this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2025
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I wonder if there is any historical way of evaluating human empathy.

It seems to me that there are far more people that lack inherent empathy, let alone more developed empathy, than there are those that have it.

Capitalism, of course, demands the rejection of empathy.

If we call what the USSR had (at some points) and the CCP (at some points) communism, they still massively lacked empathy. Take Lenin for example. He allowed non-Russian ethic groups the right to secede (Lithuania, Finland, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia and Estonia). So he appeared to understand that "hey, let's not subject the people who aren't us the ability to be independent of our experiment". He established literacy development, separation of church and state, women's rights. But then he proceeds to use terror and violence to "drive out the old order" leading to some 140,000 state sanctioned murders, established gulags and slave labor camps. This led to the Red/White civil war both sides of which use antisemitism as a means of blame. So here, now, we show that a significant majority of people are lacking empathy.

Empathy is POWERFUL in a social context especially ones Humans evolved with. Individually we could not survive very well. Grouped together we were capable of hunting the largest creatures on earth, while raising children, maintaining shelter, keeping hydrated, and advancing.

Why would we seemingly develop something to the opposite of our survival?