Post by @KatyElphinstone@mas.to

2026-09-19 09:18 UTC

Hannah Arendt spoke about the banality of evil. And how when studying evil in action, the evidence points to one thing. A rather unexpected thing. Not lack of empathy, or a fondness for logic. No, none of the above. The thing was so much simpler: a failure to think deeply! The greatest indicator of not committing evil acts, after all, is deep thinking. Perhaps the autistic tendency is actually simply towards being more *universally* empathetic... and less partisan. End of 🧵 #Neurodiversity #Fairness #StructuralInequality

Replies (2)

@KatyElphinstone@mas.to 2026-09-19 09:22

Refs for the thread: Paul Bloom – in his book, 'Against Empathy', talks about empathy as a spotlight. Powerful, but narrow and selective - in effect, biased. Paul Farmer's book 'Pathologies of Power' goes into charity vs social justice. How helping individual suffering through philanthropy leaves the power structures causing it completely untouched. Hannah Arendt on the “banality of evil” - Her point is about thoughtlessness vs some kind of monstrous evil personality (people conform, obey, don’t properly examine what they’re doing). All three books are really excellent and I'd highly recommend them 😊

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@KatyElphinstone@mas.to 2026-09-19 09:32

A quick note on empathy here. By empathy, I mainly mean affective empathy (actually feeling with someone). Which of course, however, isn’t usually separate from thought. Affective empathy can follow our biases, just as easily as our better judgement can challenge them. So then all the stuff about social expectation, power hierarchies, etc. This article is one I did about autistic empathy, and the difference between feeling empathy and displaying it in socially expected ways: https://www.neurofabulous.org.uk/autistic-empathy.html

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