Thanks for tuning in to Wit and Wisdom with Tom Green, where we start conversations on the things that really matter. This is episode number 170 of the Wit and Wisdom Podcast, and we're glad you're here. If you enjoy this conversation, I hope you'll share this podcast with a few people you care about. We're always looking for new subscribers. So last week's episode was entitled, you're not meant to carry the world.

And in it, I mentioned that every one of the world's problems isn't yours to solve. See part of being a normal grown up is recognizing that there's a great deal of suffering in the world. There always has been and there probably always will be. It's not being cynical, it's just being an adult. It's accepting reality without demanding it be something else, so you can feel better about yourself.

See, today we're exposed to more suffering than any human nervous system ever evolved process. War, footage, personal trauma, political outrage, the list goes on. Yet there are many among us who would suggest that it's your responsibility to care, and more importantly, to have an opinion on everything. Not just awareness, but a stance, a position. Well, the irony is that most Americans are just trying to pay the mortgage and keep the kids from killing each other.

That's the real struggle. And I believe those same Americans believe that we have more in common than not. They sense it instinctively when they talk to neighbors, coworkers, other parents, or folks on the sidelines of youth sports. But today, the loudest voices, the angriest voices, the most extreme voices, you seem to have taken over the stage. Today, it seems that anger and outrage are rewarded and that moderation is boring.

And the rest of us have slowly backed into the shadows, like trying to avoid a bar fight that you can sense is brewing. You just wanna be left alone so you can finish your mojito. But we're naturally empathetic people, and empathy allows you to understand another person's inner state. It's one of the things that makes us human. We want to care and we want to feel your pain, but only up to a point.

Empathy was never meant to be infinite. It has limits because humans have limits. But I feel like today empathy has been hijacked. It's almost been turned into a weapon. Not something that opens a conversation, but something that closes it.

Not a bridge, but a shield. Empathy doesn't require that you surrender your capacity for judgment. To be empathetic does not mean there's only one acceptable moral conclusion. Those two things, empathy and discernment, can coexist. But today they're treated as enemies.

Many use empathy to back people into a corner. To frame a disagreement as cruel rather than a difference. Phrases like speaking your truth have come to function less as invitations to understanding and more as tools for shutting conversations down. Once those words are deployed, the discussion is over. See, I think I can respect your feelings and still draw my own conclusions.

I can acknowledge your pain without being required to adopt your worldview. To be empathetic does not mean that there's only one acceptable moral conclusion. See, some folks think it's your responsibility to care and more importantly to have an opinion on everything. For some, those beliefs become part of their identity as permanent as the color of their eyes, and their identity becomes fused with a sense of belonging and a sense of moral righteousness. Once that happens, disagreement isn't just disagreement, it's a threat.

So let me give you an example from my childhood, and maybe this will help prove my point. So it's finally time to speak my truth and not many people know this, but my mother abused me almost every evening between the ages of seven and 12 years old. The most vulnerable time in a young boy's life. I was forced to do unspeakable things against my will, and my voice and my frequent objections are often ignored. And to be more specific, what actually happened was I was forced to eat broccoli, which is child abuse.

I'm allowed to feel that because I lived it and further, no child should ever be put in a situation where they have to experience the same kind of cruelty and trauma that I experienced. No one came to rescue me, which is clearly a failure of our system. I'm clearly a victim. Okay. Obviously, was a joke to make a point, but notice what happened.

My statement is made with a sense of authority. I've made up my mind that I was a victim and there's no room for arguing on behalf of broccoli growers or my mother's nutritional ideas. That's what I mean by hijacking empathy. I left you no room for opinion or us no opportunity for discussion. You either agree with me or you're wrong.

And if you disagree, it's not because you see it differently, it's because you lack compassion. See, empathy doesn't require that you surrender your capacity for judgment. Same goes today for discourse. As if the more aggressive approach takes the moral high ground. As if volume equals virtue.

A discussion becomes evidence of your lack of morality. Because today, your positions come with an identity. It wasn't always this way, and that's important to remember. Connection with people needs soil. Places where people bump into each other.

Where they talk and they linger and they laugh and maybe even disagree occasionally without getting to fisticuffs. Shared spaces that force proximity and patience. Those places are disappearing and with them are tolerance for complexity and dialogue. Just note how many churches grapple with gay marriage over the last twenty years. Instead of working together to find common ground, many major denominations split in two.

As if each side was morally unfit to worship with the other. Not mistaken or incomplete, but unfit. How sad. What was lost isn't just the agreement, but the willingness to have a conversation. You could have your truth if you want one.

After all, it is your lived experience. Maybe you enjoyed eating broccoli. But it's rude for me to claim that child abuse is an objective fact that applies to everyone. My truth is that I was abused. Your truth might be to really like broccoli, And you can be empathetic to me and my lived experience and still have your own truth about broccoli.

We should be able to coexist and still be friends. Still share a table and maybe even laugh about it later. To be empathetic doesn't mean that there are only one moral conclusion. If it does, then empathy isn't empathy anymore. And this hijacking of empathy leads to polarization along broccoli lines.

It's the reason why neighborhood trust is down, and close friendships are down, and conversations with friends are down. We divided ourselves into pro and anti broccoli factions, and somehow we convinced ourselves this is some kind of moral progress. It isn't. Empathy doesn't remove the need for discernment or context, and pretending otherwise doesn't make us kinder. It actually makes us more brittle.

We didn't end up here by accident. We ended up here because of a thousand shifts. Economic and political, cultural and technological, personal and collective. Incentives changed, institutions weakened, and algorithms rewarded outrage. And slowly, without realizing it, empathy stopped being something we practice and became something we performed.

And if a thousand small shifts got us here, then a thousand small shifts can get us back. Wit and Wisdom is a free weekly podcast for people who are curious about the world. If you learned something today or if this podcast challenged you or it made you think differently about the world, how about sharing it with a few people you care about? Maybe you too can have your own honest conversation about the things that really matter. So thanks again for tuning in.

I hope you'll come back next week for another episode of Wit and Wisdom. And in the meantime, always remember, nothing beats nice.