Underdeserved

Eric Deggans' NPR review of the new HBO mini-series "Landscapers" ends with the following: "But [Landscapers'] quality also encourages viewers to identify with a couple who may not deserve the empathy this show will likely generate."

What makes someone undeserving of empathy? Just what do people understand empathy to be for? Is there a shortage of it, such that it should be doled out judiciously? The main characters of Landscapers, Christopher and Susan Edwards, are murderers and thieves. And their targets were Susan's own parents, no less. It's pretty much a given that they are, as people often put these days "terrible people." And while people may always be the heroes of their own stories, the Edwards are not the heroes of this one.

Mr. Deggans points out that the HBO series does soft-pedal some of the details of the crimes; by not showing the Edwards actually performing all of the acts that they perpetrated in the service of stealing from the estate of Susan's parents. There seems to be a concern that the Edwards are portrayed as simply broken, when more attention should be paid to the fact that they were bad. But since, as the saying goes, mistreating bad people is still mistreating people, perhaps it's worth being cautious about the idea that empathy should be given out sparingly because it erodes our capacity to see others being mistreated.

But empathy should have more uses than just a wish to see people punished less harshly. (And haven't people learned yet that harsh punishments don't seem to deter the people that it's hoped they would deter?) Empathy is not about allowing people to opt out of consequences. It's about seeing them as something other than deliberately perverse. Granted, viewing people as deliberately perverse is often a useful justification for salving injured feelings by doling out an eye (and then some) for an eye. But even then, the punishments that people call for speak more to them, and what they want out of life, than they do to the person being punished.

Empathy is not a naturally scarce resource. It can be created from literally nothing, just from the will to do so. So there is no reason to only dole it out based on what we understand that people should deserve.