If the reader is unfamiliar with Professor Bloom’s book (Against Empathy: the Case for Rational Compassion), the links below will provide a useful summary of his views explaining why empathy makes peopl
e morally worse. Access to a pdf version of his book is provided at the end.
Lecture: (over 1 hr): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWWNUa6kmqE
Bloom summarizes his position (2 min. 48 seconds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM1gYZROu94
Professor Paul Bloom (Yale University) has argued extensively, though not persuasively, against the very notion of empathy. He asserts that empathy actually makes the world worse. It is bad morally, and it is fundamentally self-centered. Admittedly, the unscrupulous may use the empathy of others to deceive and manipulate, but they may use other human traits in a similar fashion, such as affection, the need to belong, the sense of fairness, and even reason. Bloom wouldn’t attack human reason because it often makes mistakes. So singling out empathy for such a massive attack seems a curious thing to do. After all, many “life skills” programs and even the WHO identify empathy as one of the necessary relational skill. So Professor Bloom’s dismissal of this trait suggests that recognized life skills programs are making students worse and that the WHO is spreading self-centered evil through its publications.
That perhaps seems nutty, but Blooms criticisms make more sense if understood as part of a contemporary rethinking of moral behavior, as interpreted through the lens of evolutionary biology. Consequently, Bloom cites as an authority a leader in this movement, the Princeton bioethicist, Peter Singer. He is the ethics expert who:
- Equates human beings with animals by applying universally to all sentient creatures the utilitarian moral criterion, “the greatest good for the greatest number”;
- Popularized the term speciesism, a notion describing a supposed, illicit human privilege affirming superiority over the animal kingdom; and
- Advocates the parental right to kill a newborn up to six months after birth, a radical extension of abortion rights and a denial of human rights to the very young.
How that supports Bloom’s efforts to label his views successfully as “rational compassion” seems puzzling. An opinion poll would show that most people would have difficulty accepting as an expert on compassion anyone who advocates killing other human beings for convenience. But it does put Peter Bloom in the proper context. Both Singer and Bloom are part of the academic movement dedicated to redefining human personality and behavior in naturalistic, evolutionary terms. They share the same utilitarian moral theory. Bloom uses it almost unreflectively to advance his case but fails to make this clear, as if utilitarian ethics were non-controversial. Within this movement, it’s not.
That’s extremely bad form intellectually. Though Bloom makes a number of moral claims, he consistently fails to provide any warrant for their moral authority beyond their utility for humankind, which is a typical failing of utilitarian ethical theories. For what proves useful for the greatest number does not necessarily equate to what is moral. A doctor treating five young people in desperate need of a donor for kidneys, liver, heart, lung, and a massive skin graft, could not forcibly and morally take these from a sixth healthy patient who came in for a sports’ exam, even if that patient might be an exact tissue match for all five of the doctor’s ill patients. A criminal court would remain unimpressed by the numerical “five to one” defense to justify the morality of medical murder.
By now, Christians ought to be familiar with this type of thinking. Materialists with impressive credentials will routinely dismiss Christian morality as actually leading to extremely immoral behavior. The medieval inquisitions, slavery, the slave trade, and the Nazi extermination of the Jews during World War II are often primary examples of where Christian moral thinking leads. This proves, allegedly, that Christian morality is a monstrosity, a brutal value theory emerging progressively through a series of brutal, unsophisticated ages. That’s nonsense, of course, but the sheer fantasy of the allegations does not prevent critics from repeating them as serious criticism. Bloom’s book is simply another example of this dreary history.
I would affirm that Bloom’s analysis of morality is a backdoor attempt to discredit—in the name of reason, of course–Judeo-Christian ideas that for centuries have undergirded institutions of charity in the West, ideas that have informed public policies relative to poverty relief, education, homelessness, public medical care, elder care, and many other issues dealing with the public’s welfare. The target of his book, empathy, has been used by Christians to persuade the public’s conscience on issues of racial justice, social welfare, child labor, prison reform, childcare, and other matters that have required political action. Consequently, it is odd to read Professor Bloom’s arguments that–if taken seriously–would imply that Letters from a Birmingham Jail represents Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s self-centered and shortsighted attempt to manipulate the American public through empathy to oppose racism. That is not overstatement. Bloom might even agree with Dr. King, but much of what this civil rights reformer did was designed to elicit empathy from the majority of Americans so that they would stand with him in his call for racial justice. Does Bloom really mean to call this self-centered, shortsighted, and manipulative? I don’t see how he can avoid that conclusion—even if he agrees with Dr. King.
