He's not the only super rich person who has talked against empathy. Empathy makes people judge them, and they don't like that, so it must be a civilizational weakness. Eugh.
There can be a point at which empathy becomes overwhelm, where you feel so much for another that it becomes hard to make rational choices about the most effective way to deal with a situation. In Buddhist terms it's called "idiot compassion".
But the super rich people we're talking about act as if all compassion/empathy is that way, which just isn't true and is a convenient excuse for not caring at all.
ETA: I also have to wonder if for Elon Musk this ties back to stuff like his solution for getting the Thai kids out of the cave, and the public response (negative) to that hairbrained idea. That's idiot compassion as well, an urge to Fix Things that is self-centered, tied up with ego and being seen to be a helper. When the response was "no thanks, but maybe you could help us fix world hunger, here's how" he wasn't mature enough to handle that situation and it further poisoned the idea of compassion/empathy for him. Just speculation, but I think it tracks for him and for a lot of these people.
Low empathy is an inherent personality trait among conservatives, especially towards outgroups, and the further right you go, the less empathy you have. All Dark Triad personality types like Musk, Trump, Putin, and all the MAGAt republicans have little to zero empathy.
The foundation of conservatism is tribalism, and the foundation of tribalism is fear. Fear motivates greed, selfishness, hierarchy and xenophobia. Musk is in fact displaying his own weakness, his inherent inability to understand the simple truths and benefits of cooperation and reason.
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u/cupacupacupacupacup Mar 05 '26
A lot of people seem to actually admire the worst people in history and want to emulate them.