I don’t think that Dunbar’s number has a direct relationship with that. Dunbar’s number is about the amount of people you can have a relationship with, but you don’t need a relationship to have an emotional inclination to be kind towards another person.
Thank you for catching that! I will fix the post once I have the time. Still, even if Dunbar’s number does not directly define the limits of human empathy, it does limit the amount of people you can really conceptualize or understand in an intuitive manner; anything beyond that has to be abstraction. (That is, it limits the amount of people who you can really feel sonder for, even though we all know abstractly that all eight billion of us have inner lives as valuable as our own.) You cannot feel empathy towards something that is not a person (to empathize with inanimate objects or animals, you need to humanize/anthropomorphize them), and since Dunbar’s number limits the amount of people you can conceptualize, it limits empathy.
Your essay blends definitions a little, run it through an AI for specific instances, the three majors are:
Your stipulated definition, “small-scale emotional kindness toward a few people” as the basis for tribal loyalty.
The common usage definition, “concern for others’ suffering”, as what people complain politicians “lack”.
The psychological definition, “The ability to: Understand/recognize others’ emotional states (cognitive empathy) and also share or mirror those emotional states (affective / compassionate empathy)” as the opposite of psychopathy.
I think you have a good point that extreme political polarization is bad and is caused by tribalism. I feel cautious about making empathy the main villain in this, for example I would argue that empathy, in the psychological definition is a near universal human trait. Are their societies without extreme political polarization, maybe Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden or Japan? If so that’s counter evidence.
Don’t get me wrong, I have my own bone to pick with empathy being used as a basis for your politics, it does feel like a sort of emotion that works well at close-range but starts to generate stupidity when applied to animals / plants / rocks / cartoon characters / imaginary friends etc.
My stipulated definition is not “small-scale kindness”, it is the emotional concern for other’s well-being that causes an “emotional inclination to be kind”. Politicians lack concern for others’ suffering because they cannot have sonder, and therefore cannot have emotional concern, for the suffering of everyone their policies will affect. (Just about everyone has intellectual/abstract concern for others’ suffering; we can all say, “children dying in a war is bad”, but when we hear news about such, we don’t have the same emotional reaction that we would have if the dying children were members of our own families or communities.) Emotionally identifying with and caring about people is known as affective/compassionate empathy; those with ASPD lack this, though they may have cognitive empathy (which is how they can manipulate people).
I don’t believe that empathy is the sole cause and determiner of political polarization, only that it is the root. While tribalism is present in all societies (Europe and Japan are not free of racism, for instance), social factors such as the identification of ethnicity/culture/religion with politics, influence of social media, and presence of charismatic individuals (the modern American right would not have existed to the same extent without Donald Trump) drive tribalism along political lines.
My concern is that you are not being careful enough with your words to ensure the reader picks up what your trying to communicate.
For example, “I don’t believe that empathy is the sole cause” shortly followed by “it is the root”. Those are contradictory statements. Perhaps you could have said “it is one of the roots of tribe formation”
I honestly also do not understand what you mean by “emotional concern”. Are you saying that someone “has a preference for others to be well, but only if they are in their in-group”?
By “emotional concern”, I intended to convey that you feel an emotional impulse in response to how someone else feels; you are physically/emotionally upset by seeing someone suffering, and you are made physically/emotionally joyful by seeing someone succeeding.
When do I use a different definition than the one above? If I have made an error, I am interested in correcting it.
I don’t think that Dunbar’s number has a direct relationship with that. Dunbar’s number is about the amount of people you can have a relationship with, but you don’t need a relationship to have an emotional inclination to be kind towards another person.
Thank you for catching that! I will fix the post once I have the time. Still, even if Dunbar’s number does not directly define the limits of human empathy, it does limit the amount of people you can really conceptualize or understand in an intuitive manner; anything beyond that has to be abstraction. (That is, it limits the amount of people who you can really feel sonder for, even though we all know abstractly that all eight billion of us have inner lives as valuable as our own.) You cannot feel empathy towards something that is not a person (to empathize with inanimate objects or animals, you need to humanize/anthropomorphize them), and since Dunbar’s number limits the amount of people you can conceptualize, it limits empathy.
Your essay blends definitions a little, run it through an AI for specific instances, the three majors are:
Your stipulated definition, “small-scale emotional kindness toward a few people” as the basis for tribal loyalty.
The common usage definition, “concern for others’ suffering”, as what people complain politicians “lack”.
The psychological definition, “The ability to: Understand/recognize others’ emotional states (cognitive empathy) and also share or mirror those emotional states (affective / compassionate empathy)” as the opposite of psychopathy.
I think you have a good point that extreme political polarization is bad and is caused by tribalism. I feel cautious about making empathy the main villain in this, for example I would argue that empathy, in the psychological definition is a near universal human trait. Are their societies without extreme political polarization, maybe Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden or Japan? If so that’s counter evidence.
Don’t get me wrong, I have my own bone to pick with empathy being used as a basis for your politics, it does feel like a sort of emotion that works well at close-range but starts to generate stupidity when applied to animals / plants / rocks / cartoon characters / imaginary friends etc.
My stipulated definition is not “small-scale kindness”, it is the emotional concern for other’s well-being that causes an “emotional inclination to be kind”. Politicians lack concern for others’ suffering because they cannot have sonder, and therefore cannot have emotional concern, for the suffering of everyone their policies will affect. (Just about everyone has intellectual/abstract concern for others’ suffering; we can all say, “children dying in a war is bad”, but when we hear news about such, we don’t have the same emotional reaction that we would have if the dying children were members of our own families or communities.) Emotionally identifying with and caring about people is known as affective/compassionate empathy; those with ASPD lack this, though they may have cognitive empathy (which is how they can manipulate people).
I don’t believe that empathy is the sole cause and determiner of political polarization, only that it is the root. While tribalism is present in all societies (Europe and Japan are not free of racism, for instance), social factors such as the identification of ethnicity/culture/religion with politics, influence of social media, and presence of charismatic individuals (the modern American right would not have existed to the same extent without Donald Trump) drive tribalism along political lines.
My concern is that you are not being careful enough with your words to ensure the reader picks up what your trying to communicate.
For example, “I don’t believe that empathy is the sole cause” shortly followed by “it is the root”. Those are contradictory statements. Perhaps you could have said “it is one of the roots of tribe formation”
I honestly also do not understand what you mean by “emotional concern”. Are you saying that someone “has a preference for others to be well, but only if they are in their in-group”?
By “emotional concern”, I intended to convey that you feel an emotional impulse in response to how someone else feels; you are physically/emotionally upset by seeing someone suffering, and you are made physically/emotionally joyful by seeing someone succeeding.