Foundations and Definitions Are Important
It is curious to hear a materialist become exercised over morality. One must have an authoritative moral theory to start with in order to become morally incensed. A materialistic universe lacks ethical sensibility. It neither loves nor hates. Like the white whale in Moby Dick, it is neither good nor evil; it just is. It does not favor man, care for his happiness or interests, or seek to guard his future. From a human point of view, to quote what Richard Dawkins famously claimed, it is characterized by “precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” How dismal! In the face of such an academic model that describes human beings as organic machines and that deconstructs “morality” as an ethically indifferent instinct produced by amoral evolutionary selection, one might think that Bloom would advance a moral foundation that might legitimize judgments about what makes people morally better or worse. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen. With just a few reservations, Bloom accepts the current model. He believes that man is a machine, but he is an intelligent one. And he makes much of intelligence as the true source of morality. He also believes that what he thinks expresses this intelligence and is, apparently, rationally self-evident. Though it is puzzling, he doesn’t feel that a rational foundation for moral values is necessary. He simply assumes that his views are morally superior, and that’s enough foundation for his purposes. The intellectual presumption is astounding.
But a moral principle must have a warrant that gives it authority; else it is just an opinion. Professor Bloom may believe that his views are “rational,” but that does not make them moral. Nor does it make them rational. He may claim that his views would benefit more human beings, but that does not answer the question why doing this would be morally good. The Human Extinction Movement, for example, would argue–on “moral” grounds–that human beings should go extinct for the good of the planet and its creatures. That’s a slightly different approach to a morality based on “the greatest good for the greatest number.” But if man is simply an organic machine like other creatures, then why shouldn’t the interests of animals, fish, reptiles, bacteria, etc., count equally with man’s interests in any moral equation. In fact, why shouldn’t they count more? Peter Singer has already claimed that that they should. According to the model Bloom accepts, human intelligence is simply an evolutionary and cultural difference, not proof of moral superiority over creation. At the very least, Bloom’s position must lead to the conclusion that man and beasts, in many critical ways, are morally equivalent.
Ignoring the Obvious
Bloom’s presumption is intellectually frustrating. He ignores the obvious. It does not require a lawyer to understand that one must define an idea before claiming to be able to recognize an example of it empirically. More than one criminal case has hinged upon whether a defendant’s act actually matches what the criminal code prohibits. Sometimes these legal cases are difficult, but in every one of them, the legal code, along with precedent and technical definitions, comes first to clarify the law. Without legal definitions, no case resolution is even possible. A legal definition of “murder” or “assault” must first exist before a court can apply it in a particular case. So definitions are important. For Bloom to classify “empathy” as moral, immoral, or amoral, he must first define what morality actually is. He never gets around to doing this.
Though Bloom provides no definition by which to distinguish what is moral from what is not in human behavior, this doesn’t’ seem to bother him. He is content to cite numbers of people affected by an action to quantify the degree of evil. Though statistics are not unimportant, they don’t establish a moral principle. A natural disaster may kill thousands of people; a rapist may molest and kill a female victim. Both are human tragedies, but only the latter is subject to moral judgment. A tsunami does not violate any moral laws when it takes life. Under Blooms own presuppositions, accusing a natural disaster of murder would be irrational. The rapist, however, falls under both moral and legal sanctions. This important distinction Bloom does not seem to understand. He wants to equate the two. Consequently, he cannot empirically distinguish what is moral from what is not. He simply assumes that his opinion is enough to substitute for an ontological foundation to make such judgments. When he does, he gets things wrong, and seems to do it intentionally. That’s intellectually dishonest, but perhaps he hopes that his readers will not notice. We will see an example in a moment.
