor!) might have been thinking by putting the word “empathy” in the title of the book, since there is so little explicit engagement with the topic. 

From an empathic point of view, totalitarian rule is the systematic canceling and nullification of empathy, indeed of the possibility of empathy. Though it is an oversimplification, it is a useful one, that in each case the selected novels narrate an account of a forbidden, romantic liaison in between a couple (not necessarily heterosexual) in which the possibility of empathy is implicitly contained, though rarely called out. The relation between empathy and love is taken for granted, left undeveloped, and remains implicit in Horan’s work. It does not live up to its promise in this respect, granted developing an account of empathy in the extreme situation of totalitarian domination, in parallel with the better documented account of desire under duress, might have taken another hundred pages. 

Still, Horan has done an admirable job of demonstrating how, if one wants to disrupt an organization, including a totalitarian form of governance, then introducing sexual and romantics dynamics is an effective way to do so. Along with nuclear power and aggression (note “Hate Week” in 1984), desire is the most powerful force in the universe. In case after case, both totalitarian bureaucratic and revolutionaries are undone by libidinous and romantic entanglements. Invoking desire is like throwing a libido bomb – the result is going to be an explosion of emotional anarchy. No one escapes the chaos. In so far as one has to tear down the old temple (or government) before raising up the new one, desire will do the job nicely. According to my reading, unmediated desire produces anarchy, which, as a form of governance, greatly overestimates citizens abilities to manage their aggression and greed, putting the community on the regressive path to Hobbes’ “war of all against all.” Therefore, step back to the point where the old temple is in ruins (for whatever reason). What does one do then? How does one build the new organization? One might expect at this point to invoke empathy as a means of team building, and there would be value and truth to that. Never underestimate the power of empathy; yet the complexity of the matter requires that we suspend judgment until we have reviewed the five novels in question, to which we now turn.

Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1908) tells of the conflict between the trade labor movement in the USA and a fascist dictatorship that reads like President Grover Cleveland calling out the US Army as strike breakers to operate the railroad during the Pullman railway strike in 1894 under the pretext of delivering the US Mail (calling the junta of the dictatorship “the Iron Heel”). As a historical footnote, the reader may recall that the railroad magnate, George Pullman, built an ideal “city” on the southside of Chicago for his workers in a utopian moment of flush profits when other capitalists were squeezing workers as hard as they could. This good start came to a violent historical end in 1893 when revenues plunged and workers were laid off – but the rents were not reduced. The President of the Railway Union, Eugene Debs, went on in historical fact to run for President from prison in 1920 (Debs was sent to prison under the Sedition Act of 1918 for opposing US participation in World War 1), garnering nearly a million votes for his socialist party while in prison and unable to campaign. In the novel, the capitalists seize power and form an oligarchy that restores hereditary transfer of pollical authority. This provides the narrative wrapping for a sexual relationship between Eva and Ernest Everhard. He is. According to Horan 2018: 26, 40, 45 (italics added): 

“The Iron Heel reads like an amateurish piece of fiction by D. H. Lawrence, complete with the strapping, passionate proletarian who rejects the stale existence of the upper classes for “real life” among the common people [. . . .] ‘Everhard—no Viagra needed.’ It is not through word or example that he wins converts, but rather through his appealing physique. [. . . .] Ernest, who is “ever hard,” and so has potency to spare, becomes the defender of virility and manhood itself, as well as the sacred guardian of social justice. Desire for Ernest initiates the process through which Avis comes to empathize with and realize her responsibility to Jackson and the other disadvantaged people affected by the injustice done to him. This compassion prepares Avis, a beneficiary of the market system, to stand in solidarity with capitalism’s numerous victims.”

The privileged gilded-age woman, Eva, is persuaded as much by the biceps as the rhetoric of this vanguard of the proletariat, Everhard, and she embraces the idea of revelation along with the biceps (and other parts). Alas! The first revolt against the Iron Heel fails (the junta, not the title of the book), and long centuries of suffering lay ahead before final victory. Everhard has a certain animal magnetism – entry level empathic receptivity – and Eva is like the sparrow hypnotized by the snake. The folk definition of empathy suffices here – Eva takes a walk in the shoes of the oppressed (named Jackson) and has an “Ah ha” moment of empathy. Wouldn’t it be nice?

In Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), the beautiful I-330 attracts D-503’s regime subverting desire. She (I-330) is the leader of the revolutionary Mephi. The animal magnetism (my term not Zamyatin’s, but a summary of the text) that attracts the couple to one another transforms them in the direction of a humanizing individualiaty and consequent critical thinking (Horan 2018: 55):

Through this process of critical thought, morality emerges: I-330’s sensuality does not reduce her to a male-pleasing object of lust; instead, she becomes the first Number to achieve full personhood in D-503’s eyes: “I stared at her […] as something that had dropped out of nowhere. She was no longer a Number, she was simply a person” (Zamyatin 1924/1993, p. 122). Whereas previously everyone was literally a number, D-503 can now recognize and value individuality as well as his responsibility to both himself and at least one other person. Although skeptical of eroticism’s power to effect a successful revolution, [there is a] [. . .] humanizing effect

Meanwhile, the totalitarian system in We strikes back. The individuality is crushed and the possibility of love thwarted in a kind of soul murder (not Horan’s term (see Shengold)) (Horan 2018: 58):

D-503, like many other Numbers, is subjected to a medical procedure that disables the portion of the brain responsible for imagination, an operation that makes desire impossible, which Elaine Hoffman Baruch (1983) calls a “fantasiectomy” (p. 52). After this surgery, D-503 becomes totally amoral—placidly watching the torture of I-330 through suffocation and even finding it beautiful

The narrative does not end happily for I-330 and D-503 (rather like Winston and Julia in Orwell’s 1984). The people in One State are being turned into human tractors by the equivalent of a prefrontal lobotomy. More soul murder occurs, and the survivors live on like Zombies. However, We also ends with a general uprising by Mephi and with the One State’s survival in doubt. A character not mentioned until now, O-90, escapes to a rustic community in the wilderness, carrying a baby who has messianic potential in her womb. Everyone was a number; but just as there is no highest number, there is no final revolution. Get ready for the next one.

Taking a step back, from the perspective of empathy, D-503 aligns with the biblical story of the Tower of Babel and thinks aloud (Horan 2018: 52 – 53): 

And so I felt that I—not generations of people, but I myself—I had conquered the old God and the old life, I  myself had created all this, and I’m like a tower. (Zamyatin 1924/1993, p. 7) In comparing himself to a tower and presenting collective human achievement as a challenge to divinity, D-503 evokes the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, a myth that showcases the godlike achievements possible through human cooperation. Here, however, the meaning of the original myth is inverted: a story that for the ancient Semites cautioned people to relegate their endeavors to mundane matters and remain firmly on the ground now suggests that people can and should claim the heavens and live as gods: “The gods have become like us—ergo, we’ve become like gods…”

This is the fallacy of the undistributed middle of course. In the myth of the Tower of Babel, there was only one language and humanity lived in peace. In a sin of pride, humans thought itself powerful enough to build a Tower to move into heaven. They were frustrated in this by the scattering of tongues – the generation of the ten thousand languages that people have spoken and (more to the point) misspoken throughout history. The sound of foreigner’s talking sounded like “bar – bar – bar,” hence, they were called “barbarians,” and treated as such. Since understanding was perfect, empathy was not needed prior to the scattering of tongues. History begins at the point of the scattering. Empathy becomes necessary to attain understanding of the Other. The “We” of the title blows up. I hasten to add this potential is not developed by Horan (or Zamyatin), but would not be that hard to do.  

In Kathrine Burdekin’s Swastika Night (1937), the thousand-year Nazi Reich is well underway. All the Jewish people are already dead. History is rewritten to make Hitler into a blond god – there is one subversive picture of him as small, brown, and with a paunch – are women have been reduced to the sole reproductive function. In a questionable interpretation, misogyny, not antisemitism, is the basis for the totalitarian state. Meanwhile, at a human scale, the protagonists Alfred and Hermann have an illicit gay (same sex) relationship, which sustains the hope of a return to humanness. The couple share an intimate moment as Alfred (English) gets didactic with his younger German friend, Hermann (Horan 2018: 104):

“Then, if you can love and trust an Englishman, can you grasp the idea that there might be something important, some knowledge, some wisdom, that’s for all of us, for all men alike?” “Yes, I think I see.” (Burdekin 1937/1985, p. 63, emphasis in original). Desire for Alfred allows Hermann to transcend racism, nationalism, and classism, replacing them with an appreciation for a shared human heritage, a heritage that Hermann accesses through subversive lust.

