When Compassion Dies: Why Zambia Feels Crueler Than Before – A Scottian-Baronian Perspective
Melicious Chongo
The Zambia of today is not the same as we have known it before. Today Zambia stands at an inflection point that it is difficult to remain mute.
It is dangerously tilting towards evil. Empathy is fast eroding. There’s no compassion in politics, no compassion in workplaces, zero compassion in institutions.
But why is this happening now?
Dr M. Scott Peck, coupled with Simon Baron-Cohen, help provide a theoretical framework. – mechanisms – within which to begin to understand what is happening in Zambia right now.
M. Scott Peck simply calls it evil. Baron-Cohen calls it empathy erosion. In Zambia we call it normal!
But both agree evil is not demon possession. It is observable through ordinary people.
Both say the key is self-deception – “I’m justified.”
Both agree it harms others while protecting image.
Both agree it builds up over time, not overnight.
In the book ‘People of The Lie’, M. Scott Peck gives a description of narcissists, or chronic Liars.
Narcissists are not born. They are built. Evil People are narcissistic.
For Dr. M. Scott Peck, people of the Lie become evil through many small actions of self-deception. One small lie today to avoid guilt, to protect self-image.
It looks normal, rational, even smart to them. And this is actually Peck’s central idea. The evil person does not see themselves as evil. They have just built a false self-image of perfection around themselves; of always being right, good, a messiah who has come to fix things. A well-intentioned person.
Anything that threatens that image – truth, criticism, or guilt – is explained away or rationalized. Truth unsettles them bcoz it exposes who they are, and makes them combative. They become terrified and jittery of being exposed by any mention of truth.
The choice to lie, to be combative, defensive or protective is small at first. But becomes irreversible through momentum. Because, each lie requires another lie to protect it. The second one now amplifies the first one. And, at this point, the second, the third or the fourth one does not just protect the first lie. It cements it.
Over years, it calcifies into a pattern, then a culture, then an identity. Soon a person loses capacity for self-examination. They become trapped.
It will appear normal, even righteous. That’s why they’re dangerous.
Peck says they are not obviously monstrous. They’re often successful – they can even be doctors, teachers, nurses, business people, lawyers, politicians, or even church leaders. Their evil is in the consistency of their self-righteousness.
They can even be sad, bitter and resentful. Their bitterness or sadness may sometimes manifest as righteous anger – “I’m the victim, everyone else is the problem.” They scapegoat others to avoid the pain of confronting their own imperfections.
I have seen friends, classmates, or politicians.
They are sad but they do not know it. They are bitter but carry it as holy anger. They can even threaten you, scare you.
They have sold their soul in chasing ambition, power, and money. They bury dignity, throw away self respect to simp for power and ambition.
They trade long term happiness for a short term desire or feeling of self Importance.
They may not consciously sell their soul, or sacrifice conscience for money, but to avoid the pain of saying “I was wrong.”
While Peck makes a case for evil through choice, through sacrificing conscience, Simon Baron-Cohen says one becomes evil, cruel or inhuman when empathy is switched off.
For him, not necessarily through choice, but through biology (genes, hormones), upbringing, social political context – authority, conformity, loyalty, dehumanization or ideology – an individual becomes evil.
Where Peck is moral, clinical and spiritual, Baron-Cohen is scientific about evil.
He makes this argument in ‘The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty.’ Baron-Cohen says evil or cruelty happens because empathy circuits that enable us to feel with another person’s feelings are temporarily or permanently low.
We go through what he calls empathy erosion when these circuits shut down.
There are pathways in the brain that make us share the feelings of another.
The Inferior Frontal Gyrus and the Inferior Parietal Lobule, these are the “mirror system”; they mimic others’ actions. The Anterior Insula enables us to feel others’ disgust / pain in our body.
The Anterior Cingulate Cortex also makes us feel others’ distress, or conflict. Then there’s the Orbitofrontal / Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex supporting us to make decisions to care – empathic decisions – and regulate response.
The Temporo-Parietal Junction (TPJ) is our Perspective-taking center, “what is she thinking?”
These systems erode from disuse or abuse. They are switched off. And a person is rendered incapable of caring, of empathy, of compassion, or love.
He makes a distinction between cognitive empathy, where ‘I understand what you feel’, and affective empathy, where ‘I feel a response to what you feel.’
We need both. But where circuits are shut down; where one lacks both the cognitive and affective empathy, then they are incapable of caring, of empathy, of goodness.
Where Scott Peck says ‘they are evil bcoz they will not face their issues’, Baron-Cohen says bcoz ‘they cannot feel your pain.’
For Zambia today particularly, Baron-Cohen’s concept of empathy erosion is even more striking.
For Zambia, it seems empathy erosion is happening slowly, dangerously through institutions. It is institutionalized cruelty. It is happening through lawfare.
It looks rational, normal but dangerous.
Here, Baron-Cohen agrees with the truism in psychology that “nature hates vacuum.” You don’t use something, there will be compensatory mechanisms.
Ambition erodes empathy.
If evil got established through many small, selfish repeated acts, through choice. If it happened through choosing self-deception, then through disuse or abuse, through switching off, through empathy erosion, evil can still happen.
Both Scott Peck and Baron-Cohen try to propose some solutions.
If evil can be experienced and named, then it can be confronted. If it can be explained as a science, then it be prevented.
Not through exorcism, many prayers or spiritual rituals. But through empathy training. Through early attachment, emotional literacy, and nurturing.
The idea is to establish a counter-intuitive culture. Evil happens in small rationalized steps. Through small acts of cruelty dressed as discipline and maintaining order. Through small betrayal called ambition. A small lie to avoid guilt.
So it can be corrected through nurturing, caring, and empathy. It can be reversed through more compassion in politics, more love in institutions. It can be reversed when individuals choose to confront truth and reason over safety, comforts and stability.
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John 8:32 “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
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