Condescension without comprehension

This is something of a sad post for me, because it involves a disappointment from one of my all-time favorite authors, Douglas R. Hofstadter. I believe that I have read all of his books, and have studied one of them, Gödel, Escher, Bach, quite intensely. I admire both the depth of his thought and the ornateness of his writing. And, I just love all of the self-reference.

The disappointment is this quote from Le Ton beau de Marot, on page 485, in the section entitled "Concentric Rings of Diminishing Empathy".

A few rare people are exceedingly empathetic, a few are extremely sociopathic, and most of us fall somewhere closer to the middle.

The distance in "acquaintance space" at which an individual's empathy tails off is a central character trait determining many things, including one's politics.

Grosso modo, the conflict between left-wing and right-wing ideologies is simply the battle between small-radius and large-radius individuals writ large.

I loved everything about the book, except for this one sentence, which I felt to be dismissive of right-wing people. It is obvious from his writing that he "leans left," but this has nowhere else been condescending in tone. The way I understood it is, "on the scale from sociopathic to exceedingly empathetic, you would encounter right-wing people first, nearer the sociopathic end, while left-wing people are more empathetic." Or, in other words, "the less well a right-wing person knows someone, the less he or she cares about them."

This is a very interesting claim, and I believe it to be an over-simplification at best, just plain wrong in the middle, and condescending at worst.

Here, I may be in a bit of trouble, because I am not trained in political science, so I ask help from readers. I think of left-wing as tending towards the welfare state and right-wing as tending towards self-sufficiency. The rest of this post is based on that assumption, so please help me understand if I am wrong.

Side remark: I also think of left-wing as being "progressive" while right-wing is "conservative." My parents were supporters for much of my growing up years of a political party in Canada named "Progressive Conservative," so perhaps this is not a dichotomy.

I am leery of the progressive movement because of this truism: All progress requires change, but not all change is progress. In order to join in in calling reckless change "progress" I would need to understand the long-term goal of the progressive movement. Someone, please paint me a picture of the ideal society towards which we are making progress with these changes? But, this would be the topic of a different post, and one which I am not ready to write until my empathy for the progressive movement increases.

Back to the topic. Personally, I identify more with "right-wing" than I do with alternatives. Nevertheless, I have personally taken early retirement in order to live half-way around the world to help people who, until recently, were very remote in my "acquaintance space." Certainly my empathy has not tailed off with the distance.

I propose that the conflict between left-wing and right-wing has nothing to do with empathy at all, but everything to do with how best to help people in need. Grosso modo, I believe, the left-wing prefers to help the needy with government programs while the right-wing prefers to help the needy with private and locally-run programs.

This is well illustrated by conversations I have enjoyed with a good friend, whom I shall call "John." John is frustrated that the government isn't doing more to help the poor. He earns a very good income and yet wishes that the federal tax rate were much higher, perhaps even 60% to 80% so that social programs could be funded, and no one would need to suffer and die in poverty. This is what is done in some countries in the world, and he wished his country was more like these. Each person in society could then choose, if they are able, to work and pay for those who are unable, or who choose not, to work.

For my part, I told him about a fund which is managed by a private charitable organization. This fund accepts donations, and has tens of thousands of local units which actively seek out the poor and needy in order to help them with food, clothing, and shelter. And to find work if they are able and so desire. The overhead for managing the fund is provided by the charitable organization from other sources, so that the fund itself uses 100% of donations received to help the poor and needy. There are millions of voluntary contributors to this fund throughout the world, and it is actively engaged throughout the world. Would you be willing, I asked, to voluntarily contribute 20% to 40% of your income to this fund? This would go a long way towards helping those in poverty. No. He was not willing to voluntarily contribute to this fund.

I have no conclusion to offer for this post. I wish that I could have a dialog with my favorite author to find out if I am understanding his meaning correctly, or if it might be that I have simply taken offense where none was intended.

I do wish to invite my readers to consider this post from another blog, "The value of struggle." I was surprised in a speech by a left-wing person to hear that they understand that struggle has value, while at the same time seeking to remove the need to struggle. An interesting contradiction.