Connecting the dots between the “love and trust” (and lust!) between the couple and empathy remains implicit, nor is it argued for or even called out by Horan. This review shall have a proposal about the connection and what is implied thereby for Horan’s overall position.

Huxley’s Brave New World (1931) aims to exemplify that psychopharmecutical and behavioral conditioning are much more effective in dominating the people than force and violence. Huxley writes:

“Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.” (Letters of Note, Shaun Usher (ed.), Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2021 Huxley, Letters of Note, 1984 v. Brave New World)

Thus, John, The Savage (“savage” because he was “natural born,” not “hatched” and conditioned) is the perfect “unavailable object” that inflames Lenina’s passion because of his very inaccessibility. Lenina’s love for John the Savage is unconsummated but, for her, all consuming. Even though the sexual encounter is not in the present tense (or less so), the narrative turns on John’s mother’s (named “Linda”) sexual transgression with Thomas Tomakin, the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, which results in the birth of John, The Savage. Lenina’s promiscuity is not transgressive but affirms the norms of the World State that relationships should not be monogamous or filled with romance or affection.  Horan 2018: 74

Huxley, like Zamyatin, demonstrates that the subversive power of desire lies not in sex itself but in the longing for bodies that are forbidden. The urgent awareness of self brought on by deferred desire triggers what Marcuse refers to as erotic cognition: “[E]rotic as well as logical cognition break the hold of the established, contingent reality and strive for a truth incompatible with it [….] In the exigencies of thought and in the madness of love is the destructive refusal of the established ways of life” ([Marcuse, One Dimensional Man,]1964/1991, p. 127).

This is where the revolutionary potential of sexual libido starts to reach its limit. To be sure, sex is powerful and should never be underestimated in its disruptive potential. However, igniting the sexual fuse can be like doing so and awaiting the explosion. One had better have a plan as to what to do after the dust from the explosion settles. Just as transgressive, maybe even more, is learning to read. John does that with the only two books available to his mother, a scientific treatise and the complete works of Shakespeare. He spends the rest of the novel quoting Shakespeare like you or I might issue a social media post. The people are fascinated with John’s asceticism and self-flagellation and flock to see him. Thus, Huxley’s ultimate recommendation to combat the dehumanizing effects of psychopharm and behavioral conditioning – read Shakespeare! 

Horan likes to invoke Herbart Marcuse, whose revolutionary potential should never be underestimated:

According to Marcuse, when sexual urges go temporarily or entirely unfulfilled because culture and environment restrain them, these impulses beget dreams and aspirations that transcend the self, encouraging the individual to realize and struggle for something beyond quotidian reality. The individual envisions the realization of these lofty desires as taking place in an ideal landscape, which—even if unachievable—embodies the encouraging dream of a utopia and inculcates the will to work toward establishing it. Unlike the complacent, sated Londoners, John the Savage, who is the product of sexually frustrating circumstances, never stops believing in and searching for a better world, even though he ultimately judges himself to be unworthy of one (Horan 2018: 74)

However, this is hardly any different than basic Freudian sublimation of libido. Love is aim-inhibited sexuality (i.e., “libido” the Latin word for “desire”), and the advances of civilization require delayed gratification and the transformation of libido into cultural artifacts. In turn, this unleashes a dynamic whereby the more advanced the civilization the more extensive the guilt, repression, and sublimation; and, whereas sublimation transforms the raw libido into something artistic or socially useful, the guilt and repression remains, well, guilt and repression and a source of visits to the psychoanalyst: 

Every renunciation of instinct now becomes a dynamic source of conscience and every fresh renunciation increases the latter’s severity and intolerance. [. . . .] The effect of instinctual renunciation on the conscience then is that every piece of aggression whose satisfaction the subject gives up is taken over by the super-ego and increases the latter’s aggressiveness (against the ego) (Freud, (1930), Civilization and its Discontents: 128–129). 

