The Tyranny of Compassion

Rebuilding Maslow’s Pyramid from the Truth Up

Thesis: Elevating emotional comfort above truth has created a new form of psychological fragility and cultural distortion. This essay proposes a reimagined hierarchy of needs with truth as its foundation, arguing that only by restoring truth to its rightful place can we prevent the descent into soft totalitarianism and reclaim the conditions necessary for authentic human flourishing — a state that demands action, resilience, and reality over sentimentality.

Introduction

Over the last decade, I began noticing an intense guardrailing of speech—in conversations, at work, at social events—a subtle hesitation between words. Certain things weren’t being said. Others were quickly interrupted and swept away by the distraction of a new topic. Some truths weren’t avoided for being wrong, but for being uncomfortable. I’m defining this as the tyranny of compassion: a coercive form of compassion that demands conformity to emotional comfort at the expense of truth, stifling debate and resilience.

I’m a somewhat disagreeable person. I relish debate. But I’ve felt the cultural pull away from discursive conversation—as if disagreement were a social faux pas, a personal attack, rather than what it is: the heartbeat of truth-seeking. People wince at the mere spectacle of disagreement, even mild, and instinctively retreat to the comfort of group harmony, like children fearing their parents are fighting. And maybe that’s what first set my alarm bells ringing: the growing infantilisation of society.

I understand avoiding insincere confrontation, but something deeper is being lost. The thrill—and necessity—of convivial debate has been smothered by conformity. Are people afraid of the argument? Afraid to be wrong? Afraid to learn? Has cancel culture installed a kind of moral fence-sitting? Why is this mood so pervasive?

I’m not someone who bites my tongue easily, but even I found myself softening, self-censoring, and reading the room before speaking plainly. And more striking still: how often others stayed silent—or enforced the script of virtue. Emotional coercion has become a means of control.

We like to think of compassion as a universal good. Who could be against kindness? But what if there’s such a thing as too much compassion, or rather, compassion unmoored from truth? What if we’ve built entire ideologies around emotional comfort at the cost of psychological resilience, and called it progress?

This is where toxic empathy creeps in—not the desire to alleviate suffering, but the demand that no one ever feel discomfort, even at the cost of truth, justice, or mental health.

This piece is both a public reflection and a personal reckoning. I’m arguing for truth as the only fertile soil where real compassion, real strength, and real flourishing can grow.

Part I: The Lie of Compassion

I’ve never fully trusted the cultural elevation of empathy and compassion—not because they’re unworthy, but because I’ve so rarely seen them truly in action. The Oxford English Dictionary defines compassion as “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others,” and empathy as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” These definitions are noble. But in practice, I see something else: performance. A placeholder for action. A softened, sentimental instinct that flatters the giver more than it serves the receiver.

In my experience, all emotions have light and shadow components. None are inherently virtuous; none are inherently vice. Even the noblest intentions—compassion, empathy, care—can curdle into control, cowardice, or coercion.

Nietzsche warned: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” And isn’t that the risk here? That in our pursuit of kindness, we become dogmatic? In our desire to protect, we infantilise? What begins in virtue too often ends in performance—or worse, punishment.

For eight summers, I coached women’s mountain bike camps in Canada. It was the kind of work that let me channel my passion into something real—helping women feel stronger, braver, more capable on a bike and in themselves. As someone prone to social anxiety, coaching gave me a role to step into: confident, cheeky, competent.

We laughed a lot. Had our own language. The camps were full of grit and camaraderie, with a dose of gallows humour that made it fun and human.

Then, in my final summer, the shift came—sudden and unmistakable. Gender ideology didn’t creep in; it arrived like a freight train.

Language was scrubbed. The familiar shorthand we used—playful, irreverent, female—was discouraged. Swearing was policed. Gendered language, quietly edited out.

That same weekend, we were handed new policy documents and name tags with pronouns pre-printed. No conversation. No context. Just the assumption. And of course, that was the point. No one asked because disagreement wasn’t allowed.

You’re not a bigot, are you?

This isn’t confined to small camps. In 2023, former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines gave a talk about fairness in women’s sports. Protesters chased, harassed, and physically blocked her from leaving the building. She was barricaded for hours. Their actions were framed as defending inclusion, but what unfolded was coercion.

It mirrored the policies and speech controls I experienced: language scrubbed, disagreement forbidden, assumptions imposed. Compassion, weaponised to silence debate. The university called it free speech. That, too, is moral fence-sitting. By 2025, Gaines’ ordeal helped fuel a broader reckoning: congressional hearings, state-level debates, and a growing sense that truth is being smothered by well-meaning lies.

