Captains of industry and political pundits who believe the free market economy will save us all love to cite 18th-century social thinker Adam Smith and his book The Wealth of Nations. In it, he championed self-interest and a free market as a catalyst for societal improvement. But he also assumed those with the power and privilege would consider the needs of others within that free market system. Somewhere along the way, his ideas around empathy and moral obligation got stripped away from his economic philosophy. See, back then, the lines were blurred between economists, social thinkers, and philosophers.
Today, I talk with Sam Fleischacker, an expert on Adam Smith, to clarify what Smith really thought about a free market and our responsibilities to society within it. We also talk about what is distinctive about Smith’s conception of empathy in his own time and how it squares with today. Sam shares how empathy affects Smith’s proposals for economic policy, what he had to say about our tendency to empathize more with people we already know and care for than for people very distant from us, and the big question: Should we try to empathize with people we think are evil?
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- Judgment isn’t always negative and, in some cases, it can be used to form connections – such as admiring strength of character or showing sensitivity.
- Consuming art, literature, documentary and other stories of people that have different lives from you is a way to stretch your brain and think more empathetically.
- You must empathize with people you don’t agree with, even those who you consider evil. If you want to have any hope of changing them, you need to do that. You don’t have to approve of it, but you have to at least try to understand them. Empathy and criticism are not incompatible.
“Smith is very much about thinking about what everybody wants, from their own perspective, that is to say, empathizing with them. And I think that’s gotten badly lost on both the left and the right in public policy.” — Sam Fleischacker
About Sam Fleischacker, LAS Distinguished Professor of Philosophy
Sam Fleischacker is LAS Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He works on moral and political philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. He is the author of nine books, including Adam Smith, Being Me Being You: Adam Smith and Empathy, A Third Concept of Liberty: Judgment and Freedom in Kant and Adam Smith, and On Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion. He was President of the International Adam Smith Society from 2006 to 2010.
References Mentioned:
Edwin Rutsch, The Empathy Edge podcast: How Empathy Circles Can Change the World
David Weissman, The Empathy Edge podcast: From MAGA to Jewish Liberal Progressive
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Connect with Sam Fleischacker
University of Illinois at Chicago: https://phil.uic.edu/philosophy/people/faculty/fleischacker
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sam.fleischacker.7
Books:
Adam Smith (Routledge, 2021)
Being Me Being You: Adam Smith and Empathy (University of Chicago Press, 2019)
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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. captains of industry and political pundits who believe the free market economy will save us all love to cite 18th century social thinker Adam Smith, and his book The Wealth of Nations. In it he did championed self interest and a free market as a catalyst for societal improvement. But he also assumed those with the power and privilege would consider the needs of others within that free market system. Somewhere along the way, his idea around empathy and moral obligation got stripped away from his economic philosophy. See, back then, the lines were blurred between economists, social thinkers and philosophers. Adam Smith also authored The Theory of Moral Sentiments, where he wrote about and defined empathy, then known as sympathy as, quote, changing places and fancy with the sufferer and quote, I’ve mentioned Adam Smith in the empathy edge. And today, my guest sandfly Shachar, and Las distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and expert on Adam Smith, will clarify what Smith really thought about a free market and our responsibilities to society within it, and how he saw even policies such as taxation, through a lens of fairness and empathy for those impacted. Sam works on moral and political philosophy and the philosophy of religion. He is the author of nine books, including Adam Smith, being me being you, Adam Smith, and empathy. And on Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations a full philosophical companion. He was president of the International Adam Smith society from 2006 to 2010. Today, we talk about what is distinctive about Smith’s conception of empathy in his own time, and how it squares with today, Sam shares how empathy effects Smith’s proposals for economic policy, what he had to say about our tendency to empathize more with people we already know and care for, then for people very distant from us. And the big question, Should we try to empathize with people we think are evil. This was such a provocative conversation. Take a listen. Welcome to the show, Sam flashpacker. I’m so excited to have this conversation about Adam Smith. Thank you for joining us.
03:42
Thank you so much for inviting me, Maria, this is great.
Maria Ross 03:45
Well tell us a little bit about your work. We know that you are a professor of philosophy, and you are a big fan of Adam Smith, and speak about him at lots of different events in lots of different venues. Tell us a little bit about how you got into this work, what drew you into philosophy, and specifically your interest in Adam Smith and his impact on our world today? And tell us a little bit also about who he is for those who don’t know?
