Quotes from Paul Bloom

For better or worse, then, my attack on empathy is nonpartisan. Or to put it more positively, individuals of all political orientations—liberal, conservative, libertarian, hard right, hard left, all of us—can join hands and work together in the fight against empathy.

It turns out, then, that if you think something is really going to hurt and it hurts just mildly, the magic of contrast can cause this mild hurt to transform into pleasure.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones," writes Richard Dawkins. After all, we're the ones who got to exist in the first place.

The purpose of life," Peterson has written, "is finding the largest burden you can bear and bearing it," while Žižek believes that "the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle.

In On Apology, Aaron Lazare offers a similar sentiment: "what makes an apology work is the exchange of shame and power between the offender and the offended. By apologizing, you take the shame of your offense and redirect it to yourself.

Choosing to experience pain to enhance subsequent pleasure is a powerful trick, but it only works some of the time.

When experts insist that their societies are awash in misery, they are unknowingly illustrating one of the big findings in happiness research, which is that people underestimate how happy other people are—we tend to think of ourselves as lucky exceptions.

He concluded that the answer is meaning. Those who had the best chance of survival were those whose lives had broader purpose, who had some goal or project or relationship, some reason to live. As he later wrote (paraphrasing Nietzsche), "Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.

So if the world were a simple place, where the only dilemmas one had to deal with involved a single person in some sort of immediate distress, and where helping that person had positive effects, the case for empathy would be solid.

Greater Effort Increases Perceived Value in an Invertebrate," Journal of Comparative Psychology

I know many people who defend this, who argue that humiliation is necessary to deter ugly racist behavior, so, perhaps reluctantly, we carry it out. But if you look at tweets and Facebook posts, or at the faces of those protesting Schlossberg on the streets of New York—many of whom are progressives, the sorts of people who explicitly disdain vengeful impulses—you'll see glee. People enjoy watching Schlossberg get what he deserves.

children provoke a couple's most frequent arguments: Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood

empathy distorts our moral judgments in pretty much the same way that prejudice does. Empathy is limited as well in that it focuses on specific individuals. Its spotlight nature renders it innumerate and myopic: It doesn't resonate properly to the effects of our actions on groups of people, and it is insensitive to statistical data and estimated costs and benefits

Some degree of unsettledness, anxiety, and ambition may be baked into the human condition.

Regardless of their sex, good-looking faces light up the brain

If our concern is driven by thoughts of the suffering of specific individuals, then it sets up a perverse situation in which the suffering of one can matter more than the suffering of a thousand.

We are happier when we are healthy": Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

My friend Graeme Wood, a journalist who has written extensively about ISIS, including a book based on interviews with both new recruits and long-standing members, tells me that many of those who joined the group were jaded when they signed up. They've had a lot of anonymous sex, they've taken every drug there is, they've lived lives of empty pleasure. But this wasn't enough. They were looking for more, something of real value.

But war's appeal is more than belonging, morality, and signaling. As Chris Hedges put it in the title of one of his books, "War is a force that gives us meaning." PERHAPS THE TWO examples so far have left you cold. Maybe you don't want to climb mountains or go to war. But what about having children?

As Jennifer Senior notes, children provoke a couple's most frequent arguments—"more than money, more than work, more than in-laws, more than annoying personal habits, communication styles, leisure activities, commitment issues, bothersome friends, sex." Someone who doesn't understand this is welcome to spend a full day with an angry two-year-old (or a sullen fifteen-year-old) and find out.

Our selectivity in who to care about makes a difference. About twenty years ago, Walter Isaacson expressed his frustration over the American public's focus on the crisis in Somalia and relative disregard of the (objectively greater) tragedy in the Sudan, when he plaintively asked: "Will the world end up rescuing Somalia while ignoring the Sudan mainly because the former proves more photogenic?" Before

So what's the difference between people who are high in communion (positive) and those who are high in unmitigated communion (negative)? Both sorts of people care about others. But communion corresponds to what we can call concern and compassion, while unmitigated communion ends up relating more to empathy or, more precisely, empathic distress—suffering at the suffering of others.

choosing from among fifteen flavors of ice cream is harder than choosing from three. Indeed, there is a whole literature on the "paradox of choice" that focuses on the stress associated with difficult decisions.