Professor Bloom vs. Empathy
To most people, Bloom’s rejection of empathy would appear counterintuitive—if not absurd. The ability to put ourselves into other people’s shoes seems to be a foundation for positive charitable activity and selfless caring. In fact, countless Christian sermons and articles exhort believers to empathize with those who suffer and to relieve their pain if they can. And that’s understandable, for it is Christ who said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Bloom, on the other hand, emphasizes intelligence as the primary factor in moral development, not sentiments that “we would do better without,” as he wrote in an Atlantic article (March 2014). These sentiments, he claims, must yield to reason if human kind is to have a future. This, I would argue, is the real point of his book. Religion, he would claim, emerges from humankind’s non-rational mind. Intelligence is man’s true moral guide, not irrational, religious sentiments. Human beings create values, laws, and institutions that make humankind morally better, but intelligence accomplishes this, not instinctive emotion. That’s an almost platonic sentiment, but he is not a Platonist. He believes that man is a physical machine, the result of an evolutionary process. That process has created intelligence within that machine. That intelligence is the foundation for moral behavior. Consequently, he believes that a mindless, amoral process has created both mind and morality. In other words, he believes that a less complicated machine (mindless nature) has created machines of greater sophistication and complexity (human beings with intelligent minds and moral behaviors). Unlike Darwin, Bloom appears to have no doubts about the naturalistic origins of humankind.
Bloom’s attack on empathy affirms that this sentiment provides no reliable tool to motivate intelligent moral behavior, for empathy is “biased, innumerate, concrete, and myopic.” It blinds us to long-term consequences, misappropriates resources, disconnects reason from caring, imprisons charitable motivations in “warm-glow” selfishness, and leads to such things as the “morally justified” carpet bombing of a country in order to save its population from oppression. If one didn’t know any better, one might think that Bloom is saying that evolution didn’t know what it was doing when it gave humans such a sentiment. For it is the source of all sorts of problems. As proof, he points to the case of Natalee Holloway who went missing during a trip in 2005. How is this proof? Allegedly, the unsuccessful search to find her received 18 times the network coverage than did the contemporaneous famine in the Sudan, which was killing tens of thousands of people. That tragic famine was the result of war and drought. In fact, drought and famine occur in that nation periodically—with or without war. Both are happening now in 2017.
Natalee Holloway’s murder was an immoral act. Drought is tragic and devastating but not immoral. It is an act of nature, not subject to either moral censure or legal penalty. Courts don’t put the weather in prison. The war might be considered immoral, but that’s a bit more complicated. Just ask the warring parties. Moreover, the war in Sudan had been going on long before Natalee Holloway’s murder. The world functionally ignored that war for complicated international reasons that had nothing to do with Holloway’s death. Of course, the world could have invaded the Sudan and perhaps forced a peace. It might have stepped up aid to starving people while the war was going on. No amount of coverage, however, would have stopped the drought and famine. These still go on periodically. Nor would more press coverage have stopped the war. In Holloway’s case, however, such coverage could conceivably step up attempts to find her body and reveal her murderer. In other words, the coverage could help bring closure to the family and achieve justice.
It’s not clear what Bloom is arguing here. What network coverage has to do with the morality or immorality of an action he does not coherently explain. Both Natalee Holloway’s murder and the Sudan’s drought and famine are tragic. The former was the horrific murder of an American citizen. That falls under the scope of moral judgment. The Sudan is more complicated. The drought is not subject to moral sanction. To the degree that it is the result of drought, neither is the famine. Those have been happening for years. The warring parties might be criticized morally, but would Bloom favor a United Nation’s invasion to enforce peace? Would that action be free of unintended consequences? Or would he favor providing food aid in a war zone? Would that aid actually get to the people or be used by warlords to control their territories? And if the amount of news coverage had been reversed in these cases (perhaps purposely to suit Bloom’s priorities), would that have even made a practical difference in the Sudan? If not, what is Bloom talking about from a utilitarian point of view? These are legitimate questions, but Bloom never considers them. He simply mourns Natalee Holloway’s press coverage, as if that would demonstrate some kind of consummate evil and prove empathy’s moral worthlessness.
