Elon Musk says empathy is threatening civilisation. He's wrong. He is that threat. What's worse though is that his threat is totally consistent with neoliberal economics.
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
I care and Elon Musk doesn't, and that is the big difference between us.
Let me explain. Elon Musk said in the course of a podcast interview during the course of the last week, that empathy was the threat that he perceived to Western civilization.
Let's be clear what I mean by empathy. It is the ability of a person to stand in another person's shoes and understand that person's situations, fears, hopes, aspirations, joy, whatever it might be.
It is our comprehension of other people that we can embrace to therefore influence our own behaviour.
And Musk is embracing instead the thinking of neoliberal economics.
Neoliberal economics is a philosophy that is so corrupt that it has no relationship to human behavior at all. It says that we, as economic agents, should only be interested in our own wellbeing and not that of anyone else, and that we should maximize our worth at cost to everyone else without having to worry about the consequences.
Well, we can see that being played out in Elon Musk's life.
Of course, he was born in South Africa.
He was born into privilege based upon the exploitation of most of the population of that country at the time under the apartheid regime. And his ability to exploit has continued ever since.
He's a man who literally probably doesn't care because he's never learned how to care because he was never taught how to do so.
But the vast majority of us were. We understand that caring matters.
We have causes and people for whom we have sympathy.
When a friend is really ill, we lend a hand.
When we go and do a run, we quite often get sponsorship for a favourite charity and we raise money for it.
Or we make a regular donation.
Or we give away goods for recycling to a charity shop. There are loads in the high street, not far from here.
All of those are indications that we care.
We can imagine that we want to support the person with cancer or with mental ill health, or who's suffering in some other way because we know that there, but for the grace of God - to use a phrase - go all of us.
None of us know what is going to happen, and that is the fundamental philosophical point that I adopt. Because none of us know what might happen we should behave as if anything could happen to us. And as a result, we should care about the fact that everybody gets access to what they need because one day we might want whatever it is that they need now.
That is a political philosophy based upon the idea that I care.
Elon Musk has a political philosophy that is based upon the idea that he does not care and doesn't want to care, and doesn't care that he doesn't care.
That, in my opinion, is callousness.
It is indifferent.
It's actually inhuman because as far as I can see, we are essentially made to live in society. We have to have people around us. We cannot live in isolation. We need to cohabit with others in order to survive. We must therefore care. That is the normal state of human nature.
And he's trying to deny that.
He's trying to run a whole government on the basis that this is not true. He says that empathy is the threat to Western civilisation that he needs the defeat. And yet empathy is synonymous with civilisation because it is exactly because we care that we are civilised.
Indeed, one of the first examples that there was ever found of civilisation was when a preserved bone was discovered of a human or a pre-human being, which had both been broken and clearly set. In other words, one person had cared sufficiently about another many thousands of years ago to actually reset their bone, so that they survived having broken it. That was an indication of care. And at that point you can say civilisation began because we were able to imagine ourselves in the position of the person with the broken bone and we did something about it, or rather our ancient ancestor did. And ever since we've done the same.
But Musk doesn't want us to do that, and to me that is truly terrifying.
A government that doesn't care, a civilization that doesn't care, a population that doesn't care led by people who do not care is the very antithesis of everything that I believe society should be about. Musk is the threat to Western civilization. Empathy is not, and we have a choice about which we want to support, and I would suggest that if you support Musk you've got something very serious that you need to think about, about your own wellbeing, your own attitudes, and how you care for others.
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What a very odd coincidence!
Doing my morning internet ‘rounds’, immediately after reading this piece, I found the following linked to (at random) in my facebook feed:
https://www.spectator.com.au/2025/03/finally-the-truly-superior-moral-justification-for-selfishness/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJAuXRleHRuA2FlbQEwAGFkaWQBqxnczKPc6gEdceEusOGOZydZmkQ0TBL0ElTVLizW0CmDrbc2RyWzGBLH8Z4B2S3a87v7_aem_IwubyXfo3ssC30zb5kxYFw (it went behind a paywall after I’d briefly scanned through it).
My thinking aligns with yours, btw, not the Spectator (Australian or otherwise).
(Apologies, it looks like it’s been pasted as text and not a link as I intended.)
It worked…but I could not get it from behind the paywall
Darn! But I think the headline says it all.
I recommend removepaywall.com to view the full text of this and similar paywalled articles
Thanks
Non-paywalled version at https://archive.ph/oClVC …
The coincidence I had from the internet was the latest from the Parody Project:
WE POISONED THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH | Don Caron & Mikael Vanhanen , at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek8yXVgCorA – very apposite
Thanks
I agree – but would add that caring is not just an aspect of of civilisation. We can’t get inside their heads, but it’s easy to observe caring behaviour in animals – and, at least among mammals, not just in the context of parenting.
Once again, a billionaire showing zero self awareness, or knowledge of the very societies that allowed him to become brain distortingly wealthy.
About two years ago I was having lunch in La (or Da) Panne south of Ostende.
You could see Dunkirk on the horizon.
The beach there had been uses as part of the ‘Dunkirk’ evacuation and one of the ships that went there was Bristol’s ‘Glen Gower’ whose fleet mate Bristol Queen I remember on as a very small child.
