Monetized Empathy and the Conditioning of Violence-Capitalism

Among the mass protests on the Easter weekend, there were only three in my red state. It was the most predictable three cities, the three largest cities. What was interesting to me is that in my city the central focus of the protestors signs and chanting was in defense of Harvard which is currently in a crisis dealing with massive budget cuts. What an action to take. With so much poverty in my tricounty area, the deep red disregard for human life, or ritual of mostly keeping local politicians in their seats for life, they have never made living conditions better for the most poor. Almost no action in the decades I have been here. I have left and come back a number of times. I know this state disregards to most poor. That is absolute.

However, there have never been protests for the poor. If I remember correctly, there was one march, on one occasion when the Poor People’s Campaign, led by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II himself, marched in this city. There was quite a welcoming from the black community, which disproportionately live in the poorest areas of the tricounty area. But under the current administration, what got people out to protest was concern for Harvard. Yes, budget cuts to Harvard are deeply harmful, not just for them, but for everyone. A specialist in new cancer research at Harvard is currently being held in a cell for immigrants. My own alma mater, Johns Hopkins, also does significant cancer research as well as other medical research, but they also lost a great deal of funding.

Still, there is no escaping that Harvard is and does provide for the master-class. Harvard is inaccessible to people living in the poorest areas downtown, but concern for Harvard is what this town was most concerned to protest on behalf of. Not the poor. Not kidnapped immigrants. Not the wellbeing of their own neighbors. I found it very curious and not surprising at all, given what I know about the abject lack of social consciousness in this area. I have noted a few times what the theory of monetized empathy states. Please all me to repeat some of that here:

Theory of Monetized Empathy states that people are more likely to be oppressed by other people if they lack financial well-being. Intersectionality still applies. This is a holistic theory, all encompassing, and true.

Given the reality of economic inequality and humanity’s refusal to intellectually entertain abolishing currency, we are left with the reality that we would be seen under this gaze. We are what we are. I am not saying there is not a healthy place for idealism in our collective cultures, but there is a big difference between idealism and deluding ourselves. We are dark creatures. We always have been. We think society has advanced, but for whom? And to what degree? And with what promptness? I have been giving some thought to what I call the theory of monetized empathy, which states that people are more likely to be oppressed by other people if they lack financial well-being. Intersectionality still applies. This takes nothing away from intersectionality. It does indicate that the voices heard at the lowest volume are those without the capital to warrant discussion by the upperclasses (plural, because there are many segments).

I was reading “The Dialectics of Ecology and Ecological Civilization” and the author cites Global Change and the Earth System. I did a search for the book. It was actually a bit difficult to find. Springer is asking $99.00 for the eBook, but you can download a PDF of the book, free, Open Access here. I also noted that Monthly Review cites this book quite often.

I felt this segment of the article contributed a good deal to what I briefly mentioned dealing with the Theory of Monetized Empathy,

The book Global Change and the Earth System, written by a number of respected scientists, notes: “In a world in which the disparity between the wealthy and the poor, both within and between countries, is growing, equity issues are important in any consideration of global environmental management.” Moreover, it is crucial to note that this systemic crisis has not directly led to a transformation of society toward sustainability. On the contrary, it has been co-opted by neoliberalism, exacerbating the crisis.

Monetized empathy is indeed cyclical. We can even see it rushing forward internationally, among so many nations in the world over the current tariffs controversy.

This submission to vacate any resemblance of human compassion for those of a lower class status, a construct, that so many are forced to live through and suffer through just because of the pleasant wellbeing of the master classes, is violence. Poverty is Violence.

The recent actions of class-elite’s explication of poverty inherits a history of racial hygienic cleansing that seeks to root out “not just mental and physical diseases and so-called defects, but also poverty, criminality, alcoholism, prostitution, and other social problems [that were understood as being] based in biology and inherited.” (Leonard J. Davis, ed., The Disabilities Studies Reader New York: Routledge, 2006, 95). Class regimes situational understanding of poverty as a social problem that is distant and elusive and not something easily addressed under the terms of intersectional justice, is the mandate of feminist readings of biblical verses that we must not detract from our station until “There shall be no needy among you” (Deut. 14:4). hooks maintains an inviting discourse, as Lisa Guenther notes, that places those in power as able to meet those without. Guenther questions were there can be resistance to domination in this meeting which I find is necessary to quote at length:

What is this margin of resistance, and how might one inhabit it differently, depending on which side of a hierarchical social binary (such as white/ black, man/woman, rich/poor) one is positioned? Borrowing a phrase from Levinas scholar Alphonso Lingis, I propose to consider the margin as a “community of those who have nothing in common”: a coalition of subjects brought together not by a shared attribute or essence, nor even by a common social position, but rather by a desire to resist oppression in all its forms. The point of such a coalition would not be to form a third identity position between black and white, nor to claim that race doesn’t matter, but rather to foster relations of solidarity that cross the tracks of identity in order to both analyze the systematic patterns of domination and privilege that structure subjectivity, and also to build upon those exceptional moments that rupture the totality of domination or testify to its incompleteness (Lisa Guenther, “The Ethics and Politics of Otherness: Negotiation Alterity and Racial Difference,” philoSOPHIA, Vol. 1.2, 2011, 198-199).

The violence of poverty is tied to the desperate action of provoking God:

Provoking God is like a river. Perhaps it is pure. Perhaps it is polluted. Perhaps it passes directly through your town or through a village on the other side of the world. The river dances whether it is tainted or not. It only knows to move. It has a history just as we have through our language. It came from some place. It has a reference point. We all have our reference points. We can use that to forward our actions to the crest of a vision and dream of a better way, for our community and ourselves. Our actions must be collectively centered. This river does not know how to be self-centered. It is inherently communal. It is the drift of our sandy thoughts in the wind that bend and shape an idealized future without demands from inaccessible portraits of fatigue and unrest. We can bend ourselves to the stars. It is internal and it is outward. In bending to that shape we distort derision to be exposed for what it is. If we have the heart to petition God, then we can dispel the monsters that shape derision and conquest and bend new shapes out of humanity to joy and eternal triumph, pushing through the city from our thoughts to our actions and realized in the quake of what flows from the [center of our collective created selves] and our esteem for each other (Tilley, “Provoking God” 2017, 2018, 2023, 2024).