Sam Fleishacker 04:11
Sure. So I got interested in philosophy. Even when I was in high school, I was worried about questions about whether there’s a God, what’s the point of living all the biggest,
Maria Ross 04:23
common 10 questions? Yeah.
Sam Fleishacker 04:26
I haven’t yet to find a satisfactory answer to most of that. But then I went to college and studied philosophy and and on to graduate school, and I wrote a dissertation about the role of cultural norms and ethics. And when I came out, in my first year of teaching, I was teaching a class on British moral sentiment theory. That school of moral philosophy in the 18th century 1700s The most famous member of it is David Hume. But there are other people like Francis Hutcheson. Lord Shaftesbury not so well known today. What was distinctive about them is that they thought that morality is rooted in how we feel, rather than in our reason. And one of the main ones is Adam Smith, who was also a very good friend, arguably the best friend of David Hume. They’re both from Scotland. And they both were writing about the human mind. And they’re both founders, really, the social sciences, as well as the philosophy of social science, do more of history. But he also has important things to say about economics and political science. And Adam Smith is best known as the author of The Wealth of Nations, or as it’s technically called, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which is regarded by many people as the founding textbook of economics. It isn’t actually the first thing that was ever written about economics, but it’s probably the first systematic, extensive treatise on the subject. And it was thought for a long time in many schools and was very, very influential on the rest of the discipline. And for because he’s so famous for that, but people think he wasn’t economists. Now, first of all, in the 18th century, people weren’t divided that neatly between economist and philosopher are economists, political scientists, philosopher, psychologist, sociologists, both human Smith could be called all of those things. But this typically was a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow where he also got his own degree. And he was a student of Francis Hutchison. And he took over Hutchison’s courses in one was this huge year long course, which started with moral philosophy. And then went to philosophy of law, and then did policy at the end. And the policy included heavily economic policy. And Smith taught that and he was actually going to publish books on each part of it. But he never got around to doing the law part. I think if he had ever published that he might be known as a legal thinker instead of an economist. So this is all part of one project.
Maria Ross 07:02
I love that he, you know, back then it was sort of a blurred line around economics, social thinking philosophy, because we just spoke about the fact that in my first book, I had a reference to Adam Smith that I got from Roman Chris menarik, from his book. And I talked about the fact that he is cited as championing self interest as the catalyst for societal improvement in the Wealth of Nations. And he’s seen as the forefather, and he’s often bastardized to justify greed in economics, when actually he also wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and talked about concepts like empathy and collaboration. And so I love that there was this duality about him where they they very clearly saw a link between economic structures, and moral imperatives. Can you talk a little bit about that? How did that start that way? And where did we lose our way?
Sam Fleishacker 08:01
Yeah, that’s a big question. I should say that, as regard men, this has been a question people have been worrying about for about 150 years that the in fact, at the end of the 19th century, in Germany, you have people who talk about what they call in German, of course, that’s Adam Smith, probleem, which means the problem of how you put together the Wealth of Nations and the Theory of Moral Sentiments, because they said in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith is talking all about sympathy, X, his word, they didn’t have the word empathy, then, and benevolence and virtue and in the Wealth of Nations, they said, He only talks about self interest. Now, I should say, I don’t think this is really a fair reading of either book, Smith thinks that there is some kind of virtuous acting on your own self interest, even in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, that is caring about yourself, caring for your own health and your life is a moral duty. He thinks you’re you should do that, as do most people, actually. And most thinkers at the time would have said, and since that said, it’s a virtue to take care of yourself and to let yourself go, suicide to become drug addicted or something. This is actually a moral failing. But he also believed very strongly in benevolence. And in fact, he said that a lot goes wrong if we care too much about ourselves. He says it was a great rule of Christianity is to love your neighbor as yourself. And he says, the great rule of nature is to love yourself, only as much as you love your neighbor. Not more than that. But he did think self interest was a driver of economic activity, as again most people did. And he draws out how we can actually help each other satisfy our own interests in a free market without any government control or with very minimal government control simply acting on our self interest in the Wealth of Nations. He certainly does say that he’s not present greed, but he is saying that acting on your own self interest on acting by yourself without being told what to do by the government is a good thing, I think because the Theory of Moral Sentiments was kind of overshadowed by the Wealth of Nations. And what Smith said in his moral philosophy. It’s kind of interesting that it wasn’t that exciting to people. And wasn’t that different from other things at the time. By the 19th century, and certainly later, nowadays, most people usually read just a few sentences cut out from Smith in the economics textbook, people have forgotten that he had a wider moral theory in which he wanted to place his economic theory. And so
Maria Ross 10:33
that leads me to the question, again, because you mentioned that he did, he used the term sympathy back then, which was akin to what we call empathy today. And he actually defined it as, quote, changing places and fancy with the suffer. But where how does empathy effect his proposals for economic policy? Can you explain the link he talked about in terms of that, if it’s a free market, and there’s no regulation? What was the role of empathy in that economic prosperity and in that economic model?
