by PF

There is an interesting paradox involved in human responsibility. On the one hand, asking someone to be responsible is asking them to do something that is nearly impossible in our unconscious waking state. On the other hand, holding people to responsibility is what we do, and it is not entirely clear how an alternative mechanism could take the place of it.

When judging someone, it is very interesting which perspective set you choose to view them through. Take Hitler, for example. There are sympathetic perspectives from which to view every action taken by the Nazis in WWII. You could call to mind their awareness of the Soviet threat, the threat of Communism. You could note the various examples of British malfeasance and provocation - or rather those actions of the British which, you would then note, would necessarily have to be seen this way in the eyes of Germans. You could note the intense humiliation at Versailles and the high jinx of the Weimar governments, and get a good feel for why German man wanted to lash out in various directions at that time period.

Putting yourself into other peoples shoes isn’t a new game for me, so I am utterly underwhelmed when, after going on an Easter egg hunt for all the sympathetic perspectives that can be wielded to reflect favorably on Nazism, they turn out looking quite vindicated. Their position actually makes a great deal of sense, once you adjust your own view for how they were viewing it.

The same is true for any person or persons whom you approach with a view to developing a sympathetic understanding of them - the same would be true, for example, of the British in WW2. You can actually judge how successful you have been in “perspective transferal” shall we say (putting yourself in other people’s shoes), by how much you find yourself asserting the absolute reasonableness of another person’s actions. If you can get into a man’s head, you will see why what he does is, from his perspective, always right - even if it is only always right in that moment. The application of this is limited only by our own imagination and ability to model other perspectives. If you can’t see why he’s “right” - in the same self-verified way that humans are always “right” - it is because you cannot get into his head. Even when people internally punish themselves, they still are “meta-right” because they believe in the rightness of the judge in their mind to pass judgment. Being reasonable is just having “the kiss of verification” from your immediate mental process - not a very tall order. We are all in near permanent receipt of such a kiss, unless we are presently undergoing contingency shocks and dealing with a pain that subdues our rightness.

Sympathetic perspectives are sympathetic because they acknowledge a limiting of the parameter range for human behavior. They acknowledge that you did not have complete freedom to smoke or not smoke that cigarette. And the more I understand about you, the more it becomes clear to me what little freedom you actually had. You had to smoke that cigarette, there wasn’t a choice.

Sympathetic perspectives qualify the psychological context of the individual’s behavior with a view to understanding them. Above all they make clear the limitations that human beings operate under. This ameliorates the force of judgment, because in the absence of these qualifications, the person-to-be-judged is an opaque glyph to be held against a set of default social standards. Did you punch someone in the face? Utterly unacceptable ... until I learn more about it.

If you do not employ sympathetic perspectives, the default assumption is that the human being in question should be able to move his personality through the whole of the parameter range that is available to you. You look at a child molester - why couldn’t he have a normal expression of his sexuality, like you can? Or at least restrain himself, like you can? Well, there are perfectly good reasons why he couldn’t do this - his childhood consisted of sexual torture at the hands of his uncle, and he has schizophrenic tendencies such that he hears voices when he goes to sleep each night. But you don’t know about these problems, and you don’t care - let the guillotine fall! This is how it is with all judgment.

When society doesn’t employ sympathetic perspectives to understand someone, they don’t understand them. If they place expectations on someone that are outside that person’s own restricted parameter range, they are asking the impossible of them - but that is what judgment is! In this sense all judgment is unfair, when viewed up close. Judgment is in some sense both a perceptual error and a fundamental mechanism for human social life.

But society judges, just the same. Especially those who endanger society, in such cases it is not understanding that we seek, but a guarantee of our own safety. We say ‘This is adaptive for us’ as the guillotine falls, not caring really whether we sussed someone thoroughly.

The vindication of Nazism that occurs through selective application of sympathetic perspectives - only to Third Reich Germany - is an example of a person fooling themselves ...

“Hey (scratches head) ... why is it that the people I decided to emotionally identify with always turn out to appear to have been in the right?” They must not know that this works with literally everyone, limited only by your capacity to model. Try it with WW2 British society and you will also understand why they behaved the way they did. Try it with Afghani resistance fighters - it will work. Try it with Jewish Zionists - a bit more difficult, but it will work. See how far afield you can get with your adventures in sympathy.