I firmly believe that a key component of human decency is empathy.

Empathy is different from sympathy. Sympathy means “feeling with,” as in “I feel your pain.” Empathy is the ability to understand somebody’s feelings without necessarily sharing them.

Sympathy can be good or bad for decision-making about human relations; empathy is absolutely crucial. If you can’t understand somebody’s point of view then the person is simply an object, not a human being to you.

In fact, the reaction we have to people who are being especially cruel is at least partly driven by our inability to understand their cruelty. We can’t empathize with a child abuser, or with somebody who kills John Wick’s dog, so we want them dead. I use my inability to have empathy for somebody as something of a moral marker. I can empathize with a thief–I get what motivates them. I can’t empathize with a madman or a puppy killer.

The @TorontoStar just tried to lecture us all on social empathy! LOL

🤡🤡🤡 https://t.co/JLsXOaF83Z pic.twitter.com/DcDGxJQfSj

— Kat Kanada (@KatKanada_TM) October 4, 2023

Empathy was in very short supply during the COVID crisis, as it often is in totalitarian times. Totalitarianism thrives on atomizing society–driving wedges between people and destroying empathy. You saw this in the frenzy of hate directed at COVID skeptics. You can see that hate dripping off the front page of the Toronto Star from 2020.

Die. Die. DIE! I hope you die, narrative denier.

Amsterdam, January 2022.

Anti-lockdown protestors are viciously attacked by the police.

This is what they did to people’s rights.

They did this in the name of science.

It was not science.

It was evil.
pic.twitter.com/BBlIDcuL9n

— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) September 12, 2023

Cruelty was everywhere. Vast numbers of people said they wanted to put the unvaccinated in concentration camps. Police were sent out to manhandle people in the streets in order to force people to wear masks. Police dogs were used to control COVID-19 protesters. Cruelty was everywhere.

August 11, 2020

21-year-old Australian mother of three is choked and arrested for not wearing a mask.

She had been to the doctor earlier and had a mask exemption.

She was charged with assaulting a police officer.

Masks have minimal effect at preventing COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/3zDt9qc3Rb

— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) September 1, 2023

The cruelty shown to COVID skeptics was nearly unlimited. Not only was there no empathy; the government and the media did everything they could to ensure that none could develop. They turned skeptics into “others,” subhuman, and treated them as such. They created an environment where dissent made you inhuman and subject to violence and humiliation.

May 2020 – An Ohio woman is arrested and tazed for refusing to wear a mask at a football game. 33/pic.twitter.com/xVFDe3gx0s

— Michael P Senger (@michaelpsenger) May 17, 2023

Now we are being treated to an editorial from the Toronto Star–the paper that published on its front page in huge type that COVID skeptics should DIE DIE DIE–on the importance of empathy. In this case by empathy they just mean: comply.

This call for empathy in the Toronto Star is simply another call for compliance with The Narrative. It’s not the people who agree with the Narrative who need empathy–rather it is the people who dissent. They need to comply. Out of “empathy,” they say. But this is the opposite of empathy.

Parents should decide what’s best for their children, but we are part of a community. What about the immunocompromised child in the classroom who is susceptible to the negative effects of the chickenpox? Don’t we have a responsibility to think about that person?

For years, people have denied that our climate is changing because of what we, as humans, have been doing. They speak about #climatehoax or #climatescam and pretend like we haven’t just experienced the worst wildfire season on record in Canada.

A difference of opinion is necessary. It makes us rethink what we believe in and test our theories. We learn so much by listening and learning from those who hold opposing ideas. When we break out of the echo chambers that support our views and reject any dissent, we become more empathetic to the people we don’t agree with. But what we must understand is you can hold your own opinions, but your opinions don’t overrule cold, hard facts.

Some people refuse to listen to reason, science, or facts. They believe that a conspiracy is always afoot and they are the only ones to have the real truth, because they watched a YouTube video or joined an online discussion — or because of their lived experiences.

Where does all of this lead us? Groupthink, the stubbornness and wilful ignorance that makes us think that we are always right, and our point of view is the only valid one. We are wrong and strong, never thinking we could or should change our minds.

Notice the pitch? Not one bit of empathy regarding the fears–many or most of them justified by revelations–people have developed since they were lied to so many times by the public health establishment. The people who need empathy are the dissenters–they must learn to love “science” and comply.

Otherwise they are part of “groupthink” or conspiracy theorists. The Toronto Star uses the word “empathy” in the same way that trans-activists use the word “woman.”

There is an irony here, but I can’t appreciate it. This is just the soft pitch of totalitarianism. If people don’t comply, the dogs come out to force it.

The message is clear: obey, or else. Empathy is just a word for these people.