Sam Fleishacker 11:07
So I’d love to talk about that as one of my favorite things about the Wealth of Nations. But could we backtrack a little bit, we didn’t talk about what Smith in detail thinks empathy is because he really has a different view of it from other people, including his friend, David Hume. And I think that’s how both of you put Yeah, nicely changing places with a sufferer, but quite how unusual that is, is worth Brown. Yes, so far, cume, sympathy is catching somebody else’s feeling. Man, he has a complicated explanation of how you do that. But you know, if somebody else is sad, you feel sad, if they’re happy, you feel happy. If they’re angry, you feel angry. And basically, that’s the mechanism for him even calls it contagion at one point,
Maria Ross 11:50
which is what we know to be emotional empathy at this, in our current world, yeah, after effective empathy.
Sam Fleishacker 11:57
For Smith, it’s feeling what you think you would feel if you were in another person’s situation, right? So sometimes that means feeling what they’re feeling. Sometimes it means feeling it less strongly or more strongly, sometimes it means feeling something quite different. So on the one hand, if you stub your toe, and you start screaming and yelling all over the place, I might think, man, it’s not that bad. That’s not how I would feel and I disapprove of you a bit, or rebuked you for making too much fast. If on the other hand, you’re going through something very painful and you are feeling it or expressing less pain than I think I would feel, then I might admire you and think, oh, wow, she’s, she’s really stoic. She can handle pain. She really, I’ve been very impressed by you. Right? So I measure what you feel by what I think I would feel in your circumstances. And it could be different.
Maria Ross 12:50
Right? And it’s because it’s your own lens. Yeah, your own
Sam Fleishacker 12:53
lens. And sometimes the lens is completely different. Smith gives the example of seeing somebody who, either because they’re drunk, or or they they might, and they’re not in a good mental state, or dancing and singing and clowning around inappropriately, you don’t think if I were in that situation, I would behave in the same way you think if I were in this situation, I’d be ashamed of myself. Just completely different. Right. So the point about what I call on behalf projective, empathy, as opposed to contagious empathy, is that it gives you a standpoint by which you can feel what other people feel but also measure their feelings to some extent, and either approve or disapprove, depending upon how much what they seem to be feeling Mac does what you think one should feel, and you would feel in their circumstance.
Maria Ross 13:44
So this is interesting, because we talk about this today as like I said, affective empathy. But also cognitive empathy is the mental exercise of imagining what it must be like for you or trying to, to see the situation through your perspective. Effective empathy is when the emotions get involved. But
Sam Fleishacker 14:03
that can say, I think that Smith wouldn’t accept, right, that dichotomy, because they’re both effective. When you project yourself, you’re still feeling something is just a different feeling different kinds of feelings. So I don’t think he would exactly line up with the wave data,
Maria Ross 14:19
he probably wouldn’t. But that’s the way they define it today. Right? So the point being that we often talk about it that in terms of the good it can do, but in my talks, especially talk about what are the pitfalls of that? Where can that go wrong? And that’s actually what you just got to whereas now you get into judgment, you get into I wouldn’t do it that way, or I wouldn’t feel that way or again, you can be biased of even the way you see it might not be the way the other person sees it, because you’re looking at it through your own frame of reference. And so it’s very interesting that there’s a that can be good or bad. And I hate using those terms, but but you can use it where it’s it’s productive. It creates connection. But it can also be something where it creates distance as well and creates some judgment,
Sam Fleishacker 15:07
the I would add further complexity, and partly on Smith’s behalf because Smith also thinks each of us is constantly seeking other people’s sympathy or empathy. And because of that we change how we feel or how we express how we feel. So a young child, for instance, may indeed jump all around the room screaming every time it stops, it’s no. But as the child gets older, they learn to restrain the feeling and often have a different version of the feeling that’s called maturity, right? Called growing up. And this is how we adjust ourselves to one another. So I actually think even the judgment sometimes is a good thing. And it’s a way of forming connection. After all, remember, the judgment can also be positive, if I admire you for your strength of character, or even for for showing a sensitivity that I don’t show to right? Well, I may emulate you, I may want to be like you. So that’s also a form of connection. Yeah, all these hasn’t gone many different directions. I love
Maria Ross 16:04
this. I love this. So let’s get back to that question of how, in Adam Smith’s view, how did empathy affect? How does empathy effect economic policy?
