Empathy and the Omega

A reader is seeing improvement in his personal life

I've experienced a lot of personal growth over the last 6 months and Sigma Game is the only real causal factor I could have for it. I'm getting in shape and I've noticed I get along with the men I work with in a way that seemed unthinkable a year ago.

A little while ago you touched on empathy and the SSH. If I understand you correctly, there is a positive correlation between empathic ability and SSH status. I had asked if it's uncommon for Omegas to possess empathy; now I'm wondering if empathy has been my key out of Omega for a long time and I've had a fundamentally flawed perception of it. It would also explain why my take on the typical Omega was horribly inaccurate.

So I'd like to ask, is high empathy something you find unusual for an Omega to possess?

Yes, it would be very unusual to find high empathy in an Omega, but it is definitely not impossible. Think about the wise, kindly, highly-spiritual priest who appears to understand everyone’s problems before they can even tell him about them. While most of us know this sort of figure out of Russian literature or even folk lore, such men do exist and while I’ve never met one myself, several of my friends and acquaintances have.

Father Zosima, from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, superficially appears to be one such character, but in truth, as we learn from his past as a cruel and arrogant young officer, he is actually a man who has transcended all of Man’s hierarchies through his strong devotion to his Christian faith, God, and Man. It’s interesting, though, to observe that some of Zosima’s more famous quotes from the novel are pertinent to the SSH.

• Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

• Love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labor.

• What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Empathy is the ability to feel what others feel and to see things from their perspective. High-status men tend to have this ability, regardless of whether they utilize it for the benefit of others or for their own benefit. But remember, empathy is amoral. The most dangerous seducer is the empathetic predator who knows how his prey thinks and is able to feel what it is feeling; there is an apocryphal saying that the torturer most to be feared is the one who sheds tears as he plies his trade.

Father Zosima even had empathy for the animals.

The average Omega finds it almost impossible to think about anyone but himself. Unlike the Gamma, who thinks almost incessantly about others, albeit only in terms of how they are perceiving him and behaving toward him, the Omega barely tends to see other people because they do not see him. He lives in his own little corner of the universe, his safe little cave, where he is protected by from the cruel vagaries of social interaction that he doesn’t understand.

I would think it would be very difficult to develop much pseudo-empathy from this position, but if an Omega happened to possess the ability, it would seem to be possible to further develop it by intentionally focusing on the individuals around him. However, it will be necessary for the Omega to give up his natural desire to seek revenge for his rejection and to treat the world as it has treated him.

Expecting empathy from an Omega is a very big and unreasonable ask.

Unsurprisingly, Father Zosima has much to say in this regard.

• If the evil‐doing of men moves you to indignation and overwhelming distress, even to a desire for vengeance on the evil‐doers, shun above all things that feeling. Go at once and seek suffering for yourself, as though you were yourself guilty of that wrong… You are working for the whole, you are acting for the future. Seek no reward, for great is your reward on this earth: the spiritual joy which is only vouchsafed to the righteous man. Fear not the great nor the mighty, but be wise and ever serene.

I suspect that the Omega has the potential to be closer to God than the average man. We are told, after all, that the meek and the humble shall inherit the Earth. But I suspect that they are also subject to the temptation of a Luciferian pride that places more importance on their own suffering than on the entire rest of the humanity.

The irony, of course, is that there is no man more highly esteemed by men than the saint, than the truly holy man who is simultaneously both the least and the best of all men. That, I think, may be the ideal outcome for the empathetic Omega.