Ampersand Gazette #89
Welcome to the Ampersand Gazette, a metaphysical take on some of the news of the day. If you know others like us, who want to create a world that includes and works for everyone, please feel free to share this newsletter. The sign-up is here. And now, on with the latest …
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The Dark Side of Empathy
Recently, Elon Musk quipped that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” He seemed to blame it, in part, for the decline of America’s cultural vitality. He said he believed in empathy but cast it as being “weaponized” by the woke. For all his derision of empathy, Mr. Musk is quite good at employing it for his own needs.
Though we often think of empathy as synonymous with kindness, that isn’t entirely accurate. Empathy is not the same as compassion. At its core, empathy is the ability to understand others’ perspectives—what they feel, what they think, what they fear, what they want. That understanding can be wielded in service of a greater good. Or it can be exploited, as Mr. Musk himself was arguing.
In psychological terms, empathy is not a singular skill—it comes in different forms. Affective empathy (the ability to feel what others feel) is distinct from cognitive empathy (the ability to understand what others feel). Many people have both. Others, like narcissists and sociopaths, often possess only the latter, if they have empathy at all.
When I wrote my book, “Applied Empathy,” several years ago, I included Mr. Musk on a list of entrepreneurs who had leveraged their cultural understanding to create compelling businesses. What I didn’t account for back then—and what we’re reckoning with now—is what happens when an understanding of human behavior is not used to uplift or support but to provoke or destabilize.
Across tech, media and politics, we’re witnessing a rise in leaders who reject empathy rhetorically while using it tactically. They discredit this vital skill as weakness, yet fine-tune their messaging to trigger precisely the reactions they need from investors, voters and followers.
President Trump has long derided empathy as naïve, casting strength as synonymous with domination, suggesting that to care is to lose—and to control is to win. But this perspective is not only ethically bankrupt, it’s also deeply impractical for leadership. Empathy, applied with ethical integrity, is a driver of performance.
Empathy that connects, that builds, that heals requires a code of ethics. It requires restraint. It requires trust. It asks the empathizer not just to understand others but also to honor what that understanding unlocks. When empathy becomes unmoored from ethics, it becomes coercion with a smile.
Empathy without accountability is not just hollow, it’s deceptive. It lulls people into false security. And it fractures the very trust it pretends to build. And yet, we can’t write off empathy. That’s precisely what the provocateurs want. They want to reframe care as weakness, dignity as naïveté and trust as a liability. Let’s not take the bait.
If we want better leadership in business, politics and technology, we need to reclaim empathy as a responsibility. We need to teach it not just as a soft skill but as a disciplined practice, bound by ethics and rooted in our shared humanity.
Excerpted from an Opinion Essay by Michael Ventura in The New York Times
The Dark Side of Empathy
May 4, 2025
Who knew there was a dark side to empathy? I’d never thought of it certainly. Not once. Nope, I’ve only ever thought of empathy as something to cultivate.
But wait. Remember polarity? We all live here on Earth, a planet based, for the nonce, upon polarity. If polarity is, and it is, then if there’s a light side to empathy, then there has to be a dark one. Ow.
That really shouldn’t surprise us. Almost everything devolves upon intention in this life.
So, what are yours?
About everything.
Do they include empathy for others who are unlike you in any way, or in every way?
Empathy, real empathy, isn’t for the faint of heart. Oh, maybe the tactical use of it is. Senator Josh Hawley recent wrote an Essay in The New York Times about how cutting Medicaid is a terrible idea. The Letters to the Editor in today’s paper were divided right down the middle—half praised him, half accused him of mere political repositioning. After all, his voting record belies every point he made in the essay. Every single one.
There’s empathy weaponized, and by no one even remotely woke, right there.
Empathy can be a valuable tool, it’s true. So’s a hammer, but used incorrectly, it can be quite damaging. The same applies to any tool.
Empathy is the inner stance that says, Educate me. Teach me about your differences. Show me what I don’t know about my own blind spots. Empathy, true empathy, is a heart-opener. Domination is about closed hearts.
One of these things is not like the other.
Caring isn’t control. Control isn’t always caring. What makes the differential in both cases? Intention.
When your intention about anything is to shut others out, who are you really shutting out, Beloved? Yourself. Because what I will not will for you, I too may not will for me.
One of these days, Alice, one of these days, we’re all going to get it. Unless we function from a place of us, we all lose, and we all lose big. The moment we function from us, we win, and we can win big, too.
