You don't need to be angry or sad to be useful

I was having a disagreement with an old friend about this recently. Smart guy, doing a PhD in AI (hi!). This made me realise that I should take a public position on this, as there are many other people I respect that seem to embody this position at various degrees. I shall talk about one version of this argument.

The core argument, as far as I can tell, goes like this:

• The world is a dumpster fire full of evil (wars, genocide, corruption etc)
• You need to embody righteous anger to counter this evil
• Also: if you are happy, you are oblivious to the evils of this world and can't play a role in countering it

This misconception stems from assuming that compassion can only be driven by strong negative feelings. And the only way to be happy is to be ignorant.

I am so tired of the 'I know the world is ending and everything is misery but here is my baby' Facebook posts. You do not need to acknowledge the collapse of civilization to post a picture of your child. You are allowed to just be happy.

— paraphrase of a tweet that I cannot locate anymore

To the argument above, I have a few things to say.

Firstly, negative emotions cloud judgement. They possess a person like a ghost, and make them feel terrible. It is in fact sadness, anger and greed that causes evil. Often the side that a person would consider evil would themselves be driven by a sense of righteous anger and bitterness. Mirroring the feelings of the side you'd consider evil is not a strong foundation to improve the world.

Another frame: we want to reduce injustice in order to reduce harm and negative emotions in others. In the face of this, embodying negative emotions in yourself, a form of self-harm, would now increase the amount of negativity in the world. The cope here is that this negative fuel in ourself is needed to reduce it in others later. But we can learn from our history textbooks—this is an escalatory pattern.

I anticipate an objection that what I'm saying sounds very logical and stoic, but compassion and empathy are highly emotional things, and it's not possible to "logick" your way out of it.

This is true. Thankfully, you don't need your left and right brains to be at odds with each other. Compassion, to those who are willing to try, can be a positive emotion. Think of the glowy aura that you feel from wishing someone well (often available on demand when you imagine a person you like and say in your head "may you be happy"). Or think of an instance when you helped someone and they were grateful for your help. Feels good, right?

You are also allowed to empathise and share someone's suffering, but you don't have to hold on to it. It's possible to feel it and then allow the emotion to release itself. This is often necessary if you want to be truly effective at reducing suffering.

I also suspect that a lot of those who hold on to suffering, and keep pumping the righteous rage of injustice within them, are doing so in an attempt to feel whole, to hold on to something and give their ego a purpose. It is a narrative that employs other people's suffering, but ultimately is focused to serve an inward purpose. A better form of compassion is one that's truly selfless and boundless, that doesn't serve or acknowledge an ego. When there's no self or ego involved, there would also be no embodiment of negative emotion.

There is also a lot to say about today's information environment, that assaults your limited attention with an endless feed of negativity and distant wars, and monetises your righteous anger that results from it. If the goal is to be effective, it is best to cut off information sources outside your sphere of influence, and spend that attention on either extending your sphere of influence or actually exerting it within the sphere to concrete results.

I shall now pause here and brew myself a lovely cup of chai.

This new year, permit yourself to be happy and reduce the suffering in this world. The best place to start is within. May you go forth with clarity.