Troubling lack of empathy
Reading Gary Younge’s excellent article on Incels (Why are nearly all mass killers male? 4 May) got me reflecting on what might be the root cause of many of our current malaises: the lack of human connection. Empathy has evolved to mediate human society and to create the bonds that have given us our past evolutionary strength. Two travellers walking on a lonely road will stop and chat and the warmth of the encounter will linger in both. But travellers in a packed train build defences around themselves and avoid eye contact. Road rage happens from within the disconnected bubble of the car, but if we inadvertently bump someone on the pavement we say, “Oh, sorry, mate”, looking them in the eye, and they say, “Don’t worry about it”.
But worst of all, locked up in isolated and lonely rooms, people’s anger is really let loose: all sorts of hate-filled garbage is poured out on to the keyboard. In this environment there is no human contact to allow empathy to aid interaction. It is so easy to be angry about a distant, objectified person and so much harder face to face. And where there is no meaningful contact, empathy can atrophy and hate builds, spilling over into all encounters. Women are naturally more empathetic and they maintain connection through open social bonds. But this safety valve is far less available to males, so they bottle it up and some explode.
David Trubridge
Havelock North, New Zealand
• Based on Gary Younge’s excellent article, let’s attempt a profile of an involuntarily celibate mass killer. He is a violent, angry young man. He has a victim mentality – he is unaware of his feelings and blames others for how he feels. He feels entitled to sex.
Digging a little deeper, beneath his anger is shame, loneliness and grief for life unlived. He is unable to move beyond these feelings, is immersed in them like a fish in water because he assumes their origin is outside of himself. He is bombarded by sexual imagery and assumes that sex would solve the problem of his loneliness.
He feels entitled – a spoiled brat. His parents swung between permissiveness (reacting to their authoritarian parenting) and violence (conforming to their background).
The problem is cultural: millions of young men fit this profile. He is just at the extreme end of the spectrum. Is there a solution? Yes, the skills of emotional intelligence can be taught, should be taught in all schools. It is just beginning to happen, but it may take generations.
Edward Butterworth
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Creating fake news is easy
Jonathan Freedland rightly denounces how borders between real facts and the tribal use of them is becoming confused (The great divide of our times is truth v lies, 27 April). This is perfectly illustrated by Alexander Nix, former CEO of Cambridge Analytica: “It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true as long as they’re believed”.
The situation is getting worse when real facts are not only denied, but also intermingled with untruths. Forging fake news is unfortunately made easier through advances in technologies.
Photographs were previously considered as unquestionable pieces of factual evidence. Now that they are digitalised, even a mere amateur can falsify and display them through social media as reality.
More than ever, we need urgently for our education systems to include what Noam Chomsky calls “intellectual self-defense courses”.
Jean-Marie Gillis
Wezembeek-Oppem, Belgium
Rewilding is still a valid idea
The atrocious events that have occurred in the so-called Dutch Serengeti will no doubt be used by some to discredit the whole idea of rewilding, so let’s be clear from the beginning that true rewilding is founded on re-introducing top predators (4 May).
The debacle near Amsterdam was never a rewilding project, since it depended on grazing animals to maintain a supposedly “wild” pasture in a place that would probably have otherwise reverted naturally to woodland.
A rewilding project would have started with predators, such as lynxes or wolves, to keep the grazing animals from eating themselves into starvation. The “Dutch Serengeti” is simply a case of human beings meddling unwisely, and nothing to do with rewilding as understood by ecologists.
Giles Watson
Albany, Western Australia
Briefly
• The 27 April editorial about the Gaza protests makes one hope that among those demonstrators and soldiers there are some future political leaders who will be given pause to contemplate the impasse of this apartheid situation; and that one of the Israelis will become the likes of FW de Klerk, while a Palestinian will have the vision of Nelson Mandela.
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
• Dandruff politics (4 May): I was surprised that Donald Trump has such an eye for detail, letting the world know that Emmanuel Macron has dandruff. Kim Jong-un should be advised to wear a white jacket when he meets the president.
Rhys Winterburn
Perth, Western Australia
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