On Empathy and Communication

“The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear” 

The German fairytale by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm is a fascinating yet psychologically insightful, rather than a philosophically insightful (though with substantive philosophical insights) - story. It entails a single protagonist who goes by the reference “the boy”, who was a “dimwit” according to his own “clever and intelligent” older brother and equally his own father who permanently banished him for his seeming - general - inadequacy in all things cognitive. The boy goes out and pursues his singular hard-headed desire to have the knowledge of fright: “I would like to learn how to shudder. I don’t understand that at all yet.” He goes through a series of countless frightening journeys where mystical and  necromantic macabre activities take place, but at every turn, he repeats, “I want to be able to shudder, but no one can teach me how”, “if only someone can tell me”. His obstinate (some might say, overly conscious) desire to know, to possess, blocks him throughout his journey, from acquiring any semblance of “experience”. As Lou Agosta (2010) suggests, the boy simply “tries so hard to feel fear that he is effectively defended against all feelings” (p. xv), though the word “so” is better replaced with “too” in the message he wishes to effectively deliver. He diagnoses this as a problem of “empathy” (ibid.), and in doing so, highlights an interesting understanding of empathy. 

This conundrum of an epistemic blockage gets solved through one simple trick. While the boy is asleep, his wife - who is at this point thoroughly annoyed by his harangue for knowledge - retrieves a “bucketful of cold water and minnows” (...) and mercilessly pours it on his unprotected body. At that moment, he awakens and cries out “What is making me shudder, dear wife? Yes, now I know how to shudder.” (...). What is the suggestion being offered here by the Grimm brothers? 

Simply, to have an experience, a proper experience, one must be in a relational position of admitting an Other where one’s Self-exertion does not completely take over, engulf, possess, oneself and determine oneself. Vulnerability is the pre-requisite for knowledge. An invulnerable man can never improve, nor - seemingly - does he need to. 

Now, let us explore the theme of the ever-popular manga, “One Piece”; an especially crucial feat given its global emergence in recent times. 

If one has been following global news, one has been witnessed to a flurry of global demonstrations featuring the presence of demonstrative “One Piece” flags, from Morocco, Madagascar, Indonesia (where it has now been banned), all the way to France, the UK and even the United States, and countless more other countries. 

These flags, are in fact, not the flags of the manga, “One Piece”, itself; but rather, the singular flag of the main protagonist crew, the Strawhat fleet led by the captain, “Monkey D. Luffy” who has the magical powers of the “Sun God”, who intrinsically brings liberation, joy and freedom wherever he goes, and whose powers are only limited by his imagination - literally, he can make, create, any reality which he imagines. On a cute note, his body is also of the quality of rubber, practically allowing him infinite malleability and flexibility. 

The captain, Luffy, begins his journey alone on a small boat, and at every point throughout the story, develops as a character (i.e. becoming the main - powerful - protagonist) by liberating everyone around him, in whatever fashion this may be. Eventually he is surrounded by some of the most powerful people in the world of “One Piece” who are his most loyal companions and allegiances. What is most interesting in this, is however, his unconventional way of gaining a following. He never asks (besides a few of his own direct crew members, for example, Zoro) for allegiances, followings, nor any type of loyalty or commitment to him or his cause. He liberates everyone who was oppressed or was in an environment of some kind of oppressive existence, psychologically, politically, socially; and in doing so, upon liberation, they “miraculously” swear their allegiance, commitment and loyalty to him, to stay with him till times come to an end. All of this, Luffy finds utterly amusing, and bizarre; the language of loyalty and commitment, as an explicit endeavour, is foreign to him. Liberating others, simply, comes naturally to him. It is neither a conscious project, nor a project of any sort but the consequences of an intrinsic authentic acting out of oneself. 

Luffy portrays himself as a very different character from many other pirates, historically as well as fictionally in the manga “One Piece” itself as well. We, in fact, are not privy to the final goal which Luffy wants to attain, which is off-screened in chapter 1060: as Luffy says, “That’s what I want at the end of my dream”. But, we do know his primary goal is to become the pirate king. 

One might think, with the “No Kings” protest afloat across the United States, and the behaviour of the seemingly self-proclaiming “King” (with his golden A.I crown videos, etc.,), that being a “King” is ultimately and fundamentally about leveraging power for the sake of it; to push everyone else down and establish oneself as the all-powerful King. One can see this frame of mind, this ideology, in the recent AI-generated video of Trump launching a never-ending stream of feces from a fighter jet upon “No Kings” protestors, that he is piloting with his golden crown. Simply, utilising power for the sake of it. 