You hear it everywhere: “I have compassion for...” as if saying the words is enough. As if feeling bad is a substitute for doing good. But compassion without action is theatre. It signals virtue, but changes nothing.

A friend and I were voice-noting recently, circling that exact dilemma. We’re both Sam Harris fans, and his book Lying has shaped how we think about these moments. He makes the case that lying—even with good intentions—undermines trust, flattens reality, and robs people of agency.

One line stuck with me:

“When we presume to lie for the benefit of others, we have decided that we are the best judges of how much they should understand about their own lives.”

That’s not compassion. That’s control dressed up as care.

Czech dissident Václav Havel had a name for this kind of thing: “living within the lie.” Not gulags or purges—just quiet, daily compliance with something you don’t believe. Havel argued that totalitarianism doesn’t need to announce itself. It survives through small performances: say the slogan, hang the sign, wear the badge. Go along to get along.

My coaching story wasn’t a Soviet dictatorship. But it was proof of something else—our deep instinct to control others through language. To manage reality by managing what can be said. It doesn’t take force. It just takes fear and repetition.

And that’s exactly why we have to call it early.

Part II: The Inverted Pyramid

Maslow’s hierarchy is simple: from survival at the base to self-actualisation at the top. First, meet the body’s needs, then safety, then connection, competence, and finally, fulfilment.

But what happens when we tamper with that structure?

This is the core problem of the tyranny of compassion. We’ve begun to treat emotional comfort—not food, not safety, not truth—as the most urgent human need. As if no reality, no biological fact, no shared language should outweigh someone’s momentary sense of affirmation.

Maslow never claimed comfort was foundational. He assumed contact with reality. Needs must be met, not simulated. Resilience, connection, and self-respect are born from that contact, not protection from it. Some argue shielding people from discomfort fosters inclusion, especially for those on the margins. That assumes fragility where there’s strength. Honesty honours their grit—it’s what the marginalised need to thrive in a world that’s rarely kind.

Inverting the pyramid doesn’t just stall growth. It breeds dysfunction. Fragility follows because the deeper needs—safety, competence, connection—wither in the soil of denial.

I think about children raised without boundaries—not out of neglect, but misguided “support.” They don’t thrive. They become dysregulated. Because boundaries, like truth, make you feel safe enough to grow. They let you test, push, retreat, and expand. Without them, everything feels like chaos.

This dynamic mirrors what psychologists call the devouring mother— we can use this as a substitute for the prevailing culture, an archetype that shields rather than strengthens, who mistakes control for care. Under the guise of compassion, it creates dependence, not resilience.

Camille Paglia captures it sharply: “Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just falls back into her and is swallowed up.” The pattern is universal. It’s what happens when compassion becomes a cage.

And without truth, even self-actualisation becomes a hollow performance—not the fulfilment of potential, but a curated identity crafted to avoid offence and attract applause.

Truth is now framed as violence. Reality becomes taboo. You can see the crack in real time. The emotional dysregulation, the livestreamed identity crises, the outbursts that feel less like protest and more like collapse. What looks like rebellion is often a cry for structure. Because without a grounded self to push against, expression implodes. The performance turns manic.

Part III: The Builder’s Mindset

If we keep sacrificing truth to avoid discomfort, we’re not building freedom—we’re rebuilding tyranny in softer colours.

My favourite people don’t bullshit. If I’m wearing a stupid hat, tell me. That’s how trust is forged. That’s how humans grow. Truth isn’t rude—it’s respect. As Thomas Sowell put it, “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth.”

Picture a dimly lit pub in Edinburgh—channelling the spirit of Enlightenment debates. No scripts, no dogma. Just spirited rows over pints. That’s the builder’s mindset: truth over comfort, grit over performance.

Start your own version. One rule: speak plainly. No coddling. No silencing.

Arthur Herman reasoned, “Truth emerges from argument—not authority—and ideas only achieve legitimacy through open debate and scrutiny.”

Flourishing demands contact with reality. Not because it’s nice—because it’s necessary.

Build the muscle. Be brave.

Build from the truth, up.

CREDITS

This essay was written in bursts between mining shifts, boat projects, and existential mutterings into the wind & AI. Rejected by a few respectable publications, so I published it myself.

This was built with calloused hands and borrowed tools. Editing and visuals were shaped with help from AI. The soul of it is still mine. The rest? Part of the new builder’s toolkit.

Written by: Cheryl McClorey
Editor: ChatGPT
Graphics: AI-assisted, vision by me
Inspiration: Joy Division, caffeine + nootropic stack, Orwell, Hitchens, Paglia, Sowell, Nietzsche, Saad, and a stubborn love of clarity
Published via: Grim Optimism — for the overthinkers, dissociators, quietly feral.