The issue is that he who lives by Freud also dies by him. In a passage that Marcuse strategically cites, the revolutionary potential of sexuality is strictly limited:

[…][W]e derive the antithesis between civilization and sexuality from the circumstance that sexual love is a relationship between two individuals in which a third can only be superfluous or disturbing, whereas civilization depends on relationships between a considerable number of individuals. When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves, and do not even need the child they have in common to make them happy. In no other case does Eros so clearly betray the core of his being, his purpose of making one out of more than one; but when he has achieved this in the proverbial way through the love of two human beings, he refuses to go further (Freud 1930: 108); see also Marcuse, (1955), Eros and Civilization, New York: Vintage Paper (Random House), 1961: 38).

If Freud’s assertion is accurate, then it puts an end to the revolutionary potential of desire. Two is a good start to a community. However, the lovingly entangled pair has no need for expansion, hanging the “Do not Disturb” sign on the bedroom door. To create an expanding community, empathy is required, and that is conspicuous by its absence in the dystopian novels and in Horan, nor is the revolutionary potential of empathy itself clear. Natural empaths make poor revolutionaries. Indeed one method of domination in a totalitarian dictatorship is precisely the systematic nullification and denial of empathy (once again, not noted or debated by Horan). The emergence and development of empathy requires a safe space for critical inquiry and taking the point of view of one’s opponent, even if it is the better to thwart and defeat that opponent (see Zenko 2015 on thinking like the enemy). Add politics into the mix along with the issue of the relationship between empathy and a constellation of phenomena such as sexuality and romantic love. 

Ayn Rand’s Anthem was (and to an extent still is) a best seller. The summary sounds awful, but Rand writes a good story. Set in a primitive world that resembles medieval Europe, Equality 7-2521 is working by candlelight in a world lit only by fire on the discovery of electricity. In spite of his intelligence – or perhaps because of it – the faceless unempathic bureaucracy (my term, not Rand’s) responsible for career assignments, decides to assign him to sweep the streets. 

Equality 7-2521 meets Liberty 5-3000 and – get ready – here is the transgression – they fall in love. Sex is not prohibited. Indeed it is recommended during the bureaucratically sanctioned time of mating. Equality presents his discovery of electricity to the Council of Scholars, but instead of being vindicated, he is further punished. They require his innovation because it would damage the candle industry. John manages to escape to the forest, where Liberty joins him. They go “off the grid,” renaming themselves Prometheus and Gaea, respectively. Gaea (Liberty) becomes pregnant, and the pair in the hope that the off spring will become a leader in transforming the world. But see the above from Freud about the unwillingness of the pair to broaden its boundaries. So far this is not an amazing narrative. 

What launches the narrative to a new level is a framework about language in which individual personal pronouns – especially “I” – have been eliminated. This innovation in self-identity is a linguistic “castration” that results in people losing their individuality. Without the language to say “I,” people are unable to conceive and relate to themselves as individuals. Spontaneity, initiative and the ability to start something new are inhibited, cancelled, negated. The story ends with the emergence of the ability to say “I.” Without the “I,” the “We” is an undifferentiated blob that does not distinguish self and Other; and without self and Other one can have merger, but one cannot have empathy, which, by definition, distinguishes self and Other while allowing for crossing the boundary back-and-forth between them. 

George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) is the best known and perhaps the grimmest of the dystopian novels, though that is a race to the bottom in which no one wants to be the winner. Here the reader encounters all the vocabulary that has become standard to describe totalitarian domination – Big Brother, the thought police, thoughtcrime, the Ministry of Love (which tortures people), doublethink, Newspeak (“Poland invades Germany” (September 1939)). 

The seminal event – no pun intended – is the transgressive relationship between Winston and Julia – of course sex occurs but that is not the transgression – they fall in love. They are betrayed, tortured, and in this extreme situation, say things such that it would be preferable to torture the other person, the beloved. Though under duress, this has the effect on the person of “soul murder.” It kills the possibility of love. It kills the possibility of possibility as such. Though Horan does not explicitly call out the possibility of soul murder, it is fairly close to the surface in the subtext. Reading 1984 is itself something to be “survived” in that it grabs the reader by the throat prior to ripping out their emotional guts. Most readers come away shaken. 

