When Kindness Gets Pushback:
Defending Radical Empathy
Every moral framework faces the same gauntlet
Privilege guilt, practical impossibility, emotional manipulation, systemic irrelevance. It's the standard criticism playbook, applied with the confidence of someone who thinks they've spotted the fatal flaw. So let's run that gauntlet.
Round One: The Academic Challenge
We’ll start first not with a cynic’s criticisms, but what an academic may respond to a Substack post titled What We Owe Each Other. The title doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it was chosen to put my framework in dialogue with T.M. Scanlon’s Contractualism. So how might a philosophy grad student poke holes in my explanation and application of Contractualism?
Greg is a philosophy grad student whose area of study is Contractualism. Here is what this imagined grad student (IGS) may rebut my essay with.
1. You're asking the wrong question about reasonable rejection. - "You ask whether someone could reasonably reject a principle requiring you to give the homeless man money. But Scanlon's test works the other way - could the homeless man reasonably reject a principle that allows you to walk by when you could easily help at minimal cost? Given the vast disparity in your situations, that rejection might actually be quite reasonable."
This reframing of Scanlon’s reasonable rejection is a good one. However, in the scenario I posit that the man never asks for anything. We merely exist in the same space for a moment, wherein I recognize his need but am unsolicited for help. Could he reasonably reject the principle that anyone existing within his periphery for a moment that has the means to help him is obligated to do so unsolicited?
A principle that "anyone with means who briefly shares space with someone in apparent need must provide unsolicited assistance" could very reasonably be rejected by multiple parties:
By the homeless man himself: It strips away his agency and dignity. He didn't ask for help, might not want it, and forcing strangers to make assumptions about his needs based on appearance alone could be deeply paternalistic and dehumanizing.
By the person with means: It creates an impossible burden - constant obligation to assess and assist every person you encounter who might be in need, without any signal that help is wanted.
By society generally: It's impractical and violates basic principles of autonomy and consent in human interactions.
2. The asymmetrical obligation seems problematic. "’I owe him everything, he owes me nothing’ appears to contradict contractualism's core commitment to treating people as moral equals. In Scanlon's framework, everyone has equal standing to make claims and reject principles."
True, my closing maxim, "You owe me nothing, I owe you everything," is nothing if not radical. And seemingly maximalist. But the examination is not done. I would argue the man on the street in my example is the product of innumerable small evils of difference.
Each one could be easily dismissed in the moment, but in aggregate they represent a societal failure all summed within this one person. It goes from the policy makers dealing in decisions that impact millions down to me, ignoring him so I can go about my day unbothered.
What is owed to him differs for each of us, based on our capacity. If I could not give him anything tangible, I could still meet his eyes and offer the respectful head nod. He is seen. He is a person. And I’ll not forget it.
It will color my thoughts when I talk about "the homeless problem" with my friends. When I stand in ballot booth. Even a moment of attention and recognition from me has an impact. As does my apathy. Just because it may be maximalist doesn't mean it is absent of moral impact.
We live in a maximalist time. inequality is extreme. Our moral frameworks are failing to meet the moment. Systems are collapsing. Social cohesion is fraying. We live in extraordinary times. This calls for extraordinary morality.
I understand people will fail. I've failed far more than I’ve succeeded. But just because a baseball player fails to get a hit more often than not, it doesn't mean he decides not to come to bat. And if we strive to be better every day, we are going to fail a lot. But we can always be better tomorrow, until there are no tomorrows left.
In my framework individual ethics cannot be untangled from what philosophers call "structural injustice”, any more so than a note can be disentangled from a melody. A note in isolation is just a sound. Each individual note contributes to and defines the melody. Remove one from the other and neither is the same.
Or as stated by noted wordsmith Sam Roy Hagar,
“Miss the beat, you lose the rhythm
And nothing falls into place, no
Only missed by a fraction
Slipped a little off your pace”
Our imaginary grad student may be satisfied by these answers. And he may need to google Sammy Hagar, because it’s 2025 and who references Sammy Hagar?
Round Two: The Cynic's Gauntlet
But what would a more cynical person say to my ideas and arguments? Let’s imagine this cynic laying down the aforementioned gauntlet.
1. "This is privilege guilt with philosophical window dressing. You're a comfortable suburbanite who feels bad about his advantages, so you've created an elaborate framework to justify giving homeless people money. Most people struggling to pay rent don't need to be told they ‘owe everyone everything’, they need practical solutions, not moral maximalism from someone whose biggest daily struggle is choosing between podcasts.
