#decrease in empathy

There's nothing surprising in saying that Japan's society in Psycho-Pass, as it progresses further under Sibyl System's rule, is decreasing in empathy and is heading towards the dehumanisation of people based on psycho-passes and even more.

However, I find it interesting to also see this evolution in the inspectors' task forces too. For instance, the older enforcer we know of, Masaoka, happens to have been an inspector before the Sibyl system was instituted. And he became an enforcers because of his mental/emotional instability, which is something he probably struggled with before Sibyl, but was rebuked for it once Sibyl was in place.

This is something that happened to both Ginoza and Kogami later on too, when faced with grief and despair. For Ginoza, the turn into a latent criminal was caused by the loss of his father, so it's not really surprising. However what really interest me is the death that triggered Kogami's demoting into a latent criminal and thus enforcer.

Kogami's psycho-pass surge was triggered by the death of one of his enforcers, Mitsuru Sasayama. It is shown in the series that they were close, and that the case on which they were working when Sasayama was killed was gruesome, which explains why Kogami's reaction was so strong when he discovered Sasayama's mutilated body.

So, I think losing it is a pretty normal reaction when someone who was your responsability is killed so violently. So, from the first season, it was always clear that empathy could cause you to turn into a latent criminal, which is why it's not surprising to see other inspectors, after Kogami's demotion, start distancing themselves from their enforcers. And I do not think it has anything to do with age, as Kogami and Ginoza were born in the same year.

And Ginoza is a pretty interesting example because, even before the events with Kogami, he was already trying to avoid being close to his enforcers in order to prevent his psycho-pass from going up. But there are circumstances behind Ginoza's behaviour, as his father was demoted due to his psycho-pass surge, and he has suffered the circumstances of such an event.

So, with that being said, when we start the second season and see that Ginoza has become an enforcer, we expect new inspectors to be detached from their enforcers. We can see it with Mika Shimotsuki, her behaviour, and how she is abiding by the laws she dutifully learned. She rejects Akane's conduct and sees enforcers as a disposable task force. However, as the season progresses, she starts to forge ties with Yayoi Kunizuka, and by the third season, we see that her beliefs were shaken, as she's much more lenient in her new position of Chief Inspector. Thus, we could think that, despite wanting to stay away from their enforcers, the wills of inspectors will never be as strong as the time spent besides their colleagues and the ties they forged together, however....

Here comes Risa Aoyanagi. She's an inspector, has the same age as Kogami and Ginoza, and even entered the public safety bureau at the same time as the latter. She is there when Kogami is demoted, and when Ginoza is too. She presumably has the same closeness with her enforcers as her former colleagues did, and yet, she does something no other inspector is shown doing in the show: She kills one of her enforcers, Ryogo Kozuki, in cold blood as he was trying to flee. He was an enforcer with whom she worked for years, and according to Psycho-Pass: The Novel, they even had a relationship at some point (I didn't read it, saw this on the wiki while I was writing this).

And I think this is where the empathy part comes out. Because I remember being shocked when Aoyanagi mentioned to Ginoza that she killed her enforcer while he was trying to flee. I tried imagining Akane or Ginoza doing the same with Kogami, and couldn't really grasp it because they would never do that. And yet here was this inspector, killing her enforcer while he was trying to flee his forced emprisonment.

And this admission made me think about Kogami's surge in psycho-pass. Kogami's psycho-pass surge happened in 2110, after the death of his enforcer. The grief and guilt were so strong that it caused him to turn into a latent criminal. Aoyanagi's execution of Kozuki happened three years later, in 2113. She killed him for something that is, on his part, understandable, and which she maybe could have stopped without the use of her dominator. I mean, I would have tried to flee too if I had been in Kozuki's position. After the killing, Aoyanagi felt grief and guilt, as she expressed it to Ginoza later, but it did not cause her psycho-pass to surge alarmingly.

And this is where this lenghty post is going: As the psycho-pass of inspectors in the Sibyl's system are remaining low, so are,their level of empathy. The Sibyl system is destroying the empathy of their inspectors, going from inspectors losing their minds because of the death of their relatives, to inspectors killing their own subordinates in cold blood.

The system is molding them into cold-blooded agents, no longer questioning the orders and thinking for themselves, ready to kill anyone as long as it is Sibyl ordering it. And in the wake of it, enforcers are nothing else but cannon fodder, finally disposable in the eyes of their inspectors.

Well, this was quite long to talk about something that is pretty obvious, but I've been thinking about the differences in reactions for their subordinates' deaths between Kogami and Aoyanagi and it will never not bug me.