Empathy is a difficult one, I agree. The only way one can build a sense of Self is by defining what one is not. It is with interest that I have watched my daughter come to have an increasing sense of Self. Still, she does tend to think that whatever she experiences must also be experienced by me - her self is still bound up in me.

Everyone has limits to empathy. Can I empathise with a serial killer? A paedophile? Nope, I’d have great difficulty. My empathy would rather be with the victims of these people. That’s the thing, you have to make choices as to who you empathise with sometimes.

I do try not to dehumanise people, however. I was reading an account by Zimbardo of his Stanford Prison experiment, and the key to how we can treat people so badly is by thinking of them as non-human.

One of her ideas is that certain categories of being suggest problems that remain unsolved. So when we look at nationalism, and in particularly the uber-nationalism of the Nazis, we do well to think not just of the obviously appalling but of the not-so-obvious:

The Nation is an answer to the question: Who Are We? Empathy, as has been noted by various experiments both controlled and unintentional can have limits drawn where ‘We’ end and the ‘Other’ begins.

The ultimate expression of this is the routine dehumanization of the enemy in wartime. A milder form of this is the dehumanization of the opponent in an election. I was in the local electoral booth at counting time last state election and was amused to hear a senior ALP hack explaining to her younger charge why each member of the Howard government is ‘not human’ - her words.

It’s a simple matter to theoretically extend ones’ empathy to everyone but in practice few of us can really do it. So throughout history we have built for ourselves larger and larger communities of imagination to extend empathy beyond our immediate circle of acquaintance. The Nation is as far as we’ve gotten. Arguably we’re now extending this to the Region - there’s a lot of talk about ‘we’ in the ‘west’ and what ‘we believe’ these days. Apparently we believe in Reason and Tolerance. Ironically many who believe this most fervently are most intolerant and irrational in adhering to the required Western doctrines.

But notice that when we say we we always exclude someone else against who we define ourselves. That’s the rub. The problem of universal empathy is the problem of universal identification. And the problem there is that we’ve become to accustomed to building our ideas of self in opposition to our ideas of the other.

This is particularly true of politics where the will to crush enemies is the fuel that drives the machine.

We were considering you for a top job in Bastard Inc or the Democratic Party for Evil Cronies but there’s a glitch.

Empathy

Now our analysts are busy trying to figure it out. We’ve got the definition of this ‘empathy’ and apparently it means that you feel bad when other peoples feel bad.

And.. um, no we just don’t get it.

Factual analysis; Moral consistency; and Disavowal of the politics of fear.

No sorry. We want professionalism. Let us know when you start making Kitten Smoothies for breakfast. Have a nice day.

Thus my view on Iraq, Afghanistan /Pakistan is shaped from my families’ (over the last 300 years) history, which is marked by the steady departure at regular 2 generation intervals of approximately half of all of my ancestors to that region of the world. Some returned, some dont. for various reasons. To fight for the empire , pax brittainnia, to stop the kidnapping of people from villages off of the english coast (people forget about that, but it happened) and it finally appears that my people are succeeding, but if this success does not eventuate, rest assured that those currently there will wither and die from cumulative radiation poisoning, from the Depleted Uranium weapons or they won’t, either way I think that my cousin (who drove APC for Army) did the right thing by going and assured the society that is formed by that environment there that any action by them to affect negatively the anglosphere is not wise, which short of the Anglosaxon sphere advocating wholesale destruction of those MIddle eastern societies whom are causing said sphere trouble is the best thing that can be done about that whole spot.

Bit extreme isn’t it? But you have to take a realist view of the world. Any challenge to the security of the OECD countries or specifically America -England - Canada (with Australia - New Zealand an afterthought) cannot be countenanced.

The plain fact of the matter is with out oil, and lots of it, the military of America is 1 /10 the strength of China, and that means that China is suddenly calling alot of shots.

If all of the poor people in these countries were suddenly purchasing at the same pricing power per person, as in developed countries you would be alot poorer. This is fact. There are only so many million tonnes of Iron / Gun powder / Oil / Food produced each year.

And I believe that minorities don’t do so well, so I am supportive of anything that keeps me in the majority of the money.

Sometimes we forget about simple truths (ie ultimately the authority of the law is derived from officers of the law ( ie men willing to risk their lives to enforce a certain number of rules, determined by another group, or more basically a group of thugs holding the deadliest personal weapon available about their person).

The problem is that thugs can have consciences too, this creates the need for fairness, and equal treatment of different parties. Thus law is created to deal with societies inability to reconcile its natural tendency to bully, with its natural tendency to empathize.

So professional arguers, with a trained (or natural) ability to empathize are the result, leading to a very interesting evolution of legal principles throughout history.

I think that the current generation of developed people being raised is being done a great disservice by having many things made easy, and also, as a pet peeve, this current preoccupation with trying to prevent people who want to commit suicide from commiting suicide, I say let those who feel that they cannot go on not go on. It frees up resources for those who want to live.

The strength of the law derives from its adherence to making good judgements, and the quality of a judgement affects the power and reach of the law. So where a power vacuum opens, it is poor law, or poor argument (law = argument codified) that leads to its creation.

Thus poor arguement is responsible for the creation of new power vacuums in australia (illegalisation of mind altering drugs) which will continue to weaken the judiciary, as there is now an ongoing economic incentive to do so (no body would take on existing power structure without reason) Even to the extent that there is a special force which polices the local bikies (The Nomads). Its a shadow state. writ small.

There are sometimes good reasons to fear, as often there is no bigger teacher or kind classmate to save you from the bullies.

In the Real World, the bullies kill you.

Your emphasis on “empathy” compels this conclusion more than anything.