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And with that, this turns to social conventions, a different beast altogether. Well-developed empathy is desirable, if you’re going to interact with other human beings, just as well developed language use is desirable, but it doesn’t mean you have to plunge into storms of emotive display. Emotive displays may be completely undesirable. There are times—perhaps most of the time—when it’s appropriate to hold yourself in check. If someone is burned in a fire, and they’re screaming in pain, it might be appropriate to hold off on bitching about a rude salesman at Best Buy. If, on the other hand, someone trashes his grandmother’s house, an angry response might be appropriate. Then again, it might not. Social convention is tricky. And it’s not the same thing as empathy. This needs no belaboring.

But I’ll belabor it anyway.

People who communicate poorly and conduct themselves poorly, in the context of the social space they occupy, have a real problem. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad. It could mean they’re in the wrong space. It could mean that the space itself is a problem. Without presuming to judge, a teetotaler at a beer drinking festival may feel out of place. No harm, no foul. That’s just the way of the world. Some people speak the language of beer. Others do not. An empathetic teetotaler understands this. An empathetic beer drinker does too. This could form the basis for going bowling or talking about dogs. The teetotaler might, instead, go to a teetotaler convention. Clearly there is a vast sea of possibilities. But if the teetotaler proselytizes the beer drinkers and moralizes at them, there’s potential for a serious problem. An empathetic teetotaler realizes this and holds off. A solipsistic one does not.

It gets even tricker. A doctor might have a patient who complains of a pain in his arm. That could mean many different things. If there’s no obvious injury, some questions, examinations and even tests are in order. The patient might not have good communication skills and this will make things difficult. A good doctor perseveres and holds the Hippocratic Oath in mind. A lousy one dismisses the problem and blames the patient. The difference between the two is empathy. The good doctor has it in spades. The lousy doctor has less capacity. Empirical studies show that the patients of the empathetic doctors enjoy better outcomes. The patients of the lousy doctors don’t do as well. There’s no emotive element to this. There’s no emotive mandate. The doctors with diminished empathy may actually display extravagant emotion. The good doctors might be very reserved. Empathy can lead to sympathy, which is not the same as empathy, but then again it might not. I’ll go out on a limb and say that a patient who injured his arm in the course of torturing other people is not a candidate for sympathy.

This post has gone on way too long.

There’s no reason in the Berkshires why I shouldn’t have plenty of late season vegetables and there’s even a possibility of “hoop crops” throughout most of the winter. Gardening hoops are just that: hoops, with clear plastic stretched over them to form a greenhouse arrangement. They need maintenance, but nothing like what’s needed for a major garden over the regular season. Only full sun areas are suitable for them and the soil should be very high in compost. The crops need to be frost tolerant and you have to be patient. Next year…

I gave it a go for about a year, but found I disliked it for the same reasons I’ve disliked every trendy gathering place. They’re conducive to styles of interaction that echo late adolescent and early adult institutional education—which as I recall it, was a series of extravagantly emotional psychodramas over worthless status, stupid authoritarian relegation stunts and accelerated training in passive aggression. There were books in there too, somewhere, but not to the point where you’d notice it.

When I saw people I know, and have liked in person, diving into anti-social behaviors I had to get away. My experiment ruined some affection I’ve felt and left me more misanthropic than is healthy. So that’s it for Facebook. I’ll regret losing easy communication with many of the people who are sticking it out, but an extra effort to stay in touch won’t do me, or them, any harm.

Fortuitous snark: this post was tagged with Pigou and Litterbugs, which belong on a later post. I’m leaving them in place nevertheless.