Sam Fleishacker 16:15
Okay, so I should say that this is me reading Smith. And I know a lot of people have really stressed this about the Wealth of Nations, I would strongly say it’s there. So I’ll give you my favorite example. There’s a point where Smith is suggesting tax policy, the tax policy part, the boring today’s reading with three, this was actually the favorite part for ministers in the British government at the time they get looking through it to find new taxes they could impose on people, or how to impose taxes. But that’s not exactly what Smith has in mind. He’s looking for taxes that will be efficient, but also fair. And one of his suggestions in terms of fairness, I should say some of those famous proposals and clewd, redistributive taxes, at least to a certain degree from redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor, is very much not the greed and all capitalism is a good view that’s attributed to him. But one of the things he says is that the tax gather of who is taxing a house should tax according to the number of windows in the house and not the number of cars. Why? Because if you’re going to tax people’s hearts, the fireplace this you have to go inside. And nobody really wants to tax gather in their house, they you know, it’s kind of offensive and an invasion of privacy and you don’t like taxes anyway. So that meeting them and having them traipse around your house is going to be very upsetting, while window tax you can do just by looking around the outside. And I think that policy depends upon really in quite detail, thinking yourself into the situation of a person who is having their house invaded or debate for the back. I mean, it’s a fairly trivial example. But it’s also one that shows a great deal of sensitivity to how policies in practice affect people. A more famous example, which actually also clearly shows a great deal of empathy is that myth that we should not tax on necessities, only luxuries. And he says that a linen shirt might be considered a luxury for a poor worker. But it’s really these days deep says a necessity because and people would feel ashamed of themselves if they went out in public without having a linen shirt. He also says about shoes. So he’s thought in considerable detail about what the lives especially interestingly, of poor people are like, and what it is to what what will humiliate them, what kinds of policies will affect them in a way that they’ll feel bad about themselves, that they’ll lose their sense of self respect. And I don’t think he could have come up with that, those kinds of insights without a great deal of empathy.
Maria Ross 19:07
So before we get to our next amazing questions that I’ve got for you, I’ve got so many, but I want to know, where do you think that’s gone? astray? So like we mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of free market. Economists and business leaders who cite Smith all the time in terms of, you know, self interest is what drives the economy and drives prosperity, and they’re not encapsulating the whole picture that he seems to have flushed out. Is there a trendline of when that started to separate? Or anything you can point to of where that thinking started to get pulled away where only the greed part of it got pulled through. And then, you know, looking at economic policies today in Western nations, where did it start to uncouple
19:58
so if you think it
Maria Ross 19:59
uncoupled you might not believe that it uncoupled. But if that is something that you subscribed to where do you think that started happening?
Sam Fleishacker 20:07
So I think uncoupling Smith from his moral foundations, this happened in many ways. I do agree with that I’m one one respect is that the attention is paid to the poor, which was so important to him. And to many of his immediate followers. His followers tended to be the more radical people at the end of the 18th century, not what we would think of as the right way, April as it were. And he always shows tremendous respect for the poor, not a condescension towards them. So that’s gotten lost. Another is the way in which pessimist, whole moral philosophy and simply a stalker has been has faded away. And we talk simply about the role of self interest in the Wealth of Nations. But a third thing, and this is something I’ve stressed to a lot of my students is a way in which policy has been driven by basically utilitarian concerns, rather than empathy, basically. And then what I mean by that is, policymakers very, very often think about the people that they’re making policy for in terms of debt, objects, perhaps, who want pleasure and want to avoid pain, and maybe they care about them. And that tends to want to make them want to increase their pleasure. But they’re not thinking from the people’s perspective, to think about what, how do we get them what they want? But not, how do we make sure that we are thinking about what they want from their own perspective. And one effect of that is, in terms of economics, what you usually hear is simply about how efficient the free market is, or how the free market can increase goods and distributed them? Well, you don’t hear kind of thing that I was talking about right now. Well, do the people, especially at the lower end of the economic ladder, for workers, for instance, people who don’t have much say in public policy, do they want what we think they want, public policy, mountain makers are often very top down, even manipulative, and they’ve been trained in the best schools to think they know what’s best for everyone. And that begins to get going really, I would say, at the middle in the middle of the 19th century, and continues to some extent to this day among Democrats and Republicans alike. You tried to figure out what you think will be good for those people. And you figure that they don’t know what they want for themselves. And Smith is very much about thinking about what everybody wants, from their own perspective. And that is to say, empathizing with them. And I think that’s gotten badly lost on both the left and the right and public policy.