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale (1986) is now a Netflix series and the position being satirized in it reportedly has representation on the US Supreme Court. As with the misogynist judgment of the ancient Greeks in the Eumenides ruling against Clytemnestra and in favor of Orestes, woman is just the receptacle. Deeply debunking of the subjugation of woman in diverse contexts, especially Canada after World War 2 and prophetic in its anticipation of the reversal of Roe v Wade by the US Supreme Court, this negative fantasy of the Republic of Gilead is a page-turner. In the narrative, most women have been rendered infertile by toxic waste and a coup d’état installs a quasi-fascist US government that is a mix between Old Testament prophets and Afghanistan 2023 where women’s education is outlawed. Controlling sex is a mark of fascism – the strange fascination of certain state legislative assemblies – including a significant (though not majority) number of vocal woman legislators to control woman’s bodies through reproductive constraints  

In short, the heronine (Ofred) makes the best of bad situation and signs up to engage in ritual rape (sex) with the Commander in the presence of his wife in order to sustain the population. In this case, the transgression includes getting emotionally involved with the Commander – they are already having sex so the transgression includes reading together and playing Scrabble. All of this is a serious violation of protocol, which gives Ofred power. In the end the Commander is executed for treason. (You can’t make this stuff up!) Meanwhile, Ofred has Hot Sex with Nick, one of the Commander’s staff, and they too get emotionally involved. Amidst diverse classifications of women such as Martha’s, Aunts, Econowives, Jezebles, and Handmaidens, it remains unclear what happens to Ofred after she is taken away in the secret van, but the existence of her report is evidence that she survived. Horan gets the last word (2018: 21)

I argue [Horan writes] that it is the bizarre sexual relationship [in addition to ritual rape they play a lot of Scrabble (the board game)] between the narrator and the Commander that awakens her moral sensibilities and inspires her to leave her record. Under the pretense of having illicit fun, the narrator and the Commander vigorously debate social and political issues. The narrator’s assignations with the Commander give her the requisite information to tell her tale, including secrets about the government and what motivates those who run it, facts about her ill-fated predecessor, and knowledge of clandestine spaces where she discovers what became of her best friend. The Commander never disavows the tenets of his society, but his sexual transgressions inflame his arrogance, causing him to take unnecessary risks that bring about his eventual trial and execution for treason

Notwithstanding the master slave implications here, one can interpolate an empathic moment between the two and perhaps even an empathic attempt, however limited in its success, to take a walk in the Other’s shoes. 

This brings us to the ultimate question, which remains unaddressed by Horan. What is the relationship between empathy and desire? This must be read to include the transformation of desire represented by the aim-inhibited desire of romantic love. One seeks in vain for any proposal to address this in Horan, nor does he provide a definition of “empathy,” and that is a significant shortcoming in an otherwise engaging and thought-provoking treatment of dystopian fiction. Since Horan has not conceptualized the relationship, the following makes no claim to represent Horan’s position. The book review of Horan’s work ends here. Therefore, the following may be read as using Horan’s provocative juxtaposition of desire (including romantic love) and empathy (and politics, dystopian and otherwise) as a springboard for understanding and explanation of the issues around empathy and politics. 

The proposal here is to conceptualize the difference between desire (including romantic love) and empathy. Folk wisdom, thus, suggests that love is blind; Bob Dylan, that love is just a four letter word (which makes explicit the ambiguity of “love” as libidinous desire); Plato, that love is a kind of madness. So far, love sounds like tertiary syphilis—it makes one mad and causes one to go blind. People say that they want to be loved; people speak the truth in saying so; and they will even become manipulative about it, saying that if you truly loved me, then you would give me what I am asking for right now, thus misusing love to bully another individual.

People also want to be understood. People want to be “gotten”—appreciated, and acknowledged—for who they authentically are as they are and who they authentically are as a possibility. For example, the waiter is an aspiring actor; the barista, a novelist; the help desk worker, a software entrepreneur. People want other people to know how they have struggled to succeed and overcome adversity. In hoping to be understood for who they really are as a possibility, people are asking for love, but even more so they are asking for empathy.

Less dramatically, the folk definition of the practice of empathy urges one to take a walk in the other person’s shoes, presumably with the other person’s shoe size, not one’s one. Take off one’s own shoes prior to trying on the Other’s shoes. Take a walk in the shoes of someone who is going mad and blind? This might not turn out to be as simple or easy as it at first seems.

