Traditionally, software developers just looked at logic and the code. Just ignore emotions, make everything compile and run and that fixes everything! Right? Wrong. When I look at the free software movement, ask myself where it is weak, and then ask myself where it could be stronger, I am left with the impression of people willfully blinding themselves to obvious truths in order to make themselves bow to authority figures.
Why do people become programmers in the first place? What motivates someone to spend massive amounts of time on something that could just easily described as “applied logic?” Are people who program just rational logical human beings who only care about logic, or is something else going on, is there some underlying reason for the focus on logic. Maybe the people so focused on logic are just trying to escape emotions (and for good reason).
Understanding Empath Sickness, why people have it, and what to do about it should be a major concern in getting communities of software developers to work together. Instead of ignoring it, and pretending it doesn’t exist, or worse yet putting useless labels on it that ignore what is actually going on, does not do people any favors. You can have faith in religious institutions or science and academia all you want, it won’t matter since you are wrong. Here is a blog essay about the topic that is spot on. I could write my own essay about it, or rather a book about it, but it won’t do any good if people don’t think that it exists in the first place and instead turn to their favorite preferred explanations from religion and science.
https://robjo.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/empath-sickness/