But that takes vision, intention, ethics, and true empathy. Let’s do this thing.
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What I Want
To the Editor:
I don’t want Canada or Greenland or the Panama Canal.
I want PBS, Social Security, NPR, Medicare, the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian.
I want democracy.
Mel Tansill
Catonsville, Md.
A Letter to the Editor in The New York Times
“What I Want”
April 26, 2025
While I thoroughly appreciate Mr. Tansill’s Letter to the Editor, and agree with its every word, I did not include it so as to have a political conversation. No. Instead, as they say, it’s about the principle of the thing.
As I’m sure you know, I’ve had a spiritual counseling practice for over forty years. During that time I’ve heard a lot about the human condition. A lot.
Almost all first sessions begin with a list of what’s wrong in that individual’s perception of their own life. It makes sense. If everything were hunky-dory, would they need to work with someone like me? Probably not, unless they wanted help manifesting a big change in their lives.
The thing is, after the list-making of everything that’s wrong … what’s next? It’s simple, but it’s not always easy.
What I usually say to bring on the next phase of the work is … So, if you could have your life be any way you wanted, how would it be?
In forty years, I’ve met two people who could answer that immediately. Two. That’s one every two decades.
My question, of course, is a coded one. The bottom line is:
What do you want?
Usually, instead of what the person wants, what comes out of their mouths is a list of what they don’t want. Well, I don’t want to hurt so-and-so’s feelings, and I don’t think I have the courage to ask for a … whatever, and I think so-and-so will combust if I … and a whole long list of what I’ve come to call Free Won’t.
Knowing what you don’t want can be valuable, it’s true, but it’s no place for creation. In fact, you can’t create anything out of a place of what you don’t want because you’ll only draw to yourself what you don’t want. Besides, we weren’t given Free Won’t.
We were given Free Will.
Which is the mechanism via which we are able to a/ know what we want, and b/ say what we want, c/ go get what we want, and d/ enjoy what we want.
First things first, though. You have to know what you want. It’s the seminal question of the spiritual life. What do you want?
And until you can answer it, there’s no way to move forward out of whatever mess your life is in, unless you want to use strictly trial and error, which can work, it’s true, but that process tends to be messy as all get-out.
Mr. Tansill knows what he wants, Beloved. Do you?
P.S. The day after I wrote this, my Mary Engelbreit page-a-day calendar had these words of wisdom for me and you: Decide What You Want. Do That.
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Here’s a universal affirmation. It works every time, for everyone, always and forever …
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So here’s a very cool thing. Audra McDonald is starring in Gypsy on Broadway right now, and knocking it out of the park with her rendition of Mama Rose, the stage mother monster of all stage mother monsters.
The most famous, or one of the most famous numbers from that score is called “Rose’s Turn,” and it’s the big eleven o’clock number wherein, essentially, Mama Rose questions her whole life, and comes up with every regret in the book.
Now, here’s what’s cool. There was an article in The New York Times recently about what it takes for Audra to do that song eight times a week—because it wrecks her emotionally. Every time she sings it. It’s about how she got to that raw, real place within herself, and it’s amazing to read about her process. Utterly.
When I wrote Gypsy Chicks, book six of The Mex Mysteries, I was enchanted with all things Gypsy Rose Lee. It’s an amazing story about ambition and moving on. Both the article and my novel are well worth your reading time.
Spirituality, in all its magical disguises, is going to have to be a part of our global recovery. One way to define that is a sense of one’s own proper place in the universal scheme of things. Without that self-definition, it can be hard, and sometimes impossible, to create connection with others.
Another article in the Times, its author, Lauren Jackson, writes in “People Long to Believe, Both Inside and Outside Religion”, “In their stories and others, I discovered a powerful, common theme: In a moment of division and disagreement, partisanship and polarization, people long to believe in something.”
Like Archimedes, lever or no, first, you need a place to stand, and that place within is foundational and spiritual. Without that, the lever is useless, and so is connection. My real curiosity here is: do you have spiritual questions dinging around in your mind that you want answered? Agreement with me is not required, but if you’re thinking about it, whatever it is, others might be too, and it’s well worth engaging over. AMA spiritual. Please.
I finished Impending Decision, Book Five of The Boots & Boas Romances, on May Day, our fourth wedding anniversary, as you know, but finished is a relative term. There are two characters in the book based on real people which use their real names so I had to send them MS excerpts to see if they approve of what I’ve written about them. Then I had to do Evil Words, which took almost three weeks. There are lot of them! Then I had to reread it for continuity. Only then did I send it to my favorite editor, Tony Amato. It's a process. See below for new cover reveal!