Maria Ross 22:43
That is fascinating, because I think that that’s something we have, we’ve lost that I love how he brought in morality and the heart and and the humanitarian concern of how economic policy can impact people’s lives. Yeah, and people that were not necessarily like him. Right. So I would love to hear what you have to say about what Smith has to say about our tendency to empathize more with people we already know and care for, than for people that are very distant from us, because I think what happens in our very polarized society right now, is that we can imagine what, what those lives are like, because in our bubble, everyone looks and acts and functions the same. And so what did he have to say about that?
Sam Fleishacker 23:34
So Smith, there’s a section of his Theory of Moral Sentiments, that is known by scholars as the circles of sympathy. And he’s drawing there on an ancient idea goes back to the Roman stoic, that our care goes out in circles that we care most about ourselves and our families. A little bit more about the people we see every day. Smith mentions neighborhoods, and he mentioned office workers, he says, people in the same office call each other brothers that sometimes really feel that way, which is nice. And I think sometimes true, not always. And then still, we still care. But again, and again, and then we could weigh about every member of our country. And then just some small extent, Smith thinks we can care about the well being of any preacher that fields including animals in the entire universe. So that’s very weak. Our broad care for human beings is very weak. So the circles get weaker as you go further out. And I think he’s right. And he’s aware that that can mean for instance, that you don’t care very much about me in the hate the people, the next country. And he talks about national prejudice as one of the most terrible sources of conflict and completely unnecessary. It’s actually one reason why he wrote The Wealth of Nations actually, he really thought the idea that Britain has to do down French industry that, you know, the British have to destroy the French economy or the French have to destroy the British economy in order to be successful themselves. I thought that was ridiculous. That’s a win win game. International trade is helpful to everyone. And that’s the main sense in which he’s a free trader, actually, he’s it’s not so much about no government interference in in your local economy, as free trade across nations across the world. But he recognized that it’s just a natural fact about us that we don’t care that much about people we don’t know. And in fact, it’s very interesting, he doesn’t tie even family love to any biological kinship. It’s not that we have the same blood, it’s that we know each other well, Mac, the phrase he uses for the basis of caring about people, which I think is lovely, is habits of sympathy, or habitual sympathy. The people you have are in the habit of sympathizing with are people that you come to care about. And that does point to at least a partial solution, which is you have to get into the habit of sympathizing with empathizing with very different people. And of course, you can’t meet everybody. So the face to face contact, which is very important to this for him. And for others at the time, you know, you can’t hope to care about all this distant people. But he also thought because empathy works through the imagination, projecting yourself in imagination into other people’s place, places that literature can help. He’s a big promoter of imagine more than any other philosopher of
Maria Ross 26:42
the time. Right. And actually, I talked about that in the book in terms of consuming art, literature, film documentary from people that have very different lives from you, and being able to stretch that muscle of what might their life be like and start getting your brain to think that way. But I want to ask a question about this an offshoot question, do you think that’s why that purest form? I’ve had this discussion with lots of people over the course of my life. Do you think that’s why economic regulation legal, you know, policy regulation is required, because people ultimately fall back on their own self interests. And so the true free market economy can’t flourish without regulation, because of our very human traits of only being empathetic to people that are just like us.