The goal of desire is to erase the boundary between the self and other. Merger of one’s mind and body with the desired beloved’s mind and body is the main aspiration and outcome. So desire emerges as a breakdown in empathy—from the perspective of too much or too little engagement with the other. It is desire versus empathy. Yet in desire, empathy lives. In contrast to desire, empathy navigates or transgresses the boundary between oneself and other such that the merger is temporary and the integrity of the self and other are maintained. The boundary between self and other are firmly maintained in empathy, though one goes back-and-forth across the boundary. It is like in Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” in which it is asserted that “good fences make good neighbors.” Empathy adds one thing not literally present in Frost’s poem, extending the metaphor. There is a gate in the fence, and over the gate is a sign with the word “Empathy.” One has a vicarious experience of the other—but the difference and integrity of the self and other are preserved in empathy. 

When approaching empathy from the direction of love (desire), the more one is enthralled by the beloved, the less empathy one has. The negative aspects of love such as being blind to the

faults of the beloved or the hypnotic obsession with the beloved that Socrates/Plato compared to a kind of divine madness (more on that shortly) reduce the access of empathy to the authentic experience of the other person. Thus, love expands and empathy contracts. The contraction of empathy in the breakdowns of empathy in emotional contagion, conformity, projection, and getting lost in translation expand the aspects of love (desire) included in animal magnetism, agreeableness, “unconditional” acceptance of the other’s shortcomings, and speaking in tongues, the wonderful, incoherent nonsense of two lovers cooing at one another.

However, such an inverse relationship between love and empathy is only the case when

considering the negative aspects of love. When one considers the positive aspects of

empathy, access to the shared humanity of the other person, access to the diversity and

differences in common with the other individual, then expanding empathy also expands the possibilities of love. Expanding empathy opens up the possibilities of love that work in building community, authentic relatedness, and the experience of satisfaction and fulfillment. But what about the positive aspects of love – unconditional acceptance, affection and affinity, recognizing the other person as an end in her/himself and not a mere means? These aspects of love are indistinguishable from empathy, which constitutes love’s kernel.

At this point, the fan out of possibilities explodes. In an attempt to manage the dynamically changing variables, we narrow the focus and ask: What then are the revolutionary possibilities of desire (love) and empathy? 

Even in politics empathy is always empathy. However, politics brings along a whole new set of questions, issues, and challenges by with which empathy is confronted and to which empathy gets applied. The political becomes personal, upsettingly so at times. When Lincoln spoke in his 2^nd Inaugural address to “bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and is orphan” the rhetorical empathy created a clearing for compassionate action. When Malcolm X said to his African American audience in an example of “out bound,” rhetorical empathy: “You didn’t land on Plymouth Rock; Plymouth rock landed on you,” the audience felt heard and appreciated in its long suffering and struggle for social justice.

What then is the limit of empathy in politics? This is the limit: the practice of empathy does not work well with bullies, sociopaths, psychopaths, QAnon style delusional thinking, the criminally insane, totalitarian dystopias, and [some] autistic children. 

The prevalence of bullying in the school playground and politics is notable; and one should never underestimate the power of empathy. Yet, if your political opponent is behaving like a bully, empathy is not going to be enough. You will need to find a supplementary methods – empathy alone will not work on her or him. These hard cases literally will not “get it.” They will not perceive the empathy. They will not experience your empathy.

Worse yet, some bullies and psychopaths will accept your empathy and turn it against you, the better to control, manipulate, and dominate you. If the practice of empathy is not the way forward, how then does one deal with bullying without becoming a bully oneself?

The answer is direct: set limits. Set boundaries. Thus, far and no further! Stay in your own lane. Get back into your own corner. Stay in your own space. Keep your hands to yourself! In so far as empathy is all about firm yet flexible boundaries between the self and the other, a rigorous and critical empathy is engaged here; but until the boundary is reestablished, empathy cannot come into its own. Indeed once boundary violations occur and safety or security is at risk, the issue is no longer an empathic one – call for backup, implement self-defense measures, or escape and continue the struggle on another day.  