Bloom’s real problem seems to be that people do not care enough about the things that Paul Bloom wants them to care about—like climate change and massive deaths overseas. He blames empathy for this, as if he has proved the allegation. Moreover, he is really upset about it. This is puzzling. In a world that would actually follow his advice, it is unclear why his opinion should matter to anyone. After all, who would really care to empathize? Perhaps people might thank him for providing a reason to dismiss his concerns out of hand, but Bloom’s own reasoning gives no justification why his views should matter. Amazingly, he assumes otherwise. His summary lecture on the subject will take over an hour of a listener’s valuable time.
Reason Alone Can’t Do the Job, So What Else Do We Need
Now Bloom would say that his ethical critique of empathy derives from science and reason. Unfortunately, that is mere academic pretense, for he must obscure the actual scientific work done on empathy (and there is quite a lot of research spanning many years) to advance his point and then smuggle into his formulation the utilitarian moral maxim, “the greatest good for the greatest number.” He asserts that empathy is biased, but his own presuppositions bias his assertions. For example, he is certain of his moral clarity when he cites statistics to decide which issues should receive moral priority (e.g., Holloway vs. the Sudan) but never justifies ethically why anyone should use statistics in this way. He simply applies the utilitarian assumption as if his readers should see the moral superiority of his methods. Moreover, he holds certain views that he thinks everyone should share (e.g., global warming should morally concern everyone) without explaining why these issues should cause moral concern. Since he is an evolutionist, after all, the extinctions expected from the projected warming of the earth might be the best thing ever to happen from the standpoint of the next dominant life form, just as the extinction of the dinosaurs was terrific news for mammals. So even from within his own model, his moral concerns over the presumed warming of earth may well be “biased, innumerate, concrete, and myopic,” simply obstacles in the way of a brave new world trying to be born—a world that Bloom is too blind to see.
To be fair, Bloom does admit that reason alone will not lead to moral behavior and caring. That is remarkably honest. This, however, does not improve his case. What he suggests must be added to reason as a motivator simply scuttles his argument. He posits compassion to serve that role, but that merely causes greater confusion. Compassion, like empathy, is emotive, concrete, and sympathetic. It is unclear how including this characteristic into the moral equation will exclude the bias he desperately wants to avoid.
Why can’t reason do the job alone? Perhaps without knowing it, Bloom answers that question. He points to how advocates of opposing views seek to use empathy to sway public opinion. If one is in favor of abortion rights, one employs reason to motivate empathy for the pregnant mother; if one is pro-life, one employs reason to motivate empathy for the unborn child. Empathy is of no real help but becomes the mere tool that reasoning seeks to activate in behalf of chosen presuppositions. But reason offers no help, either. It, too, is guided by the very same presuppositions.
What causes a person to choose one set of presuppositions over another? From what Bloom says, the likely source will surely be training and cultural experience, not reason. Why? According to Bloom, reason alone cannot resolve the ethical dilemma. It awaits the adoption of presuppositions. Something must condition the reason to choose ethical behavior; else, reason will employ its power to achieve immoral ends. Bloom has dismissed empathy as a candidate to serve this role, so he needs a replacement. What does he choose? Perhaps mystically, he comes up with compassion as his substitute, though what he even means by the term is uncertain. So empathy is out, replaced by a very fuzzy notion of compassion. Why that’s important will become clear in a moment.
It’s worth repeating at this juncture that Bloom begins by crediting reason as humankind’s moral guide. That is the source from which civilization develops systems that improve the moral state of people. In what he now claims, however, reason is just as satisfied achieving “immoral” aims.” (So much for reason as the chief instrument of moral improvement) Consequently, it needs a motivator or governor to keep it from embracing the “dark side.” Bloom then takes us back to sentiment, which is what he desperately attempted to escape at the beginning. The longer he argues his case against empathy, the more incoherent his reasoning becomes. He uses abstractions without doing his readers the courtesy of defining them. That throws everything into a murky swamp of rhetoric. Paradoxically, to serve as reason’s motivator, he now relies on another abstraction, “compassion,” a term that many often use as a synonym for “empathy.” We desperately need good definitions here, but Bloom won’t come up with any.
