The world needs your empathy and compassion more than ever.

I arrived in Rome on Monday, jet-lagged and determined to stay awake long enough to avoid the impacts of the six-hour time change, a naïve hope but one that I continue to cling to, despite ample evidence of its futility.

Once I settled into my hotel room, I opened the News tab on my phone. The first headline that I saw was on Pope Leo’s newly released manifesto, where he was alleged to “ponder the future of humanity.” Given the long and painful history that Papal legacies have caused for both Indigenous and Black Peoples, the arrival of this headline coinciding with my arrival in Rome felt significant, especially when I considered my purpose for being here.

In 2015, Pope Francis made history when he formally apologized to the Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia for the atrocities and “grave sins” committed against Indigenous Peoples in the name of God. Then in 2022, Francis apologized again, this time to First Nations Peoples in Canada, for the atrocities that were committed in Indian residential schools. During that trip, Pope Francis acknowledged that the forced removal of Indian children was in fact a genocide. A critical recognition.

Now comes Leo. In his first encyclical, he acknowledged the Vatican’s role in legitimizing slavery, calling it a “wound in Christian memory.” These statements are the first steps toward restorative justice. The question remains, will these declarations remain empty words, or will they lead to some active repair and institutional transformation? Only time will tell. But I can’t help believing that this may be the perfect moment for a new legacy to be born, one that truly embodies the empathy and compassion that nearly all systems of belief claims as core values. This belief feels even more meaningful after reading Pope Leo’s encyclical and seeing the emphasis that he places on protecting our humanity and his acknowledgement that empathy is the thing that forms the essence of our humanity.

A couple of months ago, I sat in an audience and listened to Michael Pollan say that “empathy requires two things: feeling and vulnerability, two things that even the most advanced thinking machines will never possess.” This brings me to my next point, which is that Pope Leo’s message also contains some strong warnings about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence (AI), calling for robust regulation of its uses and reach. He specifically speaks against AI’s role in the mechanization of warfare - stating that it is “not permissible to entrust irreversible lethal decisions to machines, while their creators are being driven by a culture of power.” Instead, he urged the creators of AI to focus their efforts on working toward the common good, providing a clear description of what that means:

“…building for the common good means accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected. Today, the human desire for fullness of life is at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of a technology that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations. All too often, we place our hope in unlimited “upgrades,” in forms of progress that exacerbate inequalities, and in immediate solutions incapable of healing people’s wounds. As a result, while some pursue the illusion of unlimited self-assertion, many are deprived of basic necessities. The Church reminds us, with a firm yet humble voice, that true fulfilment is not achieved by eliminating weakness but through harmonious growth. It is found where freedom and responsibility are intertwined with mutual care and true solidarity, and where progress is measured by the dignity of each person and the good of all peoples.”

The Pope’s request that AI leaders begin to build for the common good, rather than their own benefit, may be as naïve as my hope of avoiding jet lag, but it does invite us to look more deeply into the very serious implications of this technology being misused. It also informs us that we must be willing to consciously resist the attempted degradation of our humanity that is accompanying the rise of the technocratic state. I have given a great deal of thought to this topic. It is woven throughout my newest book, Rise Wild. In two specific chapters I look deeply into the diminishing effect that machines have on our physical and mental wellbeing, and at the ways technocrats are working purposefully to break down our moral and ethical foundations. In a chapter titled Technocracy And The Disembodied Human I write that “Our inability to keep pace with the rapid acceleration of technology has facilitated the emergence of a new form of autocracy, technocratic rule. Since we are currently incapable of managing the immense complexity that has resulted from our technological advancement outpacing the development of our consciousness, the only sane option is to slow the growth of technology to allow for our spiritual and emotional intelligence to catch up.”

The alternative is that our decision-making gets outsourced to machines that lack essential humane awareness. On the path to this alternate reality, tech leaders are labeling the ethical building blocks of our societies, like compassion and empathy, as sinful indulgences because they are seen as an obstacle to our blind obedience to mechanized systems. Last week, there was an article in TIME Magazine that highlighted a portion of the current capitalist gospel, which is the rebranding of an Ayn Rand ideology that defines empathy as destructive, even suicidal. The term used in the article was ‘suicidal empathy,’ which comes from a book written by a Canadian marketing professor named Gad Saad. He suggests that empathy is a danger to the progress of the colonial-capitalist state. Saad’s position has been adopted and rigorously promoted by the billionaire class, who boldly proclaim that empathy will destroy civilization. Though it is certainly true that empathy poses a threat to the inequitable and destructive form of ‘civilization’ that the ultra-wealthy have profited from, it is also true that increased empathy and greater compassionate awareness are essential requirements of a more humane and just world.

