# Empathy as the ultimate good

*The beginnings of a moral system centered on empathy*

By [Minerva](https://paragraph.com/@x0minerva) · 2025-06-29

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In another [post](https://open.substack.com/pub/x0minerva/p/a-call-to-build-a-new-moral-system?r=5toxzg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false), I wrote about our need for a new moral system based around empathy. In this essay, I tease that idea out some more.

**The good**
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Empathy as the ultimate good means that connecting with others is the most meaningful thing a person can do. People are judged by their capacity to connect and understand others, even those from different backgrounds, cultures, and languages. Patience and communication are skills we intentionally develop. From this deep empathy, everyone feels a sense of unity and oneness with those around them.

**The bad**
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The ultimate sin is violence. Bringing harm to others is not tolerated, and results in rehabilitation and exclusion from the group. The predecessors to violence- hate and cruelty- are viewed as an infection we must root out and treat.

Instead of primitively seeking vengeance when someone loses their way, we seek to understand what went wrong. Where does the negativity come from? The benefit of the doubt is always given, because the ultimate test of spirit is loving those who have brought harm onto you. Nothing shakes the faith in the human spirit.

**The good life**
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The best lives are those littered with deep relationships with friends and family. We salute those who make sacrifices to care for others, like a child moving home to care for an ailing parent or grandparents moving in with their kids to care for their grandchildren. At the end of a life, the depth and breadth of relationships are eulogized.

On an everyday basis, the best of us are kind to everyone they meet. They are friendly with strangers at the grocery store, they help carry the bags of the elderly up the stairs.

This empathy is rooted in a deep sense that we are all interconnected, and all our fates are linked. Care for others is synonymous with care for the self. The self is defined on a more abstract higher level as the communities one is a part of. Being able to define yourself with larger and larger groups of people, and therefore empathize with people who are seemingly very different from you, is the ultimate skill.

As always, this post is meant to spark a conversation. If you think of something I’m missing or if I’m not making sense at all, comment or message me.

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*Originally published on [Minerva](https://paragraph.com/@x0minerva/empathy-as-the-ultimate-good)*