The gist is that Recuber writes about the concept of "empathetic hedonism," which is the expression of empathy, not because it does good for its own sake, but to make one feel good about one's self. See? I'm empathetic! That means I'm better than you are because I have so much empathy! It's sort of a purity game. Express empathy rather than doing good. One of the issues raised in the article is the observation that, while 12 kids were trapped in a cave, there are far more living in war zones around the world, completely ignored because we don't have the dramatic event of the scary cave. Consequently, people wind up ignoring the greater dangers and disregarding far more lives for the sake of empathetic hedonism. Do you want to do some good and save lives? If so, the Thai cave rescue wasn't the place to focus your attention, by the numbers. On the other hand, it was a great place to focus your attention if what you wanted was some good, old-fashioned moral posturing.
Does this sound familiar? It might. It is very similar to how I write about liberals' reactions to "mass shootings," with a twist, and some insights I hadn't considered before. Recuber even mentions... Parkland.
Regular readers can probably guess what I was thinking as daily news coverage of the Thai cave story played out. 10,000 people were dying every day due to waterborne pathogens around the world, and everyone was focused on 12 kids in a cave. Just call me Mr. Pump. The 10,000 a day were being ignored because it was harder for the media to create a dramatic narrative about it, with a story that was too old to be a story anymore, so nobody cared, and 10,000 per day is so many that nobody can bring themselves to see that as anything more that a Stalinist statistic. I was disgusted, and continue to be disgusted by the world's capacity to pretend that they care about saving lives while ignoring mass tragedy. You want to ignore people dying? Then don't posture to me about how much you care about whatever deaths or lives-at-stake are the story of the day. I hate hypocrisy.
Resnick, who interviewed Recuber for Vox, brought up children living in war zones, as his point of comparison. Why focus on 12 kids in a cave when there are far more living in war zones? That is a legitimate comparison, and makes fundamentally the same point. The world misses mass tragedy in favor of small but dramatic stories, and according to Recuber, it is so that people can pat themselves on the back for feeling empathy rather than actually doing anything. However, I won't even go where Resnick goes because I'm not confident I know how to save the kids in war zones. Intervene militarily? Sometimes that's the right answer, sometimes not. I'm not confident I know how to tell the difference. This is one of the things that scholarship teaches you, or should teach you-- being constantly aware of the limits of your own expertise. Some problems are easy (don't start a trade war with Canada, you fucking mercantilist idiot!). Many are difficult. War and political instability? That's about as difficult as it gets, and until you get to extremes (fighting Hitler was the right thing to do, for example), I get uncomfortable about my ability to make the right call. So, dealing with kids in war zones? This gets into a whole mess of ideology that a) isn't an easy thing for me, and b) complicates our politics and morality to the point that I can't just say, "do X if you want to be moral." Resnick wants to make that comparison? OK, but that's just not where I'll go.
That's why I always go back to my observations about waterborne pathogens, malaria, and other clearly addressable issues. Death tolls are high, we know exactly how to prevent them, the moral tradeoffs are far less complicated than with war, we don't have the same practical issues to consider that we do when we decide to intervene militarily, trying to consider both the people we kill directly, and the unknown political consequences of that intervention... It's just that simple. Do you want to save lives or not? If you do, water treatment, mosquito netting, etc. If you care, do it.
Recuber's basic argument is that the empathy people express in the case of some dramatic, tragic event is hedonistic rather than directed by an active, utilitarian desire to do good. Hence, it is kind of misdirected.
Yes, this should sound very familiar because this is so similar to how I write about "mass shootings." Just call me Mr. Pump.