Sam Fleishacker 27:34
Wow, that’s so interesting. I actually hadn’t thought about it in these terms. Exactly. So I’ll try that I have to put Smith rather than for me. Okay. I think Smith thinks that trading and knowing who to trade with and knowing what’s going to be a useful economic relationship is something you don’t need regulation for. Because you don’t really care what the other person is like if they have something to offer that you like to buy from them. Right. And if they seem to be a good worker, you’ll hire them. And that will overcome prejudice. And you don’t need to worry about
Maria Ross 28:06
that’s a perfect world. Yeah, exactly. But he wasn’t
Sam Fleishacker 28:10
living in a world in which there was an issue state of racial prejudice getting in the way of hiring that wasn’t an issue around him. He, he didn’t know about that. He was very opposed to slavery, by the way. And he did think if we could we need a regulation to get rid of slavery. But he also thought that only a monarch is likely to get rid of slavery. And in a democracy, that people who own slaves are going to have a lot of money and they’re going to make sure that you don’t have lost labor. It is on the pessimistic about that. But in terms of other regulations, he did think you need basic regulation regulations to make sure that that your property is protected, you’re protected against fraud and contracts are protected. Most people even extreme free marketeers agree with that the stay in a certain rules of justice. But beyond that, he thought that the exchange world could work on its own pretty well. I think that if you really want to overcome you want to new Smith to overcome deep seated prejudice. The main place, the main Smithian tool would be to introduce literature about very unfamiliar people into into your schooling. It’s not that he actually suggests that but that fits with what his proposals on other things best, right other people’s religions, other people’s cultures,
Maria Ross 29:36
just because it is a very utopian view that that’s the way the free market should work. And then you introduce, you know, excess greed, you introduce selfishness, you introduce prejudice, you introduce just all those human emotions and tendencies that make it not work as balanced as it should on paper.
Sam Fleishacker 29:59
Yeah, I needed a look, I should add, didn’t think that we should have some regulations to redistribute wealth. As I indicated, he had very modest suggestions. The main point was that when the government is building things, it needs to especially build things that private people won’t build on their own. So rich people often take care of themselves very nicely. But a lot of taking care of the roads, for instance, take making sure that freight can pass easily, it’s very important to the poor people, and that government has to make sure that it directs its monies that way. to a limited extent, he also thought that regulations could counteract prejudices here, the prejudice he has in mind isn’t maybe one way of thinking about so much these days, it was prejudice against merchants actually, corn merchants, popular prejudice, thinking that the reason why the price of bread is high is because merchants are just keeping it for themselves. And, and just making profit, he actually stopped us free trade and corn would lower the price of bread, and that if you had regulations that would get rid of restrictions on the price of wheat, actually, that’s what he calls corn, then the prejudice against merchants might disappear. So law can do something to mitigate prejudice. But I don’t think he thinks that government can do that much to change who we are, right? moral education is something that happens in families and right once one contact, and if governments try to take it on as a project, it’s not going to work.
Maria Ross 31:32
And that’s I think that’s the reality is, if everyone had, if any, everyone was in agreement on the moral imperative, and on taking care of each other, and on that ethos, then a free market, without any regulations would work, because everyone would be doing the right get the quote, unquote, right thing for each other. But in reality, that’s not what happens. It’s even even in the best of companies that start with good intentions of, you know, doing no harm or doing no evil. Like some companies, we know, eventually, they get so big and so powerful that that takes over. And then the human drive, for selfishness and FOR MORE And for a higher stock price and for how can I get my labor as cheap as possible and earn, you know, the best profit margins I can start to take over. And so I’m just curious if he had any cautionary tales for us about what happens when it does get out of control.
Sam Fleishacker 32:31
So one thing to bear in mind is that there were no large operations of the kinds that we’re thinking of in his day. What you had was some government encouraged industries like the East India Company, government encouraged businesses government run, really, and he was very against the East India Company, he thought it was terrible. But since you didn’t have limited liability, limited liability only comes in at the end of the 19th century, you really don’t have corporations now sense. It’s all fairly small shop. Got it. And they can’t get too much out of control. They’re just not big enough to get out of control. They can have only most they’re going to have a very limited control of of the market. One person who had started Frodo large company at the time is Josiah Wedgwood, from when we get all the Wedgwood, pottery and Smith probably disliked him. There’s some reasons to think that he gets a letter A year before the Wealth of Nations comes out from Burke, who’s in parliament is and it was a friend was Smith. And at that point was a liberal, I should say, not a conservative, and Burke says that Wedgwood has been pretending, claiming that helping his business would help the whole of Britain. And Burke says I don’t like it when businessmen claim that helping their business does good for the rest of the country. I will say we honestly say they’re doing it out of their self interest. And Smith includes a version of that line in the Wealth of Nations without mentioning weds word, saying that basically, that merchants who claim that what they’re doing is good for the whole country, and usually not speaking good faith, and you should just get them to shut up.