The FBI hostage negotiating team understands that empathy reduces rage and upset; and they use empathy in context for that purpose, though, as far as I know, they do not use the word “empathy” as such. Yet once the bullets start flying, the time for empathy has passed. Send in the swat team. For an illuminating article on the margins of empathy see Elizabeth Bernstein on “Advice From a Hostage Negotiator” (WSJ.com 06/14/2020) [https://on.wsj.com/3ajoYon]. Never underestimate the power of empathy. Never. 

In so far as empathy is all about respecting the boundaries between self and other, one group and another group, boundary setting is relevant to politics and empathy. So if one can reestablish a boundary, then empathy can be reintroduced, gradually, to guide us in how to cross back and forth across the boundary without submitting to bullying, provoking a temper tantrum, or getting stuck in breakdown. 

Yet the shadow of the tribalism falls over empathy in politics. Empathy gets a bad rap because empathy is often limited in contemporary political debates to empathy of identity. However, empathy – and that is the innovation here – empathy is also empathy of differences. Key terms: empathy of identity and empathy of difference.

With an empathy of differences, in addition to identity politics, we get a politics of recognition. 

Empathy shows up when one person encounters the other person and recognizes his or her differences. I hasten to add no one is asking anyone to give up or devalue his or her identity. The suggestion is that the Empathy of Differences lets identities flourish in a space of acceptance and toleration created by empathic recognition. The empathic recognition in turn creates a political arena where people can debate and compromise and get things done. 

Talking a walk in the other person’s shoes yields an empathy of differences. One discovers the otherness of the other. The shoe rarely fits exactly right. One discovers where the shoe pinches – but the other’s shoe almost inevitably pinches at a different spot when it pinches one’s own foot, because the other foot is slightly longer or shorter than one’s own. 

Though we are different, our interests, experiences, and aspirations as human beings are recognized. Our interests and aspirations have areas of overlap – for example, we want our children to flourish; we want to be able to make a contribution to the community; we want to be secure in our private lives and preference. With goals pursued along different paths, our possibilities converge or diverge without conflict. Our opportunities align in parallel or intersect at right angles instead of clashing. We are able to cooperate and embrace workability instead of obstructing one another. We are able to build instead of tear down. 

Once again, there is nothing wrong with the empathy of identity, but something is missing. What is missing is difference. The empathy of identity is ultimately that of proximity to family, tribe, and local community. As noted, there is nothing wrong with that. It is excellent. We would be less than human without it. But the empathy of identity is ultimately derivative and incomplete without an empathy of differences. 

If one is limited to an empathy of identity, the result is tribalism. “I get you, man, and you get me, bro, because we are alike.” No one is proposing to try completely to abolish tribalism (which might not even be possible), but tribalism is definitely limiting and constraining.

All these different tribes set in motion a trend, which arguably is tribalism’s own undoing, dissolving its identity – Republicans, Democrats, Progressive, Conservatives, Libertarians, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians, Quakers, all 198 member nations of the United Nations – not to mention the Chicago Cubs Baseball team. So many identities – so many tribes. If one gets and belongs to enough of them, identity starts to dissolve. 

Tribalism itself sets in motion a dialectic whereby each individual can belong to multiple tribes with multiple identities and affiliations. If you participate in enough tribes and enough overlap between tribal identities, the notion of identity starts to dissolve into a kind of melting pot of multiculturalism, communalism, or ecumenical spirituality, market place of competing political ideologies. Even if the melting pot never completely melts, it can at least become a colloidal suspension – cosmopolitanism – where the identities and differences are fine-grained enough not to subvert individual diversity or the aspiration to commonly shared values. 

But absent such a dialectic of dissolution into a melting pot of identities– for example, in traditional societies or insular communities – the empathy within the communal group works well but breaks down at the boundary at which one encounter the other individual and group and their differences.

The innovative point here – to emphasize once again – is that empathy is about identity and similarity, but it is just as importantly about differences. 

Speaking in the first person, when I encounter an individual who is different than I am, then I have an experience of otherness. However, every person I encounter, without exception, is different than I am, even if there are similarities. The other is different than I am. But without the other individual there is no empathy. Empathy is born in otherness. Empathy is born in the difference. Empathy is born in the difference of otherness and in the otherness of difference. 

If that starts to spin, enjoy the ride.  At least you are not alone – as the practice of empathy is the one thing you cannot do all by yourself. Empathy is a function of otherness. Without the other individual, there is only myself – oneself. 

