Prosocial Emotions, some limits

Prosocial emotions (empathy, gratitude, humility, etc.) are appealing to feel. They give us energy and help us feel connected to other human beings. It is very tempting for us to make them into gods, that is, into beings we propitiate and place as highest.

However, that is not always a good idea.

If we take empathy very seriously, we will not allow ourselves to put distance between us and something horrible to think, like the idea that we will die someday. If we hear of someone else dying, we have to think that we ourselves will die.

If we have empathy for other people, or compassion, or pity, this can be a bad thing for them. We can communicate our lack of faith in them through our concern over their well-being, causing them to become unable to take care of themselves, or even to despair.

The feeling of sincerity is a prosocial emotion, the feeling of telling the truth to other people. If we are sincere and compassionate people, people will believe us more readily when we say things that are harmful or untrue, since we will really mean them and say them in a compassionate way.

In the name of humility, people destroy each other's egos, which doesn't really make them humble. Also we think that agnosticism is a good thing, and then agnosticism can be used aggressively to attack belief. But this agnosticism is not epistemically humble, does not really acknowledge that it too could be wrong.

In the name of humility, we become small-minded, fearful, or even apathetic.

Gratitude involves finding the way things are to be a good thing. If we do this when we ought to be changing something about the way things are, gratitude can deceive us.

Generosity is a prosocial emotion and feels very good. But it can lead to people continuing relationships too long (letting a scammer go from introduction to close, for instance, or covering over a relationship conflict until it's a major problem). Generosity can produce dependency in other people, and undermine their need and thus ability to take care of themselves.

Some say laughter is not an emotion but I'll include it. Laughter feels good and bonds people but shuts down epistemic and emotional empathy.

Guilt is a prosocial emotion. Not as pleasant as the others. We are anti-guilt but pro-having a conscience. Some guilt is good, but other guilt destroys us. Then we compensate for the destructive guilt by not feeling good guilt. Guilt is good if it leads somewhere good, bad if it does not. (Similarly with lack of guilt.)