2. "The framework is practically useless at scale. What does ‘Architectural Humanism’ say about healthcare policy? Immigration? Climate change? Your ledger works for individual encounters but falls apart when applied to complex institutional decisions where trade-offs are unavoidable and someone always gets hurt.”
3. "The 'witnessing' concept is performative. Most people already see homeless individuals as people, they just disagree about solutions. Your framework doesn't actually solve anything; it just makes middle-class people feel more virtuous about their charitable impulses.”
4. "You're solving the wrong problem. Individual moral frameworks are irrelevant when systemic issues require collective action. While you're debating whether to give someone $100, structural problems require billions in coordinated policy changes. This is moral masturbation.”
5. "Your framing is emotionally manipulative. Leading with Angel's death makes it nearly impossible to critique your ideas without seeming callous. That's not philosophical argument - that's emotional blackmail. Strip away the personal tragedy and you're left with ‘be nicer to people,’ dressed up in academic language, created because you couldn’t be bothered to ask your sister about her day.”
6. "It'll get watered down into self-help nonsense. Within six months someone will be selling ‘Ledger Ethics™’ workshops to corporations wanting to appear socially conscious. The philosophical rigor will disappear, leaving behind feel-good platitudes.”
7. "Who actually has time for this? Single parents working two jobs don't need another framework telling them they're morally insufficient.”
Fighting Back: Why Kindness Isn't Weakness
Oof. Ok then. Harsh, but fair. Let’s take these one at a time.
Privilege Guilt or Lived Experience?
1. This is privilege guilt with philosophical window dressing.
It’s true, there is some personal guilt in how I assess my position in relation to others. No doubt I had an easier time finding my current role through contacts others didn’t have. And there is a level of comfort in knowing that I won’t have to deal with the same challenges if my skin were darker, my name were Antwan instead of Anthony, if I presented as female, or my spouse were the same gender as me.
But it is also true that life for me could have been far worse, were it not for others choosing a good they were not morally obligated to do. I didn’t start in the middle class. I grew up attending seven schools from grades K through 6. Eight homes in two years, not including the occasional night sleeping in a car or sleeping in one bedroom with four siblings and three beds. I went to school with my naked toe sticking out of the front of the shoes I’d outgrown, taping them together knowing new ones were months away.
I had no money or time for college, completing my bachelor’s degree via online universities while I worked 65-70 hours a week to pay my bills and cover the tuition that student loans weren’t enough for. And I still graduated with $50K in debt because online for profit universities are rapacious.
The scenario might be between me and a homeless man. Or it might be me, a cis hetero normative man complimenting the trans woman’s earrings in the elevator at the office, the hidden message being that I accept her for who she has the courage to be.
It’s about being aware of how much good we can do if we try. And that choosing to do nothing still carries a cost. We justify our indifference, which breeds more indifference. And people suffer when they need not.
Everyone has a responsibility. But living in that same world, I understand no one can expect others to do them good.
I raise my expectations towards others and it pushes me to be better. To consider how my words and actions impact others. To grow towards radical empathy.
I expect nothing and therefore do not grow bitter and resentful when expectations are not met.
From Personal Ethics to Political Action
2. The framework is practically useless at scale.
So, scale.
Yes, I might affirm a trans person’s humanity in the elevator. But the ice caps are still melting and the combustion engine car I drove alone to the office 19 miles each way is only accelerating that. And how does my framework handle the immigration question? We all want to help people, but we have people here who aren’t getting the help we need.
To which I reply that architectural humanism isn’t designed to put the weight of the world on the shoulders of each individual. But it does ask them to remember that their choices and actions do not exist in a vacuum.
I can’t meaningfully reorganize the energy structure of the US on my own. But I can make smarter choices about my environmental impact, beginning with simply knowing what my impact is. I can advocate with friends and peers, raising awareness through the power of our personal connection, not as a scolding teenager from Scandinavia (no shade to Greta, she’s a hero, but I also get why some people are put off by her).
I can vote my dollars and invest with ESG in mind. I can advocate to my political leaders that this important. And if I can nudge myself to a more sustainable approach, and then a few others, who knows. I don’t need to solve it all. But I do need to understand my part in all of it. The ledger is a method of moral accounting that helps me understand my impacts, and how to account for them moving forward.