Playing Games with Definitions
The problem with Bloom’s thinking is simply this: Empathy is an abstract term. Unless that term receives an operational definition, we can’t even discuss it, let alone explore it. scientifically. We can’t know what the term means with any precision. Bloom throws names around, such as David Hume, Adam Smith, and Peter Singer, but he never gives a satisfactory operational definition to empathy. No, not even when he briefly mentions neuroscience or refers to some of the research literature! Instead, he keeps going back to philosophy and philosophers. He seems satisfied to leave the reader with literary impressions rather than scientific definitions.
He does admit that part of the problem is the term itself. Some people, he says, use empathy to mean “everything good.” If people mean that, he says, he’s “all for it.” That’s incredible! I can’t imagine a physicist so imprecise as to say, “If what you mean by gravity is that things fall down, I’m all for it.” Imprecision is the enemy of science. The only way I can explain how Bloom could accept the imprecise “everything good” as acceptable would be to postulate that his own definition of empathy is equally imprecise. Or, perhaps, he just doesn’t care.
Fortunately, other researchers (and there is a wealth of literature on this topic) clearly address the operational definition of empathy before they report and interpret their experimental results. That is good research technique, and their bibliographies are readily available. I would presume that Bloom would meet the standard of due diligence before making global statements. Unfortunately, he doesn’t.
Why is this important? It’s a matter of definition. As I have said, unless we provide operational definitions for abstract terms, we can’t understand what we are talking about. Scientific investigation becomes impossible. For example, do you believe in a democratic system of selecting political leaders? Suppose you say, “Yes, I believe in a democratic process.” “Good,” I reply. “What I mean by democracy is doing what I tell you to do. That’s real democracy. Here’s my list of things that I want you to get done. Come back when you are finished. I’ll have another list.”
You might reply that this is not what you had in mind by democracy. Frankly, I wouldn’t blame you, but unless we make our definitions of democracy clear at the start, we won’t know immediately that we are referring to two entirely different things. That will emerge as the surprise when I hand you your “to do” list. This is not a silly example, by the way. Rousseau saw man in chains, and he wanted man to be free. He recognized, however, that many might object to the freedom he offered. No problem. Rousseau postulated that freedom is what society as a whole longed for. That longing became, for Rousseau, the General Will. So, if a person resisted being free, the General Will would force the person to be free. Now that’s a tidy bit of reasoning that Bloom could warm up to.
Avoiding dialectical games like that in the pursuit of scientific understanding makes good sense, but making good sense is something Bloom manages to avoid. That brings us back to Bloom’s use of compassion to induce moral and caring behavior. Without empathy, Bloom lacks a motivator of the behavior he wants to see. He needs something, he says, that “will fill the gap.” For Bloom, compassion is the candidate, but just how that might work to “fill the gap” is more than puzzling.
Vague Abstractions and Concrete Arrogance
Empathy is an abstract term, but so is compassion. Now we are juggling at least two undefined abstract terms. Replacing empathy with compassion merely puts the conversation deeper into the swamp. First, we need an operational definition to understand the term we want to dismiss (empathy); second, we need another to understand the term we want to substitute (compassion). Morality is also an abstract term, and Bloom hasn’t’ really given a clear definition to that, either. As Bloom plunges deeper into the dark, he apparently thinks that he is making sense, but adding additional, undefined layers to his model merely makes things darker. It doesn’t help.
Ultimately, Bloom wants people to do what he wants them to do. They are not listening, and that annoys him. His annoyance, however, is the real focus. He’s not talking science. He’s simply frustrated socially and politically. If people do what he wants, that’s moral. If they don’t, he finds that troubling and even immoral. Apparently, he is so sure about that he’s published a book on the topic and gives lectures. He expects people to read his book and to listen to his lectures. He also expects them to pay attention. What does he want? Some might say that he’s demanding empathy. He wants his readers to stop caring about what they care about; instead, they should start caring about what Bloom cares about. Incidentally, this serves as a reasonable summary of Professor Bloom’s ideas on empathy. Why a reader should comply, however, is a question that he cannot answer. In fact, he does not even try. He simply assumes that others should care about what he thinks and do what he says.
Why would he make such an assumption? I can think of two reasons. First, he’s arrogant enough to confuse his biases for compassion; second, he is confused enough to mistake his arrogance for reason. He has tricked himself into believing that his views are somehow scientific; consequently, he cannot see the biases he smuggles into his own arguments. But moral judgments without rationalized foundations but possessing political preferences derived from an undisclosed political philosophy can provide neither tools of scientific analysis nor insight for philosophical discussion. What we have instead is a lengthy opinion piece.
