May 29

Written By Sherri Mitchell - Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset

I arrived in Rome on Monday, jet-lagged and determined to stay awake long enough to avoid the impacts of the six-hour time change, a naïve hope but one that I continue to cling to, despite ample evidence of its futility.

Once I settled into my hotel room, I opened the News tab on my phone. The first headline that I saw was on Pope Leo’s newly released manifesto, which read “Pope ponders the future of humanity.” Given the long and painful history that Papal legacies have had on both Indigenous and Black Peoples, the arrival of this headline coinciding with my arrival in Rome felt significant, especially when I considered my purpose for being here.

In 2015, while attending the World Council of Popular Movements in Bolivia, Pope Francis made history when he formally apologized for the atrocities committed against Indigenous Peoples in the name of God. He acknowledged that past apologies had not gone far enough stating “ I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offenses of the church herself, but also for crimes committed against the Native Peoples during the so-called conquest of America.” He went on to say “many grave sins were committed against the Native Peoples of America in the name of God.” Then in 2022, Francis apologized again, this time to First Nations Peoples in Canada, for the horrific crimes that were committed against First Nations through the Indian residential schools, most of which were run by Christian priests and nuns. During that trip, Pope Francis went on to acknowledge that the forced removal of Indian children was in fact a genocide. A critical recognition.

Now comes Leo. In his first encyclical, Pope Leo acknowledged and apologized for the Vatican’s role in legitimizing slavery, calling it a “wound in Christian memory.” These statements are the first steps toward restoration. The question remains, will these declarations remain empty words, or will they lead toward justice with some form active repair and institutional transformation? Only time will tell. Yet, I can’t help believing that this may be the perfect moment for a new faith-based legacy to be born - a unifying legacy that truly embodies the empathy and compassion that nearly all systems of belief claim as core values. This belief feels even more meaningful after seeing Pope Leo’s emphasis on protecting our humanity, while naming empathy as the thing that forms the essence of humanity.

A couple of months ago, I sat in an audience and listened to Michael Pollan say that “empathy requires two things: feeling and vulnerability.” He went on to say that these are “two things that even the most advanced thinking machines will never possess.” In Pope Leo’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, he also offers strong warnings about the limitations of machines. He speaks plainly about the danger of placing too much authority in the hands of artificial intelligence (AI), calling for robust regulation of its uses and reach. He specifically condemns AI’s role in the mechanization of warfare - stating that it is “not permissible to entrust irreversible lethal decisions to machines, while their creators are being driven by a culture of power.” Instead, he urged the creators of AI to focus their efforts on working toward the common good, providing a clear description of what that means:

“…building for the common good means accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected. Today, the human desire for fullness of life is at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of a technology that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations. All too often, we place our hope in unlimited “upgrades,” in forms of progress that exacerbate inequalities, and in immediate solutions incapable of healing people’s wounds. As a result, while some pursue the illusion of unlimited self-assertion, many are deprived of basic necessities. The Church reminds us, with a firm yet humble voice, that true fulfilment is not achieved by eliminating weakness but through harmonious growth. It is found where freedom and responsibility are intertwined with mutual care and true solidarity, and where progress is measured by the dignity of each person and the good of all peoples.”

The Pope’s request that AI leaders self-regulate and begin building for the common good may be as naïve a hope as my wish to avoid jet lag, but it does invite us to look more deeply at the very serious implications of this technology being misused by those seeking power and control. And it quietly informs us that we must be willing to consciously resist all attempts to degrade our humanity in pursuit of technological advancement. This is something I have thought about deeply. In fact, it is woven throughout my newest book, Rise Wild. In two separate chapters I look into the diminishing effect that machines have on our physical and mental wellbeing, and at the ways technocrats are working purposefully to break down our moral and ethical foundations. In a chapter titled Technocracy And The Disembodied Human I write that “Our inability to keep pace with the rapid acceleration of technology has facilitated the emergence of a new form of autocracy, technocratic rule. Since we are currently incapable of managing the immense complexity that has resulted from our technological advancement outpacing the development of our consciousness, the only sane option is to slow the growth of technology to allow for our spiritual and emotional intelligence to catch up.” The alternative is that our decision-making gets outsourced to machines that lack essential humane awareness.

On the path to this alternate reality, tech leaders are labeling the ethical building blocks of our societies, like compassion and empathy, as sinful indulgences. This is because they adhere to a higher order, which presents an obstacle to us becoming blindly obedient to mechanized systems. Last week, there was an article in TIME Magazine that highlighted one tenet of the new capitalist gospel, which is really just a rebranding of the Ayn Rand ideology that defines empathy as destructive to progress. The term that was used in the article was ‘suicidal empathy,’ which comes from a book written by a Canadian marketing professor named Gad Saad. Saad also suggests that empathy is a danger to the progress of the colonial-capitalist state. His position has been adopted and rigorously promoted by the billionaire class, who boldly proclaim that empathy will destroy civilization. Though it is certainly true that empathy poses a threat to the inequitable and destructive form of ‘civilization’ that the ultra-wealthy have profited from, it is also true that increased empathy and greater compassionate awareness are essential building blocks of a more humane and just world.