Maria Ross 34:14
He would not like some of the modern business leaders that I don’t know. Well, let’s this leads me into my last question, which is a big question. And it’s kind of all rooted in this because when we talk about differences in philosophy around the moral imperative of rich versus poor or business versus consumer, or you know, all of these things that their economic policies, but they also reflect our, our moral sentiments, many of these economic policies that we subscribe to, I get this question a lot. And I told you, I never know how to answer it in a great way. But should we try to empathize with people we think are evil. Where does our tolerance for empathy. When does our responsibility for empathy run out? If it does?
Sam Fleishacker 35:07
That’s a great question. And it is actually the question of the last chapter of my book. It’s called, that chapter is called empathy and demonization. And I do argue, without apology, that yes, we should try to empathize with people who are evil. In fact, I don’t hold no holds barred bear. I’m a son of a refugee from Nazi Germany, both both my parents were refugees from Nazi Germany. But I think we should empathize with Nazis. And were the white nationalists. Why? And their Capistan going beyond Smith, they’re talking about exercising the vote that Brett Smith, so rather lovely, perhaps naive, non demonic view of human beings in general, or yes, people he criticizes, he says, oh, you should do the best that you’re doing the best they can. He’s very rarely rarely he really
Maria Ross 36:00
understood their context. It sounds like Right.
Sam Fleishacker 36:03
However bad they were he’d ever demonize them because right, it was the people. But look, you can demonize him, I think correctly. You can see a lot of a lot of people as grossly, grossly evil. Why empathize with them anyway? Well, first, let’s remember what you were calling in accordance with a lot of current usage, cognitive empathy, and I’m calling projective empathy. Smithian empathy, which the but remember that I said that that does involve Smith, dealing what somebody else feels when you project yourself into their circumstances? Why should you do that with evil people? Well, I’ll give you three reasons. First of all, if you want to have any hope, of changing them, you need to do that. You don’t have to approve of that. But you have to at least try to understand them. And think of how you might do what they’re doing. Understanding I think means figuring out, maybe you wouldn’t do some of the horrible things that the people you’re talking about are doing. But how could you get the situation in which you might be tempted to do that? I can’t imagine myself doing what the Nazis did. But I can imagine myself, going through a process in which I became an exam is a horrible thought. But I can’t imagine that happening. And if I want to have any stance of changing a Nazi, I need to do that. Now, I don’t know how good our chances are of changing Nazis period, there are these stories, especially in fact, in a lot of empathy broadcasts and podcasts, about some former white nationalists, white Nazis in America have been turned around often by way of empathetic exercises. So I think that’s encouraging, but I doubt it happens a lot. But the second thing is, do you want to prevent other people from becoming not this from becoming white nationalists from becoming terribly evil in some other respect, empathizing with what gets people into the sponsor vivo is necessary if you want to prevent it, right. And then the third thing, and maybe the most difficult thing is if we don’t try to empathize with the evil, we block ourselves from recognizing the potential for evil in ourselves. And I think eBay, basically, it’s a matter of either own up to the fact that you yourself could become exactly what you most hate, you know, horrible, fanatic, killing people, cruelly greedy person, etc. Or you have at least the possibility that you will act like that, or will eventually become like that, without knowing it. you block yourself from seeing the wrong you’re doing and that you’re capable of, if you can’t empathize with other people like that. So the Renaissance slogan, nothing human is alien to me. I think we have to recognize that good and bad we can, everything anyone else does for the good. Because it’s what a human being has done, we can share. But everything every other human being does that evil, because it’s what another human being does, we also can share that. So I think a true humanism involves an effort in empathizing with others, you can still condemn them when you do. Right. Right. But I think empathy and and, and criticism are not incompatible and May, but the criticism that comes up empathy is a deeper and more thoughtful criticism.