Conclusion
If Bloom is right about empathy, he has not proved his case—far from it. His arguments lack the rigor of scientific investigation but make pretense to scientific authority. That’s a pity. I would expect better from a secular scholar teaching at Yale than carefully selected, unrepresentative references from existing literature, refusal to clarify terms operationally, the admixture of political opinion, and the subtle assumption of utilitarian ethics. What he offers up is an uninspiring hodge-podge of materialistic reductionism accented, ironically enough, with mysticism and speculation. He provides no insights on humankind’s actual moral improvement.
For the moment, therefore, empathy’s positive reputation remains unscathed. Men and women of goodwill may use it to persuade their communities to respond to issues in the public’s best interests. And Christians may confidently use their empathy to follow Christ’s command, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We may not be perfect in our efforts. That is something utilitarian moral theory’s “consequentialism” seems to demand. But imperfection does not make our empathy subject to Professor Bloom’s criticisms. A world governed by his principles would prove that. It would not be attractive. Should he give it an experimental try somewhere, certainly others would be willing to join him. With optimistic enthusiasm, they will formally ban empathy and build their culture. Then we could see if “rational compassion” could ignite an ethical renaissance on earth and recreate Eden. If it does, the rest of us will admit error, dispose of our empathy, and seek entrance into paradise. Somehow, however, I think Bloom would fall short of the ideal objective. A society in which people think and act the way that Professor Bloom would like—political opinions, news coverage, and all–may prove less frustrating to him, but it really doesn’t sound like a moral paradise. It doesn’t even sound that interesting.
In conclusion, I offer the good professor some advice.
A Personal Word to Professor Bloom
I am sorry, Dr. Bloom, that people don’t behave the way you would like them to. I feel your pain. But please empathize with my position. Your frustrations provide no justification for shoddy science or amateur philosophy pretending to be science. I would very much like to see you give this presentation before the American Philosophical Association. Moreover, the analysis you extend to empathy I would like to see extended to beauty, reason, truth, logic, morality, or any other academically or culturally important abstract term of which we might think. It would be great fun to see what damage we could do. We could argue that the very notion of logic gives birth to invalid reasoning or that truth is actually the source of all lies. Then again, that would take time and effort. Most of us have actual work to do.
SOURCES
Bloom, Paul. Against empathy: the case for rational compassion. London: The Bodley Head, 2017. Web.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-war-on-reason/357561/
http://www.vhemt.org/
Resources on Empathy
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/cou/43/3/261/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1520-6696(198401)20:1%3C38::AID-JHBS2300200106%3E3.0.CO;2-1/full
http://cultureofempathy.com/References/NewsPaper/
http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/empathy
http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/empathy.htm
I have come upon a most distressing book entitled Evangelical Exodus: Evangelical Seminarians and Their Paths to Rome. The author, Douglas M. Beaumont, argues that the Southern Evangelical Seminary’s focus on classical apologetics, specifically its emphasis on the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, leads Evangelicals to the Roman Church. Apparently, studying Aquinas is bad for the Evangelical’s health. Beaumont has nine cases to demonstrate his claim.
Posted by davidmx3000 
tics and, later, my employment workshop, I gave my students two mottos for the class:
As Demonstrated in a Witch Trial
“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren has apparently changed her mind on vouchers. In a book she co-authored in 2003, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are (Still) Going Broke, she supported them. In her challenge to Betsy DeVoss’ nomination as Secretary of the Department of Education, she has changed her mind.
For those who have prophetic souls, the study of literature can be quite satisfying, especially if it is done outside the Academy. For inside the lecture hall, post-modern vampires will drain all life from a great novel, poem, or play, and leave it in your hands crumbling to dust. But let great authors on their own terms speak to you, and their words will elucidate the past and even show you the future. One such novelist is Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick. His voice has something to teach about America’s possible future, and the angry voices we hear around us today would do well to listen. Through his great white whale, Melville offers a prophetic warning.
INDY RE-ENTRY FOCUS 