Silvers Rayleigh - a character in the story - in order to know what Luffy meant by the referent “Pirate King”, asks him:

“Do you think you can conquer such powerful oceans?”

To which Luffy responds,

“I’m not going to conquer anything. The one who is the most free … is the pirate king!!!”

If one sees the current uprising across the world against rampant nepotism, corruption, and morally problematic inequality, featuring the Strawhat Jolly Roger, one can understand this as - among many others - a fight, fundamentally for communicative truth. There are many elements to this, as those who adamantly wave the flag, so protest, such as the rising unaffordability of living costs alongside the inability to determine a positive or attractive vision for oneself’s future amidst the everchanging landscape of unemployment and the incredible emergence of A.I. But, fundamentally, as an act of explicit protest where one makes oneself vulnerable, it is an act of democratic communication intended to compel an honest communication with those who have built around themselves an impenetrable fortress of non-communication. 

We can envision here two different types of liberty that are at play. First, the liberty of the “Pirate King” as time immemorial. 

This liberty has the typical slogan, “peace through strength”. One might say, it is a pragmatic form of liberty. This is rather than a democratic or communicative form of liberty, a form of liberty that hinges itself on the integrity (in a plurality of its meanings) of a hierarchical system of dominance. At the same time, it is an individualistic approach that is oriented around the accruement of individual power: its primary goal, ostensibly, is security. It is perhaps a recognition of the brutal historical fact that a society governed through fear and repression is not likely to kindle any grand democratic flames of resistance. Let me provide an example to help portray this dynamic. 

Professor Sophia Moreau of the University of Toronto in one of her classes, presented one of her key ideas on what kind of things make discrimination wrong:

Imagine an African American family living in  a “white neighbourhood” - in all the relevant ways. They are soon planning to sell their house and move to a new neighbourhood due to their breadwinner’s promotion. To do so, they contact the neighbourhood realtor to bring in potential buyers and tour their house. The realtor proposes several measures to make their house more attractive to the bidders. She suggests - perhaps shockingly to some and not to others - that they remove all their family portraits and any other items that may signal or show that the previous homeowner was “black”. The family, sadly, agrees with the realtor and takes down all references of their “black” identity. 

This is, in fact, such a common phenomenon, that even “The Onion” once made a satirical headline about it: “Black Homeowner Receives Higher Appraisal After Displaying Pictures of Klan Members” (2022). 

There is something clearly morally troublesome about this event. Moreau diagnosed the troublesome quality of this event as a case of a violation of “deliberative freedom”. 

Deliberative freedom, for Moreau, is a kind of negative liberty (in Isaiah Berlin’s terms) that one has, to not be interfered in their deliberations with morally irrelevant considerations. Ultimately, the wrongness of violating this deliberative freedom boils down to, for Moreau, the violation of the equality edict: that people ought to be, given all morally relevant considerations, treated equally. In the case of the black family portrait removal, the wrongness comes from the fact that being black was something that they had to (negatively) include in their deliberation when marketing their house to potential buyers. 

One of the problems that comes from this type of liberty of the “Pirate King” time immemorial, as the family portrait issue shows, is that in trying to become free, one is affirming and preserving, and in some way, strengthening the morally problematic socio-political hierarchy. With great frequency, such an unbearable weight of maintaining the system and of preserving a coherent identity of oneself in it leads one to forego the goal of authentic liberation and preserve the hierarchical state by building a fortress of non-communication impervious to outside scrutiny (as well as, needless to say, internally from brutal conscious scrutiny). 

Luffy’s Philosophy of Liberation 

Now, we will explore the second type of liberty, demonstrated by Luffy, the protagonist of “One Piece”.

Luffy is an uncompromising man. Some might say, a psychotic man, that is at least how the newspapers against him (run by the world government), seemingly portray him. But, clinically speaking, he is nothing remotely close to a psychotic man, nor of a psychotic character. Again, some might say, an idealistically suicidal man, a man who jumps into the fire to fight it without a demonstrative plan, but with the mere gladiatorial shield of optimism and honour. Perhaps, a naive and impractical man whose moral principles can never be practically implemented in reality, outside of fiction. 

All of this is not to say that his principles of liberation are faulty or erroneous. If everybody was like Luffy, undeniably, the world would become a better place at a more rapid pace. The key to understanding Luffy’s philosophy of liberation is to understand that the man has not surrendered in any significant capacity to corruption, malice, or morally problematic ideals, but equally importantly, and fortunately, has had the luck and power to do so. Sometimes, surrendering can, non-problematically, take place and it is crucial to acknowledge this to understand the larger dynamics of social progress. To begin understanding this approach, we must understand what the quality of psychosis entails.