Minor personal loss > Major international tragedy

On the eve of 2008 (i.e. 369 days ago), our family dog paid his last ever trip to the vet. He’d been in steady decline for the previous year and putting him down was undoubtedly the kindest thing to do, but it was nonetheless a very sad occasion. The women were weeping, the men’s stiff upper lips were quivering, and more than once it was remarked that, “this truly feels like a death in the family”.

Around three years earlier, on Boxing Day in 2004, a major tsunami hit the South Pacific. Several thousand people died, whole communities were wiped out, and families were left in pieces. It was arguably the most devastating natural disaster since the Tangshan earthquake of 1979, and a humanitarian crisis was left in its wake.

My brother, during one of those drunken existential conversations that seem somehow unavoidable during the festive period, recently pointed to these two events and declared that because he was more upset by the death of an elderly dog than the deaths of thousands of fit and healthy human beings, the human race must be shallow and self-interested by nature. He’d had personal experience of the dog, so he would dearly miss him; by contrast, although he could recognise the inherent tragedy of the tsunami, he felt little or no emotional response to it. Those deaths would have little or no impact on his life, so just like every other callous and selfish human would, he quickly forgot about it.

Now, it should go without saying that we simply wouldn’t be able to function if we were too good at empathising with our fellow man, and it’s both healthy and necessary to be able to maintain some emotional distance from the world around you . If you’ve just become the sole surviving member of your family it’s understandable that you might spend a number of weeks or months grieving; but to do so after watching the ten o’clock news would make you utterly dysfunctional.

In fact, it's possible that some super-empathetic variant of Homo sapiens did once or might one day exist. The trouble is that they’d be utterly doomed as a species from wasting their energy crying or rejoicing over events that didn’t affect them. The process of natural selection that has (arguably) made the human mind what it is today, has nothing to do with ‘good’ or ‘evil’, ‘selfish’ or ‘selfless’. It is simply that which works that survives and thrives.

Those who are particularly lacking in empathy we generally call sociopaths or psychopaths. It’s been argued by some that these marginalised individuals are in fact incredibly well adapted for the current evolutionary scene. By not wasting energy on the problems of others, and not feeling at all guilty about exploiting other people, they’re often incredibly successful resource gatherers (i.e. businessmen). Similarly, although in most societies it's fairly taboo for men to indulge in one-night stands, impregnate women, and then leave them to bring up a child alone, this is the sociopath’s preferred method of operating. By ignoring the stigma that usually surrounds fathering many children by many different mothers (especially without providing any financial support), the sociopath can potentially enjoy the kind of ‘reproductive success’ that would put Genghis Khan to shame.

Of course, the success of the psychopath's adaptation depends entirely on there being a large majority of those who play by the rules. If everyone was out for themselves and was happy to exploit or manipulate at every opportunity without remorse, we (as a species) wouldn't be able to do all the useful things that come about through mutually beneficial cooperation.

Oops. What's happened? Where did all this sketchy evolutionary psychology come from? And what have psychopaths got to do with anything? Oh yes! I was trying to show what amounts to an "appropriate" level of empathy. And I was saying in the most long-winded way possible that we should aim to be somewhere between psychopaths and the kind of gibbering wreck that cries when watching the news. And that that's nothing to be ashamed of. And...

...maybe I'll stick to posting Youtube videos.