There’s no better trait than empathy.
You understand a small part of someone’s pain and may sacrifice to help them out. It’ll make you give away your one working umbrella to a young intern, so he doesn’t make his first impression while comedically drenched from a D.C. monsoon.
However, it can also hurt. You’re so tribal that you give bias to your group (career, political party, geographic location).
And it even affects me.
I recently covered restrictions against recording city council meetings.
If you’ve known me longer than five minutes, you probably know that I’m generally against onerous regulations.
When I covered this story, I assumed the government was in the wrong
And I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I felt strange when writing that story because initially, the mayor and journalist didn’t contact me back.
I was essentially trusting a journalist whom I’d never met or read. So I pushed off the story.
Until the mayor told me that a reporter had publicly cursed out city council members (which legally could bring an FCC fine) and had interrupted meetings regularly for the last two years.
I immediately empathized from my experience of people who schedules 5+ hour meetings, which often ran over, meaning that many of my coworkers with families could be charged fines by daycare or incite arguments with significant others.
I had heard nothing of this incident because the only media covering it was NPR, which said the rules were unconstitutional– but didn’t even ask why they were implemented. That’s literally why news is written– WWWWHW.
I talked to everyone involved and heard what really happened.
Thankfully my interviews were over the phone so that person couldn’t see how embarrassed I was for leaping to a journalist’s side without hearing the whole story. Although I hadn’t published anything yet, I felt robbed by my own intuitions; journalists, myself included, are often touchy about censorship, whether by a college board or government entity.
Not this time.
This pushed me to consider how empathy hurts and helps. People often donate to Gofundme sight-unseen, or to a sad commercial about homeless dogs.
I’ve read that giving someone an excuse often triggers instant empathy. For example, if you ask to cut someone in the library printer line right before a class, that person is more likely to amicably oblige if you give an excuse (even if it’s bullshit).
They think you’re a dick if you cut without explaining yourself.
Panhandlers and church leaders use the same concept. It’s like a breathalyzer; a tool that must regularly be recalibrated.
Outcomes often don’t follow intentions.
The law of unintended consequences is that actions of people and government often result in exacerbating the problem it’s meant to fix.
Parent Mistakes
When I was in high school, my parents restricted the amount of soda I drank (for good reason). But this caused me to drink two or more almost every day.
I realized years later that I didn’t even like soda. The excessive sugar made me feel terrible for hours. My parent’s well-intended restriction resulted in the opposite effect.
If you restrict your kid’s romantic life, it could have disastrous consequences. “No dating until 18” rules could push your child into the arms of a piece of trash. Your child may not even like the person; they want to rebel. All people improve with experience—dating is no different.
This phenomenon isn’t isolated to parenting. Evidence shows that gun-buyback programs result in more guns on the street, not fewer. The idea to get guns out of the hands of people strapped for cash seems like a good idea. In reality, the buyers use that cash to buy more guns.
When a governor in India placed high bounties on cobras, it brought more cobras— people bred them for the cash.
The 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act was created to reduce loan defaults by making bankruptcy more expensive. It led to more defaults.
The Endangered Species Act restricts landowners’ property rights if an endangered species lives on the land. This resulted in the death of more endangered animals. If a property owner contracted to sell his property at a lucrative price and that day, he noticed an endangered bird living in his backyard; he’s going to “Shoot, shovel, and shut up.”Seat belt laws kill. States with no seatbelt laws have fewer traffic accidents than states with regulation because drivers are riskier because they believe the seat belt will save their life.
The law of unintended consequences demonstrates the importance of consulting economists before enacting new laws. Three-Strike Laws result in more violent crime. Proposition 184 mandated minimum 25-life sentences for 3rd-time felons; 24 states adopted these laws. One California man with two prior felonies was sentenced 25-life for being with a friend who sold $20 of cocaine to an undercover cop. Think this law is reserved for violent crimes? Sharing a Netflix login is a federal crime. These laws increase violent crime. When committing a third felony, the felon has nothing to lose— if he’s caught, he gets 25-life. Why not shoot the police officer pulling you over?
From 1970-99, the left and right joined the “Tough on Crime” mindset that resulted in a 500% increase in federal and state imprisonment. Of the 11,000 incarcerated in NY for drug charges, 66% were first-time offenders, and 80% had never been convicted of a violent felony. Tough on crime didn’t reduce crime.
Jailing a drug addict is like reviving a dead person to charge them with a crime— Fayetteville County, Ohio’s strategy to the 30+ year drug war. Those who are revived from overdose are now charged with “inciting panic”, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine, or court-ordered treatment. This new charge was in response to 30 suspected overdoses in 10 days: six ending in death. Will drug addicts be forced to sign do-not-resuscitate forms to protect themselves from criminal charges in case of overdose, to choose death over life?
I’m not suggesting you let your children run wild and make their own decisions–the majority of their decisions would be detrimental to their future.The brain of young adults isn’t fully developed until the mid-20s and parents must act to protect their kids. Instead, explain the why; people abuse drugs, act against their own best interest, and smoke cigarettes. Parents in Italy normalize drinking at a young age, and the country has a lower rate of alcoholism because parents demonstrate how to drink responsibly.
I promise this post circles back to empathy.
Drug addicts can con you out of $20 and buy crack cocaine before you even turn the corner of your apartment, feeling like you made a difference. We must constantly check our empathy with outcomes, such as discovering if the millions of dollars funding the VA is helping veterans or buying expensive artwork while phone lines go unanswered.
In a world of fake and biased news, it’s imperative journalists stay grounded in sources rather than their own bias. Even more, we should care less about each others’ political views. If you see people as human first, it’s easier to discover solutions.