There was a small display which showed what the area looked like during that period and lots of ‘coastal defences’ we saw from the coast tram.
Now just going there rammed home the fact that Europe is different, their history clearly will make them view the world in very different ways and thats before you start looking at the trauma that Russia, China, Israel & Palestine have been through.
But without understanding this you cant understand what is happening in the world and deal with it yet that is precisely what Musk, Trump et al want to do.
I despair
Much to agree with
Agreed.
What Musk has confirmed is the billionaire mindset. In order to grab everything that you can, to squeeze out value and allocate it to your self – empathy for others is not required. It’s the same with the way that freedom is sold – it’s not your freedom that is being sold to you, its the freedom of billionaires to act without empathy or due consideration to anyone else.
If we do not care, civilisation, as we know it, will not survive.
I would add one amendment, in that his philosophy isn’t to maximise his wellbeing but his wealth. I doubt he is happy.
Of course, the very start of neoliberal economics is in Theory of Moral Sentiments. Where Smityh goes through sympathy (as empathy was called back then) in great detail. Have you read this?
Wrong
Neoliberalism didn’t start then
Classical economics did
You really should learn what you are talking about
And yes, I have read it. Top left in the videos.
Oddly had just read bits of Moral Sentiments as I was closing my Kindle account and I got distracted into reading, as you do. Smith seemed to my simple mind to be making arguments for community and the refusal to let a person wilfully harm others by their self-enriching actions ie the moral limits of capitalism. Perhaps I read it wrong, first time and this.
Sounds like you likely read right to me
Might it be that “the real fear of the oligarchs is that true empathy will lead us to a society that they are not the lords of [and] that the consumptive frenzy they covet will come to a grinding halt”? [Kathleen Wallace]
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/03/14/a-sea-of-feces-philosophical-musings-from-the-techno-feudalists/
Empathy is agreed the core of society .Macmillan’s One Nation Toryism was forged by his service in WW1 and the sufferings endured by the ordinary Tommies.More caring than Starmer and Reeves.Atlee,also a WW1 officer,would be aghast at the present crew.
Callaghan was the last PM to have served in a war.Then came Thatcher/ism.
I think what Elon Musk actually said was that we should care about other people, but we should not let empathy be weaponised.
I am not defending Musk just to be clear, but I also think it’s important to reflect on what he actually means as I think it is more insidious than just saying “ban empathy”.
His thinking, as I understand it, aligns closely with the longtermist position of the Effective Altruist movement. They argue that the trillions of (potential) future humans quite possibly matter more than everyone alive today – if you reduce it to a numbers game then the logic holds. But the reality is very different because humans are humans – Effective Altruism produces Sam Bankman-Fried instead of the promised utopia.
I think this is important because it explains why highly intelligent and otherwise good people can move to a position of callousness. Elon Musk may well just be an awful human, but if he and the likes of William Mackaskill can convince themselves that what they are doing is morally correct then a lot of young and/or impressionable people
may follow. They will argue that Elon Musk didn’t reduce it to “empathy is bad” and that could perhaps open the door to doubting your position?
I don’t have time to argue…..
I wasn’t looking for an argument, just adding my perspective :).
If it’s of no use then apologies.
The paradox is that on a personal level I feel sorry for someone who cannot understand, never mind practice, human empathy. What a sad, empty and pointless life they must have. It’s ridiculous that we allow these sick individuals to cause the damage they do to the world.
Musk and people like him are not just making a choice – they have developed psychologically so their apparent choice is inevitable. We should treat the as they are – threats to public safety. If there are counselling or training they could be required to undertake, that would resolve their deficiencies, so much the better, they could become productive members of society. Dan Goyal would have an informed opinion on that. If such therapy is not possible, we at least should have a public register of those so inclined so that we can avoid them as needed, and they should be ineligible for any responsible public role. Supporters of such people are not necessarily similarly damaged, they may just be misinformed, so different approaches are appropriate there. We can but dream.
Perhaps there’s something positive in Musk’s lack of empathy — it may prove to be his downfall. For me, the prospect of a totally selfish, cold-hearted supervillain with empathy is more frightening than one without. Musk clearly doesn’t know Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
For a more recent perspective on empathy as statecraft, it’s worth listening to this short piece by H.R. McMaster, one of Trump’s National Security Advisers from his first term (one can understand why he didn’t last long with Trump):
https://bbc.com/audio/play/p08jq3n7
Thanks
Richard, you didn’t display any empathy towards lobsters, in last week’s article praising an entrepreneurial lobster fisher:
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/03/08/capitalism/
After a lobster is caught, his or her fate will usually involve being boiled alive!
Are humans the only animal you consider worthy of empathy?
That, in my opinion, is callousness.
And there’s a rumour carrots squeal when they’re pulled out of the ground and mushrooms undoubtedly communicate with each other when under threat.
Tell me, what do you eat?
It was Margaret Thatcher who cynically stated “There is no such thing as society, just individuals and families”. That amounted to claiming you’re allowed empathy toward your close family members but no-one else. The same totally destructive mindset, in my view, and what set us on this horrible path over the last 40+ years.
Agreed