Toxic empathy – The daily blog of behavioral and cognitive economics

How Empathy Became a Threat

There’s an arresting quotation that resurfaces online now and again, usually accompanied by a photograph of a dark-haired woman with an intense gaze: “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs that a culture is about to fall into barbarism.” It’s followed by the name of the woman in the picture: the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, who fled the barbarism of Nazi Germany. Only there’s no record of Arendt ever saying that, or anything like it. The bogus quotation is the kind of artifact that flourishes on the internet in bewildering times — plausible-sounding and politically ominous. ….[READ]