The critic may say that this is insufficient, but I’d respond that incremental change through social networks is how movements build.
As for immigration, empathy and reason must be applied, as in all moral decisions. I can acknowledge the harm being done by ICE in immigrant communities; to those that are being deported or even just living with the fear. Fear, anxiety, they are corrosive. When we sow them into our communities, they dissolve the bonds that unite us.
There is a problem to be addressed in immigration. But not like this. This is plainly harmful to people, robbing them of dignity. It “others” those being hounded by ICE, while doing so in an environment where those perpetuating harms cannot be held accountable. So what can I do? What does my framework lead me to do?
First, I witness. This is not ok. And I will not accept it through inaction.
Next, I do what I can do. For me that’s donating to the ACLU, engaging my elected officials, attending the No Kings protest. I can only control myself, but the consequences of my actions make ripples. I can choose to worry about my life only, but beyond empathy, reason also tells me that a government empowered through apathy to ignore its own laws is a risk to all of us, regardless of political persuasion.
The critic might still say "but this doesn't solve the coordination problems that require collective action" - and they'd be right. But I’m not claiming it does. I’m offering a framework for how individuals can act responsibly within systems they can't control.
Witness the harm, understand your capacity to respond, act within that capacity. It avoids both paralysis ("the problem is too big") and saviorism ("I must fix everything"). Systemic awareness without systemic paralysis. You can acknowledge the limits of individual action while maintaining that individual choices still matter morally and practically.
Why Witnessing Isn't Performance
3. The 'witnessing' concept is performative.
Human civilization is built on a foundation of empathy and collective action. No skyscraper or starship was built alone.
I reject the idea that “most people see the homeless as people”. At a minimum they are spoken of not as people, but as a problem to be solved. And even if they are being witnessed, witnessing alone isn’t all that is called for.
Witnessing creates the conditions for moral reckoning. And a moral reckoning that allows humans to live unhoused in a world with the resources to house all has not had a reckoning with the unhoused as people. Our arguments about the solutions, whether direct cash assistance helps or hurts, whether housing-first policies work, whether addiction treatment should be voluntary or mandated, ignores the harms happening in real time, and gives us an excuse for inaction.
If you are witnessing and still choosing nothing but a policy argument while others suffer, you are committing at least an evil of indifference. If you are advocating for “solutions” that merely get the unhoused out of sight, you are advocating for a harmful act that robs these people of their dignity. Either you’ve witnessed and chosen harm, an act of moral evil, or you’ve only lied to yourself about your witnessing to avoid dealing with the consequences.
At the end of the day, you are beholden to no one but yourself. But your ledger still records. And even if we try to ignore it, it affects us. Allowing each evil of indifference to accumulate makes the next one more likely, and any future pivot to positive action more difficult. This is how moral rationalization works, and even if we lie to ourselves, the consequences of our choices still accumulate.
The ledger requires unavoidable moral reality.
Individual Action, Collective Impact
4. You're solving the wrong problem.
I think I’ve answered this criticism, but to reiterate,
· Individuals cannot solve structural and systemic problems alone.
· But individuals do not exist in isolation, each person’s actions connect to collective action (voting, advocacy, donations).
· Witnessing, true witnessing, leads tom more than just charity. It colors how we think of and frame our place in the larger world.
· Understanding you own role in the larger world is not the same as claiming control over the outcomes.
Truth-Telling, Not Manipulation
5. Your framing is emotionally manipulative
I agree. Starting with my story about my sister is emotionally manipulative. No argument there. But it was meant to be. A feature, not a bug.
I need to demonstrate my bonafides to an audience if I want to be taken seriously. I don’t have the academic credentials. But I do have a life of profound grief and trauma.
I had to face the very real questions about the consequences of my actions. I needed to understand how to persist knowing that what has been done cannot be undone. I know I cannot atone for the harms I identified in the story of my sisters passing. I’m not trying to. I have to live with the failing. I can choose to wallow in the pain of it, or I can choose to learn from it. Honestly, it’s a little of both.
As our lives accumulate so too do our regrets. Those regrets can have a numbing affect, drawing us away from future potential regrets through inaction. But that allows us to rob ourselves of the very real power we wield. Even as one of eight billion, we all contribute a net good or a net evil with every choice, whether an action or inaction. Even with our thoughts, as they influence and shade our future ideas and responses to the world.
