The Neuroscience of Empathy: What Elon Musk Gets So Wrong
- Esther Ruth Friedman
- Apr 1
- 3 min read
Dear Gentle Souls,
It’s interesting that—like Hitler—Elon Musk is afraid of empathy. Musk recently called empathy “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” In contrast, neuroscientist Dr. Dan Goyal argues that “…without empathy, there would be no human civilisation.”
So, who ya’ gonna trust? The brooding tech bro, or the neuroscience?
Goyal’s article, Empathy or Musk: Ignorant or Inhuman, explains the science: empathy lives and functions largely in the prefrontal cortex—the brain’s executive suite—while fear mongering shuts the executive suite down. Divisiveness lives and functions in the brain’s primitive emergency center—the part that gets triggered when our survival is under threat.
My mission is to empower my empathic clients. So, I was fascinated. I asked myself, “Does empathy threaten Musk’s survival?”
Gentle Soul, your superpower—empathy—fuels decent and civilized society. It bypasses hierarchy because kindness and decency don’t need dominance; in fact, they promote equality. Musk calls that “weakness.” I call his characterization gaslighting—Tech bro is afraid of kindness.
Okay, Musk, I’ll save it for others, no problem. Personally, I’m sick of you anyway. And you, Gentle Souls, don’t have time for that b.s. Your aptitude for seeing, hearing, and feeling other people’s experiences and emotions is valuable. Hardwired to care about other people, you are walking hope—and the world needs you!
Goyal’s article explains that empathy integrates maturity, intelligence, and compassion. That is powerful! His knowledge will empower you to realize that your empathy is especially valuable these days, while pouty, rich, tech bros are a dime a dozen, really.
Here’s my understanding:
Empathy: a basic brain function engaging several regions to sense what someone else might be feeling and to understand why.
Three key components:
Affective empathy – the ability to feel another person’s emotion as though we are experiencing that emotion ourselves. Goyal calls this “…an incredible level of mind reading.” Scary for liars and thieves.
Cognitive empathy – the ability to know why someone is feeling a certain way. Cognitive empathy gathers data, connects dots, and constructs possible scenarios. It determines what is most relevant. Goyal says, “Again, it is a remarkable achievement, way beyond the most sophisticated computer simulation.”
Scary for the tech bro who can’t control or simulate your natural superpower.
Prosocial action – the final aspect of empathy. An action meant to alleviate another person’s suffering to some degree, also known as compassion.
Successful Empathy Entails…
Emotional maturity – The capacity to sit with someone else’s emotions—especially painful, uncomfortable emotions—without trying to change or control them.
An impactful response to the issue at hand – In this conundrum, you need to distinguish between a response or action that calms the suffering person and a response that tries to control their emotions. It recalls for me the psychology of attachment and mirroring—too much to get into today. I’ll say this: naming, sitting with, accepting, and affirming another person’s reality (as in, “No, you’re not crazy”) tends to calm an agitated nervous system.
When you help to calm someone’s nervous system, the prefrontal cortex fires up, and they start functioning from the executive suite, instead of the emergency center. Your acceptance empowers them. Think about how powerful that is.
Goyal wrote that prosocial action is “…vital to prevent empathy from having negative effects on one’s own cognitive state. Interestingly, if one does not have the emotional maturity to sit with another’s feelings, then displaying compassion... Indeed, acting compassionately activates the advanced reward pathway of the orbitofrontal cortex.”
Goyal quotes researchers Francis Stevens and Katherine Tabor from their article, The Neuroscience of Empathy and Compassion in Pro-social Behavior:“…self-compassion may be an emotional regulation strategy that both maintains one’s emotional well-being while keeping their affective empathy intact.”
He also concurs:“In real life: simple acts of kindness when one empathizes with others keeps your mind healthy. There is nothing wrong with feeling good about helping others, even if you can’t fix their problems fully.”
Gentle Souls, we need MORE of you, exactly as you are! We need less fragile, thin-skinned, tech bro energy. So, in these insane times in which we live, protect your precious gem: empathy.
Do what you need to do to calm your heart, clear your mind, and feed your soul first. Then, when it comes to prosocial action, you’ll know what to do.
Esther Friedman
Author of The Gentle Souls Revolution
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