The idea behind Facebook was Harvard’s Face Book, a campus publication containing the pictures and names of everyone in the Harvard dorms. Zuckerberg was immediately sympathetic to the idea that everyone would “like” to know other people.
Whether there was any empathy involved, I have no idea. Maybe Zuckerberg was lonely. Or—captain of his prep school fencing team, founding Facebook with his dormmates, member of Alfa Epsilon Pi fraternity—maybe he wasn’t. But no empathy was necessary. All that was needed was understanding what others feel.
Amazon is different. Jeff Bezos empathized with his customers. He put himself in our place, which is sitting on our butts in front of a computer thinking, “It would be a hassle to go out and shop.” Whether he has any sympathy for us, who can tell? Sympathy is beside the point.
As it is with the business of business, so it is with the business of politics. For an example here, let’s cool off and go back in time to a period that we can view with relatively dispassionate eyes.
George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton present a paradigmatic contrast between sympathy and empathy.
Bush was a deeply sympathetic man. He cared about other people’s feelings. And he was no dummy. He understood why people felt the way they felt.
On the other hand, Bush never seemed to have the imagination or temperament to practice empathy—to project himself into other people’s lives. In fact, George may have thought that would be rude, too intrusive, too inappropriately personal.
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton was the most inappropriately personal man on earth. He had no problem projecting himself into other people’s . . . underwear. Not to mention lives.
Clinton was Mr. Empathy. “I feel your pain.” And when he said that he probably—in his overimaginative theatrical brain full of shallow adolescent sensitivity—meant it. For a moment. Until it was somebody else’s turn for Bill to feel their . . . whatever.
But did Bill have any sympathy for other people? We’ll have to ask Hillary. You first.
Bush’s calm, reasonable, and self-controlled attitude toward the mild recession at the end of his administration was interpreted as cold-hearted. His apparent lack of empathy cost him his reelection.
Clinton’s ability to act the part of Empathizer in Chief won him the White House.
Yet, in retrospect, we see one of them as a kind, decent man who loved America and Americans and who did his best for his fellow citizens. And we sympathize.
And we see the other as having nothing but the most sympathetic possible feelings—for himself. Just an old, conceited, rich crony capitalist from whom nobody ever wants to hear anything again. And we don’t empathize with him at all.
As emotions go, sympathy is more sympathetic than empathy. Trying to understand people’s feelings is steadier, more sensible, and less self-dramatizing than trying to project oneself into their underwear or steal their shoes. Nevertheless. Empathy may be a better business tool than sympathy, as George H. W. Bush learned in his loss to Bill Clinton.
And where do you think Facebook and Amazon will be in ten years?
When I mention Facebook to my college-age daughter she doesn’t just roll her eyes at me like I’m the extinct social media brontosaurus that I am. She also gives me a look of alarmed exasperation as if I’d suggested she give up Uber and start hitchhiking.
“Facebook is creepy,” she says. “The ads stalk you. The people stalk you. All your data gets hacked.”
As for where Amazon will be in ten years . . . Excuse me, the delivery man is at the door.
Patriotism vs. Nationalism
The difference between patriotism and nationalism is the difference between the love a father has for his family and the love a Godfather has for his family—the Bonanno family, the Colombo family, the Gambino family, the Genovese family, the Lucchese family . . .
Patriotism is a warm and personal business. Nationalism is another business entirely, the kind of business Tessio talks to Tom Hagen about after Tessio’s betrayal of Michael Corleone.
Tessio: “Tell Mike it was just business.”
In 1945 George Orwell wrote an essay, “Notes on Nationalism,” for the British magazine Polemic. The essay is long and too detailed in its analysis of Nazi, Stalinist, and Trotskyite political ideas that were put out with the trash long ago (although sometimes, unfortunately, recycled). But—in severe condensation—what Orwell has to say is:
Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism . . . By “patriotism” I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people . . . Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other [ideological, theological, ethnic, racial, etc.] unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.
Sinking your own individuality into anything is not a prescription for happiness. Even if what you’re sinking it into is beer. Maybe especially if it’s beer. But being a White Nationalist—or Black Nationalist or Hindu Nationalist or Islamic Nationalist or Gay Nationalist or Whatever Nationalist—is worse than being drunk.
At least if you’re drunk you’re not part of a mass movement. (Although I have seen something close to the sinking of individuality into a menacing unit at O’Rourke family Irish wakes. But too many O’Rourkes fall down or pass out, so it ends up being more mass than movement. Also, we have to sober up and go to Mass the next day.)
What makes the units that comprise mass movements worrisome is just what Orwell points out. You lose your individuality. When you lose your individuality, other people—who aren’t part of your mass movement, who aren’t nationalists in your “nation”—lose their individuality to you. They cease to be people and become “other people.”
You don’t