So now, I am writing *only* one book. Jaq Direct, the final book of The Subversive Lovelies, my speculative fiction series, is starting to heat up, and weave its own threads now that we’re coming to the big showdown. There’s always a showdown in my books, always. Someone somehow in every book makes a big point to another someone. This one is no exception, and who is in everyone’s crosshairs but none other than the ridiculous, sadistic smut-monger Anthony Comstock. Of course.
I guess this is why there’s always a What’s Next: because even though it looks like I’m only writing one book right now, I’m really writing dozens of others as well.
One of the secrets I learned early-on as a novelist was not to stop writing on any given day until I was in the middle of something—and I knew what came next. That way, I’m always in the middle and never afraid I’ll stumble in a storyline. So I end a day’s writing in the midst of a scene always. It means I never have to figure out how to get back in the jump rope, ever. I’m in, and I’m staying till it stops.
I’m working on tiny courses on the chakra system, Prismatica, The Phoenix Initiation, the next Mex, the next Boots & Boas—more like the next three, among other things. What a list.
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I’m happy to announce the cover reveal for Impending Decision. The publication date as of now is July 5, 2025. I’ll put it up for pre-order in early June.
As always, whichever book of mine you enjoy, would you please leave a stellar review, if you loved it? Those reviews are how others find indie authors like me.
Reviews really are the engine that powers the career of an indie author.
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Tony Amato is my favorite editor for lots of reasons, but mostly because he’s a uniquity. A very fancy word for one-of-a-kind. His bushel of talents serves authors and their books in a way unlike any other editor I know. May I encourage you to reach out if you need book-husbanding? Seriously, this is the guy. He’s edited my books for more than 20 years, so I ought to know. Find him here.
I’m happy to announce his new Fiction Critique Workshop starting on June 2nd through July 7th for six weeks. This is a workshop for writers who have a draft of a book that they’re ready to begin revising.
Here’s what he wrote about it on his substack Subscribe here.:
You will get group feedback on up to 15 pages/4,000 words of manuscript from a cohort of 5 writers (including yourself) as well as extensive private feedback from me. Members will have the option of a one-hour meeting with me at a 30% discount ($100). The fee is $400 for the workshop, or $500 if you opt for a private meeting.
Email him to register. If you’ve never done something like this, it’s well worth it.
Also, this is cool. The ever talented Helen Boyd Kramer did an interview with Tony, so you can get a taste of the kind of person you’d be working with.
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Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari
From the blurb … NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening—and how to get our attention back.
In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions—even abandoning his phone for three months—but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention—and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.
We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention.
Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus—as individuals, and as a society—if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.”
I will confess to being a fan of Johann Hari for many years. His book, Chasing the Scream, about the addiction crisis and how to heal it underpinned almost every word I wrote in the ninth book of The Mex Mysteries, Rent Rx. Given that, I was surprised that I hadn’t heard of his book Stolen Focus.
The book came out in January 2022, won a bucketload of prizes, and is more relevant than it was when it was published because things have only gone downhill on the attention front. The thing I liked best about this book is that he details his own journey with stolen focus, and he comes up with an idea for a worldwide movement to turn it around—Attention Rebellion.
One of the best things I ever did was decide to unsubscribe from any emails I didn’t want to receive any more. Talk about getting focus back! Now, I mostly get emails I want, and what a difference that makes. Something so simple … he gives us all the individual things we can do, and then he scales it up. I think everyone who has ever used a computer is mandated to read this book.
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Are you waiting for a sign?
How about this one?
I am no fan of science fiction.
It feels too possible to me.
But when I saw this
image of a rainbow world,
I fell in love.
What I want to know is: are you caught in
all the doom-mongering of our world these days?
Honestly, it’s hard not to be.
But there is an antidote to all of what
you’re not enjoying.
And that, Beloved, is
IMAGINATION.
You don’t have to imagine a
rainbow world,
you can leave that to color geeks like me.
But you, just like the rest of us,
do have a responsibility
especially if you’ve figured out
what you don’t want.
And that is:
to imagine what you do want.
And if you can’t come up
with a whole world every day,
that’s cool.
Either borrow mine,
or start with imagining
one room, and
grow your vision from there.
I am, without doubt, certain that And is the secret to all we desire.
Let’s commit to practicing And ever more diligently, shall we?
Until next time,
Be Ampersand.