Solipsism is the philosophical position – the illusion – there the entire universe consists of oneself very alone – hence, solus ipse. One is the creator of one’s entire universe – life is literally but a dream – until one encounters the other – then one wakes up to the reality of the resistance of the other – and the resistance of the other emerges from differences – the otherness of the other. You need an other – and the other individual’s differences – to get empathy started. 

Being open to the other person’s feelings, affects, experiences, beliefs, and resonating in tune with the other individual, yields inevitably both the similarity and differences of those feelings, affects, experiences, and beliefs. That is the empathic moment: I realize we are different and that difference lives and becomes accessible in the space of acceptance and toleration between us. 

This brings us again to the limit of empathy in politics. Thus, the fundamental political question for a rigorous and critical empathy in politics is what to do politically with individuals and groups that one cannot stand. 

What to do with individuals and groups who arouse a visceral dislike and antipathy that are acknowledged to be irrational? What to do with individuals and groups with whom one disagrees on policy, practices, perspectives, procedures, customs, or spiritual practices? The tribalism of the empathy of identity is not going to get you of this impasse. 

The reduction to absurdity of the empathy of identity is humorist Tom Lehrer’s satirical song,  “National Brotherhood Week”:  “Shake the hand of someone you can’t stand.” The rhyme is key here.

Humor and empathy are closely related. One crosses a boundary between self and other in both cases. In humor one crosses the boundary with aggressive or sexual innuendo; in empathy one crosses the boundary with gracious permission and generosity. 

Lehrer predictably succeeds in being wickedly funny, though deeply cynical, as he sings an upbeat tune: “…The rich folks hate the poor folks and the poor folks hate the rich folks. All of my folks hate all of your folks – it’s American as apple pie! But during National Brotherhood Week – Sheriff Clarke and Lena Horne are dancing cheek-to-cheek.” Note that Clarke was a notoriously committed racist and segregationist during the early Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s and Lena Horne was a celebrated African-American singer of romantic smoky ballads – not a likely match up on anyone’s dating site.

While shaking the hand of one’s sworn opponent (or an elbow bump in a pandemic) is always a good start, it is ultimately incomplete. Unless an empathic context of toleration and acceptance is established for the hand shaking, the risk of shaking hands with someone you can’t stand is that one will end up despising the other even more. 

Lehrer’s song ends by expressing the unexpressed elephant in the room “…[Be] nice to people who are inferior to you / It’s only for a week so have no fear / Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year.” 

As the song implies, absent additional training in and work on empathy and critical thinking, the hypocrisy and prejudice live on. The practice of empathy becomes the practice of a rigorous and critical empathy. 

The disciplined practice of a rigorous and critical empathy is on the path to well functioning political community and successful engagement with one’s political opponents and rivals. A rigorous practice of empathy requires critical thinking to guide it, and, in turn, critical thinking requires empathy to open the space of relatedness, acceptance, and toleration of differences. 

This rigorous and critical empathy includes critical thinking. Critical thinking includes such skills as questioning in the sources of one’s facts and beliefs, examining and questioning one’s assumptions, assessing conflicting reports in the media, looking for hidden assumptions and biases, examining one’s own for conflicts of interest, recognizing one’s own mistakes and cleaning them up at once, basic listening skills, taking turns, and seeing if one’s conclusions are actually implied by one’s facts and reasoning from these facts. These are all important. But the number one skill of critical thinking is putting oneself in the place of one’s opponent, competitor, or colleague and considering the alternative point of view – cognitive empathy. Such empathy becomes a priority in a political context.

In conclusion, when empathy becomes a rigorous and critical empathy, then the limits of empathy in politics are the limits of politics, not the limits of empathy.

References

S. Freud, (1930), Civilization and its Discontents. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud 21: 57– 146.

Thomas Horan. (2018). Desire and Empathy in Twentieth-Century Dystopian Fiction by (London and New York: Palgrave Publishing, 2018

Tom Lehrer, “National Brotherhood Week” [performed]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY

Herbert Marcuse. (1955). Eros and Civilization, New York: Vintage Paper (Random House), 1961.

Micah Zenko. (2015). Red Team: How to Succeed by Thinking Like the Enemy. New York: Basic Books.