OPINION: Ditch Empathy–Ditch Democracy

OPINION: Ditch Empathy–Ditch Dem0cracy

By Vajra Ma

Waggy is Adorable

Have you seen the ads for the new toy that looks and acts “just like a real puppy”​? Waggy is a curly haired AI puppy who tilts its adorable head just like a real dog. Waggy responds to your child’s voice just like a real dog. Sit! It sits. Come! It comes. It cuddles with your child just like a real dog. But it’s not real and according to the ad that’s the selling point. No expensive vet bills, no food to purchase, no long dog walks. No bothersome biological needs whatsoever. No care required.

No Empathy Required

What does such a realistic-seeming virtual puppy teach your child? It teaches them the puppy has no needs, no desires, no life of its own. It exists only to serve the needs and desires of your child.  The only thing that matters is the child, what he feels, what he needs, what he wants. No care or empathy required.

Biological Reality

Waggy weans your child away from biological reality. When biology is canceled, the opportunity to develop empathy for another living being is canceled.  We place our child in a subtle training ground for three things: 1) dissociation from the body 2) the atrophy 0f empathy 3) the development of narcissism. The interaction between the child and the AI dog is narcissistic. It is devoid of any feeling or even thought of the needs of another. Interaction with a virtual being is preferable to interaction with a real being.

Conditioning 

Is this what you want for your child? Is your convenience as a parent worth this programming of your child? Is this the conditioning you want for the next generation?

Toys Matter

Am I being hyperbolic? overstating the situation? I think not. Not when viewed in the context of three things: rapidly progressing AI, the transhumanist agenda and fascism. (Now she’s really getting hyperbolic!) Bear with me… There are plenty of dots to connect between these three things that could easily fill a whole book, but in the scope of this article I can only point briefly to them. Hopefully this will indicate how subtle and insidious the Waggy programming is, why a little toy like this matters.

Ditch Empathy

Elon Musk has stated “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” Remember him prancing about on the stage with his chainsaw? He wielded the perfect tool to represent the lack of empathy it took to slash through people’s livelihoods in his DOGE purge. Musk justifies such actions as protecting us from “civilizational suicidal empathy.” Should we prefer homicidal empathy?

Peter Thiel

In alignment with Musk, his former PayPal co-founder and kingpin of transhumanism, Peter Thiel, rejects “abstract universalism that treats all individuals as fundamentally equal.” Ditch equality, ditch democracy. Enter fascism. This brings us to the new catch phrase of the Christian Nationalist agenda…

“Toxic Empathy”

Christian author Allie Beth Stuckey, titled her book with this now popular term she coined, Toxic Empathy. In a video interview she tells us how much she likes Steven Miller and his deportations. When the interviewer pushes back about sending deportees to El Salvador (and it’s notoriously brutal CECOT prison) she deflects: (the liberals are) highlighting these stories of supposed cruelty from ICE” and admonishes people to ask “but is this true?” True? Has she seen any of the numerous videos documenting the blatant cruelty?  or does she only watch Fox News which deceives largely through omission? (emphasis added) https://www.tiktok.com/@nytopinion/video/7529126187717692703

Transhumanism

Transhumanism, at best, aims to cybor biology, at worst, to eradicate it all together in favor of uploading one’s consciousness into a computer. Either way, AI Waggy aligns and enables this.

Is that what we want for our children? or will we let ourselves see the connections between the dots?

Do we see how subtle conditioning via a cute AI toy disassociates us from biological reality? How it desensitizes us to the living needs of others? How it eradicates empathy? How it paves the way to dehumanizing others? Hitler had the Jews. We have the immigrants.

Waggy, Inside

If that’s what we want for our children, our country and the future of humanity, by all means bring (supposedly) harmless Waggy into the house. Let virtual interaction groom our children for the non-empathic narcissism and de-humanization that fascism requires. Waggy, in his adorable little robot way, helps us get there.