In the eyes of the tech gurus, our core humane values are seen as a hindrance because they negate the logic of an existence that ignores the sacredness of biological life. Whenever moral or ethical questions arise about the inhumanity of mechanized decision-making, algorithmic patterns pop up to villainize those who are raising those questions. This virtual smoke screen makes it nearly impossible to see or meaningfully evaluate the moral and ethical implications of the decisions that are being made.

The only way that those spouting anti-empathy ideology have been able to convince people that their position is correct is by distorting the image and meaning of empathy. There are many ways that these distortions are being created. I would like to highlight a couple of those lies here, so we can avoid falling prey to them.

One method that is being used to distort the truth involves the mislabeling of trauma responses as weakness. The oversaturation and purposeful misuse of trauma language has helped provide the ground where these warped views are able to gain traction. Many among us have unwittingly been helping to cultivate the soil where these lies take root. To better understand how this works, we have to first be willing to honestly look at our own behaviors to see if we have been contributing. Then, we have to commit to correcting our own behaviors. Over the last two decades, words like trauma and triggering have been misused by liberals and conservatives alike. These words are often used to avoid our own discomfort or to sarcastically discredit the painful experiences of others. When normal discomforts, mishaps, or annoyances are falsely labeled as trauma or when the word ‘triggering’ is used to avoid anything that causes tension or discomfort, it diminishes and/or invalidates the very real trauma that many have faced or are facing. This allows those seeking to dismiss the harm an easy pathway. It also helps those who are complicit with those harms avoid responsibility. When mild annoyances are repeatedly described as triggering, people become conditioned to ignore trauma survivors when they expose real sensory triggers for legitimately experienced harm. This social conditioning leads to an overall numbing effect on our response to trauma causing behaviors. This is how the most horrific episodes of our shared history get repeated, and how criminals are able to hide the bodies in plain sight (think Epstein perpetrators).

To stand in our empathy and gain the degree of compassionate awareness that is required to build a more human world, we must be careful not to falsely inflate our non-traumatic experiences. Being uncomfortable is a necessary part of growth. When we avoid all discomfort, we deny ourselves and our society the opportunity to grow. We have to remain personally accountable to our own values and reasonably responsive to the impact that traumatic experiences have on others. We can’t do that if we are desensitized to their suffering. Staying present in the midst of pain can be incredibly difficult, given the immense amount of harm that is currently taking place in this world. However, keeping our hearts open to the pain that human actions cause is the only way to prevent inhumane ideology from becoming normalized.

Another way that empathy is being diminished is by associating it with an overindulgence in white or patriarchal guilt. Today, this overindulgence is often labeled as having “too much” empathy. This is a false correlation. The overindulgence in white or patriarchal guilt is not empathy, it is simply another mechanism for avoiding the kind of meaningful action that is needed to address the lingering impacts of the history that caused that guilt to arise. Empathy is an ability to feel into the experiences of another, so that we may better understand what they are going through. It’s an emotional mechanism that has been biologically hardwired to help our species survive, generating an impulse to establish communities of mutual care. Empathy has nothing to do with co-opting another’s pain and then using it as an excuse for inaction or as a mechanism to distance yourself from the harm that caused it. An appropriate empathetic response to proximate harm must involve tangible action that results in the immediate cessation of the behaviors that are causing that harm. And an appropriate empathetic response to the violent history that formed our inequitable and unjust societies must involve the purposeful dismantling of the systems and structures that allow a handful of men to benefit from harming all other living beings. If we look at the anti-empathy ideology that is currently being circulated, we can see that it is largely being driven by those in charge of big tech companies, including the top producers of AI. They are going out of their way to demonize the moral and ethical values that could catalyze any movement toward a more equitable and just future. Toward that goal, billionaire tech bros and financiers, like Elon Musk and Bill Ackman have been proselytizing the anti-empathy gospel far and wide. They have even convinced some Christian leaders to adopt this blatantly anti-Christian ideology and begin promoting it in their congregations. This isn’t a novel idea. The demonizing of empathy is simply another tool that is being used to convince people to continue their enslavement to the current system - a system that thrives on the avarice and gluttony of a small number of delusional men. They fear a world that is governed by empathy and compassion, because in that world resource hoarding and the commodification of our survival would be rightfully viewed as crimes against humanity, which would make it impossible for those currently committing these crimes to hold onto the privilege and exclusivity that they now enjoy.

So, please don’t indulge the delusional fantasy that these men are peddling by allowing them to trick you into sacrificing your humanity for their insatiable desire to hoard wealth and power. Stay grounded in the Earth and centered in your heart. The world needs your empathy and compassion more than ever.