Toxic Compassion is the prioritisation of short-term emotional comfort over everything else.
Over truth, reality, actual long-term outcomes, flourishing, everything.
It optimises for looking good, rather than doing good.
This is seen in much of popular culture as the desirable, fair, empathetic thing to do.
And it’s everywhere.
People would rather claim that body fat has no bearing on health and mortality outcomes to avoid making overweight individuals feel upset.
Even if this causes them to literally die sooner or have a worse quality of life over the long run.
Parents would rather allow their children to play computer games, watch screens, and access social media every night than deal with the discomfort of taking it away from them.
Even if it ruins their brain development, social skills and self-esteem.
People would rather say that children growing up in single-parent households suffer no worse outcomes than those from two-parent homes.
Even if this misleads parents, children and teachers about why kids behave the way they do.
Campaigners would sooner shout Defund The Police as a response to what they perceive as the unfair treatment of criminals.
Even if this results in more crimes being committed against people from minority backgrounds due to the abandonment of police officers in those areas.
Elon Musk recently responded to criticism about his political alignment and contribution to climate change.
He identified how big of a shift Tesla had caused in the Electric Vehicle market, and the downstream impact of that on the environment, saying that he’s done more for the climate than any other human in history.
The important tradeoff with all of these examples is between appearing good and actually doing good.
Telling people what they want to hear, giving them immediate gratification and avoiding saying anything that could cause distress prioritises the former over the latter.
The net effect is often wildly negative.
It’s the toddler who wants to eat ice cream every night.
Sure, that might be what they want in the moment, but it’ll be wildly unhealthy over the long term.
The prospect of appearing bad while doing good is obviously not very enticing.
The opposite is Performative Empathy.
Saying whatever is required to look good, even if you don’t actually care.
And on the internet, the gap between words and actions has never been bigger.
You can be the least virtuous, meanest, most dishonest human on earth, but if you say the right things on social media, you look like a saint.
No one stress tests the words coming out of people’s mouths.
Which means that appearing good becomes more important than doing good.
Performative empathy is more rewarded than genuine empathy.
Posting about mistreated groups is more incentivised than helping mistreated groups. *puts flag in bio, has never actually donated to a charity*
This isn’t me saying that you can’t do good while talking about it.
But that many (maybe even most) of the people who proselytise about how virtuous and caring they are, and how it’s everyone else who is evil, uncaring and the enemy are allowing their morality to stand on the shoulders of limited scrutiny.
Beware the people who prioritise saying good things; they might not be doing good things.