Maria Ross 39:35
I think completely and you know, when I have talked to folks about empathy, it’s it doesn’t mean that you agree with someone. Right. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with the work of Edwin Racz, who I’ve quoted many times on this podcast. He has the Center for building a culture of empathy based out of Berkeley, California, and he has done global trainings for years around a process called empathy circles. which is a facilitation technique that he has actually taken to the country’s most divisive political rallies, and gotten people from both sides of the spectrum into a tent, an empathy tent, to have a conversate, an active listening conversation with each other. And the goal is not to convert to one ideology or another because that won’t happen. The goal is for them to see each other as human. And understand the context. I don’t agree with you. But I could see how you got there type of situation. And so the more conversations we can have like that, the I think the better for everyone, because I think it elevates everybody, it gets both sides thinking. It gets both sides understanding that we’re dealing with human beings that one person really believes their point of view is right, and the other person really believes their point of view is right. And how do we go forward from there? That the answer can’t be that we stopped talking to each other.
Sam Fleishacker 40:56
I even think that adds what a fourth reason for doing this kind of empathizing to the three HSK. A is somebody who even somebody who you may think of as happening, absolutely hateful ideology, if they see you trying to empathize with them, it might not change them, but at least it’s more likely to build some respect for you to open them up a little bit. Because that’s one of the things that they’re probably looking for some kind of respect, right understanding of who they are and where they’re coming from. Well, I
Maria Ross 41:29
had a guest on the show, David Weissman, who has become an influencer in social media. He was a very, very strong Magga proponent, a former veteran, and he changed his mind. And it was through the power of conscious effort, very empathetic conversations, where it turned out he had just grown up in a world where he was fed certain information. And he completely believed it about the quote unquote, other side about liberals about Democrats. He was raised to believe that they were evil, and they were trying to destroy the country. And it was only when he was able to have conversations where people weren’t judging him where people were, were talking with him and trying to understand what he’d been through that he realized the brainwashing he’d been through. And now he is what he calls a progressive, Jewish liberal, right? So he has really made that switch. And I interviewed him for the show. And it’s just so wonderful when you see like, people didn’t give up on him. They they continue to try to engage in conversation. And yeah, maybe it was their ultimate goal, quote, unquote, conversion, maybe. But they also gave him space to listen to reflect, to question his own beliefs, like you said, their empathy, and their respect for him, gave him the space to not dig in his heels so much, and do more learning, and do more reading and do more investigation of the facts on his own. So that he realized, oh, what I’ve been fed, my whole life is actually a false narrative. He never would have done that, if he was put on the defensive.
Sam Fleishacker 43:07
There’s great work like that going on in Israel and Palestine at the moment. And I know people who are involved in that, that’s the cause of close to my heart, is the brief parent circle, which has Israelis and Palestinians who have both lost family members to violence. There are a whole bunch of other groups. And in fact, I know someone quite well went through something very much like what you’re saying he began engaging in these empathetic discussions. He is an Israeli settler, with Palestinians. And at first, all he wanted was to understand them, and to have conversations, but it really led him to become very concerned about denials of Palestinian rights and to become something of an activist for Palestinian rights. That really changed him a lot. And it’s changed people on the other side as well. So I mean, it’s unfortunately, it’s very small, it’s low level, it’s grassroots. But I do see in Israel, Palestine, some of these kinds of empathetic conversations is one of the most, one of the few real points of light in that dark region at the moment.
Maria Ross 44:13
Well, that’s a wonderful place to leave it off. Uh, Sam, thank you so much for this conversation. i As always with my guests, I could probably talk to you for another hour, but I won’t keep you we will have all the links in the show notes, especially to your book being me being you Adam Smith and empathy. But for folks that are on the go right now listening, where’s the best place they can get in touch with you?
Sam Fleishacker 44:34
They can Google me and I have a web page on my unit at the university or they can get in touch with me on my Facebook page. I think that the damn
Maria Ross 44:44
dot flash Hacker dot seven. Yes. Yes, that’s fine. We will have that link in the show notes as well. Sam,
44:50
thank you for the stay off, though. It was a delight to be here.
Maria Ross 44:53
Yes. It was such a great conversation. I’d love to continue the conversation with you offline as well another event us but thank you for your time and your insights today a very unique point of view and, and a well deserved point of view of Adam Smith and his intentions and, and where the role of empathy does have a place in economic policy and in our current climate today. So thank
Sam Fleishacker 45:15
you. You’re welcome. Thanks so much for having me on.
Maria Ross 45:19
Thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. As always, if you like what you heard, please rate review and share with a colleague or a friend. And until next time, please remember that cashflow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
