I Can Tolerate Anything but the Ingroup

Further thoughts on suicidal empathy

There is an old joke about two social workers walking down the street, who stumble upon a man who has been mugged and beaten unconscious. One turns to the other and says: ‘Whoever did that to him really needs help!’

Although ‘suicidal empathy’ is a useful phrase, the trait is not new; just like many tendencies, it accelerated over the course of the 2010s as progressive moral norms shifted drastically. As a result, we live in a world with a far greater emphasis on sins of the heart, or prejudice, often crowding out all other forms of wrongdoing.