In the eyes of the tech gurus, these core humane values are seen as a hindrance because they negate the logic of the reality they are attempting to create - one that elevates virtuality and ignores the sacredness of biological life. Whenever moral or ethical questions arise about the inhumanity of mechanized decision-making, algorithmic soldiers pop up to villianize those who are raising those questions. Tech giant, Peter Thiel, has gone so far as to call those who oppose the unchecked advancement of technology as being in league with the anti-Christ. Making it clear that he views technology as a sort of God. The virtual smoke screen created by tech-ideology makes it nearly impossible to see or meaningfully evaluate the moral and ethical implications of the mechanized decisions that are being made.

The only way that those spouting anti-empathy ideology have been able to convince people that their position is correct is by distorting the image and meaning of empathy. There are many ways that these distortions are being created. In this blog post, I would like to name just a couple of them, so we can avoid falling prey to their deceptions.

One method that is being used to distort the truth involves the mislabeling of trauma responses as weakness. The oversaturation and purposeful misuse of trauma language has helped provide the ground where these warped views are able to gain traction. Many among us have unwittingly been helping to cultivate the soil where these lies take root. To better understand how this works, we have to first be willing to look at our own behaviors to see if we have been contributing. Then, we have to commit to correcting those behaviors to modify the soil. Over the last two decades, words like trauma and triggering have been frequently misused by liberals and conservatives alike. These words, often used to avoid our own discomfort or to sarcastically discredit the painful experiences of others, have taken a sharp departure from their true meaning. When normal discomforts, mishaps, or annoyances are falsely labeled as trauma or when the word ‘triggering’ is used to avoid anything that causes tension or discomfort, it diminishes and/or invalidates the very real trauma that many have faced or are facing. This allows those seeking to dismiss traumatic realities an easier pathway toward avoidance. It also helps those who are complicit with those harms avoid responsibility. When mild annoyances are repeatedly described as triggering, people become conditioned to ignore trauma survivors when they expose real sensory triggers for legitimately experienced harm. This type of social conditioning leads to an overall numbing effect on our response to trauma causing behaviors. This is how the most horrific episodes of our shared history get repeated, and how criminals are able to hide the bodies in plain sight (think Epstein perpetrators).

To stand in our empathy and gain the degree of compassionate awareness that is required to build a more humane world, we must be careful not to falsely inflate our non-traumatic experiences. Being uncomfortable is a necessary part of growth. When we avoid all discomfort, we deny ourselves and our society the opportunity to grow. We have to remain personally accountable to our own values and reasonably responsive to the experiences of others. We can’t do that if we are desensitized to their suffering. Staying present in the midst of pain can be incredibly difficult, especially given the immense amount of harm that is currently taking place in this world. However, keeping our hearts open to the pain that human actions cause is the only way to prevent inhumane ideology from becoming normalized.

Another way that empathy is being diminished is by associating it with an overindulgence in white or patriarchal guilt. Today, this overindulgence is often labeled as having “too much” empathy. This is a false correlation. The overindulgence in white or patriarchal guilt is not empathy, it is simply another mechanism for avoiding the kind of meaningful action that is needed to address the lingering impacts of the history that caused that guilt to arise. Empathy is an ability to feel into the experiences of another, so that we may better understand what they are going through. It’s an emotional mechanism that has been biologically hardwired to help our species survive, by generating an impulse within us to establish communities of mutual care. Empathy has nothing to do with co-opting another’s pain and then using it as an excuse for inaction or as a mechanism to distance yourself from the harm that caused it. An appropriate empathetic response to proximate harm must involve tangible action that results in the immediate cessation of the behaviors that are causing that harm. And an appropriate empathetic response to the violent history that formed our inequitable and unjust societies must involve the purposeful dismantling of the systems and structures that have allowed a handful of men to benefit from harming all other living beings.

If we look at the anti-empathy ideology that is currently being circulated, we can see that it is largely being driven by billionaires and those in charge of big tech companies, including the top producers of AI. These individuals are going out of their way to demonize the moral and ethical values that could catalyze any movement toward a more equitable and just future. Toward that goal, billionaire tech bros and financiers, like Elon Musk and Bill Ackman have been proselytizing the anti-empathy gospel far and wide. They have even convinced some Christian leaders to adopt this blatantly anti-Christian ideology and begin promoting it in their congregations. This is not a novel idea. The demonizing of empathy is simply another attempt at convincing people that it is safer to continue their enslavement to the current system - a system that thrives on the avarice and gluttony of a small number of delusional individuals. They fear a world that is governed by empathy and compassion, because in that world resource hoarding and the commodification of our survival would rightfully be viewed as crimes against humanity, which would make it impossible for those currently committing these crimes to hold onto the privilege and exclusivity that they now enjoy.

So, please don’t indulge the delusional fantasy that these individuals are peddling. And don’t allow them to trick you into sacrificing your humanity for their insatiable desire to hoard wealth and power. Stay grounded in the Earth and centered in your heart. The world needs your empathy and compassion now more than ever.