Empathy Can Still Save Us
- zachlaengert
- Jan 30
- 6 min read
Reflecting on our world, The Stormlight Archive, the Burningblade & Silvereye Trilogy and more
Angry and Afraid
It has been a damn tough ten days since Trump took office, and the horror of seeing Project 2025 rapidly and extrajudicially pushed out doesn't seem to have an end in sight. (I've been following Alejandra Caraballo and Erin Reed on Bluesky - add me! - who've been keeping track of the chaos and calling it all out for the fascism that it is; though I can't say awareness is doing much good for my personal mood and mental health.)
So today I want to take a step back and look at what I believe is an important cause in how we got here: a lack of empathy, and not just from people on the political right. If we can just fix our perspective, maybe we can begin fixing the world.
G.M. Gilbert, an American psychologist who worked at Nuremburg with several high-ranking Nazi prisoners, once wrote:
“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
So, how does our innate empathy for our fellow humans disappear? What could we do to strengthen it instead?
Once upon a time I actually wrote an essay on a very similar topic – with focus on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – you can read it here if you're interested!
False Dichotomies
Fundamentally, empathy fades when we no longer think of someone as human – that process being dehumanization. This is the goal of the 'us vs. them' mentality (synonyms 'factionalism', 'tribalism', 'othering', 'in-group and out-group' etc.), employed throughout history to inspire loyalty for our faction by stoking feelings of fear, hatred and prejudice of theirs. It is almost always made synonymous with good vs. bad.
Our own history is rife with examples, of course, but today I'll focus on The Stormlight Archive and a little of Burningblade & Silvereye because I find it deeply compelling to examine this mindset beyond simply 'humans vs. humans' (we're all just goddamn people, y'know?).
Sanderson's novels follow the continent- and seven millennia-spanning conflicts between humankind and the Singers, a humanoid species native to Roshar before humanity's arrival. The Singers seem utterly alien at first, but as the books progress Sanderson makes it clear that not only is that feeling mutual (humans being very fleshy compared to everything on this planet) but that the Singers' history and perspective is just as tragic and heartfelt as humanity's.
Rhythm of War finally demonstrates that empathy and respect can exist between humans and Singers; Navani and Raboniel's magical/scientific search for knowledge is among the most beautiful relationships in the series, as is Renarin and Rlain's budding romance. Wind and Truth takes this a step further, showing that similar overtures have been made in the past, to disastrous results – more on that in a minute.
I finally finished listening to Django Wexler's Burningblade & Silvereye trilogy this morning, and while the ending left me a little miffed I think it offers a useful parallel.
Brother and sister Gyre and Maia (the British narrator had me positive it was Gaia and Maia until I looked it up) spend most of the trilogy on opposite sides of a conflict between the heroic, powerful Order of Centarchs and the oppressed common people under the corrupt systems that the Order props up.
Getting perspectives from both sides, seeing good people getting hurt while taking genuinely heroic actions for the people they love and the world they believe in, makes it tough to support either side.
Like with Stormlight's humans and Singers, it feels like an impossible conflict where neither side can satisfyingly (or justly/morally) win. Neither author says it directly, but they both imply it: the conflict itself is the true enemy of both sides.
Seeded by Corrupt Powers
By now we're all familiar with the fact that Russian trolls have played a significant role in destabilizing western democracy; I think the inauguration ten days ago makes it clear that the tech oligarchs are pretty happy with the outcome as well. By sowing disinformation and building distrust among the common people, the assholes in charge give themselves room to get away with whatever they want, whenever they want.
Blood of the Chosen and Emperor of Ruin reveal that Gyre and Maia's societal conflict are partly the result of one ancient man's influence, creating fear and paranoia everywhere he can in order to keep humanity weak and the door open for his return to power. (It's also interesting that the Chosen are worshipped to such a degree given the reveal that they're ultimately just humans – an eerie mirror of capitalist/tech bro worship of figures like Musk and Bezos.)
It was clear from early on that Odium was a major cause of strife on Roshar; made even more so when Oathbringer revealed that he was originally the humans' god before switching to the side of the Singers. He is God's passionate hatred made manifest, held by a man who was already cruel even before being changed by ascension. Empathy is basically his antithesis, so of course he would sow its opposite.
Wind and Truth offers a cold slap to the face with the revelation that Honor (Odium's rival on Roshar) was responsible for shattering a nascent human-Singer alliance and inadvertently mutilating the Singer population for thousands of years. The book overall is a meditation on the fact that Honor in and of itself is not a good thing, and this moment makes it clear that the powerful can and will stand in the way of empathy to maintain their own influence and the status quo.
Us, Us (Them) and Them
Liberalism is about empathy; caring about the experiences and well-being of the people around us. Books are a great way of building empathy because they put us in the perspective of another person, seeing the world and reacting to life through their eyes. The original idea behind 'political correctness' is just being goddamn considerate of other people.
But somehow (people in power wanting to maintain the status quo) this idea got twisted into attacking people who don't perfectly conform; both negating basic empathy at its source and fostering a new 'us vs. them' mindset. For years I believed this perspective was just used by trolls, but it's actually taken over a lot of online discourse these days.
AOC herself could hold a Starbucks coffee in a picture tomorrow and there would be masses of people calling her the greatest evil in the world, even while we watch the Nazi party being re-established around us.
Empathy is about kindness and understanding, not punishing every perceived wrong one-hundred-fold. There are many things to be justifiable angry about in the world and taking that anger out on each other only makes those problems a little harder to deal with.
Our goal needs to be to teach empathy to enough people that they recognize the evil being perpetuated right now. As it stands, why would anyone change their mind if a single mistake will see them torn apart by the pack?
A World of Parallels
While I chose to focus on these series today for their overt exploration of alienation, these ideas are foundational to speculative fiction and and appear just about anywhere you choose to look.
Just take The Lord of the Rings, where half the battle is simply recognizing the evil in the world and reviving old alliances by persuading others to do the same. Time and Sauron's influence have seeded the human kingdoms of Gondor and Rohan with xenophobia to the extent that they nearly fall without reaching out to their fellows for aid.
I think it's important to look for these parallels in whatever you're reading, so that in turn you'll begin to recognize them more and more when they arise in the real world. There will always be forces trying to keep us divided, but together we can be better.
Thanks for reading and until next time <3
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