I need to show my regrets, and how through struggle I came to the conclusions I have today. Not only that, I need to do so from a position of profound moral failure, wrought in the banal self-centeredness we all fall into.
Moral philosophy can easily fall into the abstract and academic if not grounded to the world we live in. I use my vulnerability to ground these ideas to real, relatable consequences we’ve all perpetuated or been impacted by. I’m not trying to manipulate anyone into thinking I’m a philosopher. I’m using my truth to share my ideas because they’ve helped me and may help more people.
Why This Can't Be Self-Help
6. It'll get watered down into self-help nonsense
So, this is just another self-help racket. In the same vein deciding to get into shape by becoming a runner is self-help. It’s a framework for personal fitness. But here’s the thing… to get the results, it can’t be watered down.
The ledger isn’t about making you feel better about yourself. It is about others and taking a hard look at how your choices affect them.
The first day you lace up your shoes, that first mile you run will be a wakeup call. It will hurt. You will fail. You will walk. You might quit.
The next run will hurt. You might walk. You might quit.
But with every choice to go run, you get a little better. Not without setbacks. But eventually you can go a quarter mile without walking. Then a mile. This is getting easier. You’re learning what works and what doesn’t.
Your good health metrics improve. Your negative one’s decline. You can’t erase all those years on the couch; there is a cost to those choices. But you can be better tomorrow. And if you fail, be better the tomorrow after that.
While running is primarily about helping the self through the building of discipline and stamina and mental fortitude, the ledger is not about you. It’s about the impact you have on others.
You owe them everything. Everything you do, you think, you say, matters. It affects others.
You cannot control what others do. They owe you nothing. You should expect nothing. And still strive to meet your obligation anyway. It’s not about you. It’s about us. All of us. And if we reach a tipping point, it makes all our lives better. Which in turn does help us as individuals.
You cannot dignify yourself. You can only dignify others. It’s about so much more than you alone.
· The pain point is crucial – real moral development, like physical fitness, requires discomfort and failure
· Failure-as-process is foundational. Just like running, moral development involves repeated failure and incremental improvement.
· The asymmetrical obligation remains radical. "You owe them everything, they owe you nothing" – this can't be watered down into mutual benefit language without losing its core. It's inherently uncomfortable and demanding. Not easy to live.
Lifting Each Other Up
7. Who actually has time for this?
Excellent question. Who does have time for this? Certainly not the overwhelmed single mother wrangling kids and just barely squeaking by. She expends all the effort she can just to get to the next day. I know what that’s like. I lived in that world.
But here’s the thing. If all are bearing moral witness to her struggle, we should then be finding ways to alleviate it. She is at capacity at life. But the cashier at the checkout who sees her every week may not be. Maybe she’s a psychology major in college who switches to political science so she can bring about changes that make that mother’s life easier.
Maybe it’s her boss, seeing her first as a person and second as an employee, offering reasonable accommodations to allow her to meet her other obligations. Or a teacher identifying opportunities for her child that both opens doors for the student and gives some precious time to the mom. Or the neighbor who takes out her garbage cans on trash day.
Slowly if more and more people see her, truly see her, and respond to her very real needs, her burdens begin to be lifted from not being on her shoulders alone. They are born by many hands lightening the load.
And from that, now not so harried, she begins to volunteer at school, mentoring another frazzled mom. Connecting her with resources. She films a TikTok about her struggles and the poli-sci major turns it into a rallying cry for the campaign she’s working on. Her kids see her and learn the power of small changes over time.
I’m not asking the mom to carry the world and her life on her shoulders. I’m asking all of us to witness one another and act in whatever capacity we can to generate more good than bad. To recognize. To be honest about what we can do, even if it’s small. And enough small acts lead to large ones. A virtuous cycle.
· The capacity-based obligation is key.
· The ripple effect becomes concrete and practical.
· The virtuous cycle is powerful.
The Reality Check
After all this, a cynic still might say, “this is utopian thinking". But it’s not. “Utopia” literally means “nowhere”. This framework wasn’t generated nowhere. It was uncovered in the pews at a wake, revealed in the disappointment of someone whose trust I betrayed, and put into practice daily from my first waking thought to the moment I shut my eyes.
But I’ve had fun arguing with myself. What do you think? Where are the holes? Where are the flaws? Comment below. Subscribe. If my ideas can’t survive contact with the world then they aren’t built for the world. And that is where we live. So put me, and Architectural Humanism, to the test. Does it add up when you write your Ledger?