Just as it is vital to not reject empathy, it is vital to recognize that almost any virtue can be exaggerated to the point of self-destruction if acted upon in counter-productive ways. It is possible both for empathy to represent the salvation of the world AND for there to be such a thing as Suicidal Empathy, empathy for some to the extreme expense of others.
This article conflates empathy with wisdom. They are not the same thing, and empathy without wisdom is what toxic or suicidal empathy is. Trying to tie it to King Solomon and the Bible is just an attempt to steer a narrative. The King was the law, and he was trying to determine the facts.
Solomon was wise in how he did so; in my opinion because he knew from his own experience that a mother who has lost a child would not object to someone else losing theirs, but a mother whose child is alive would give it up rather than see it killed. This is not necessarily empathy.
It's a two way street. My observation is when our nation , a group of people or the west in general extend a hand, it gets bitten. Of course it must be because of past injustice they will say.
Let's hear the philosophies from other parts of the world concerning empathy.
Enriching cartels by open borders isn't compassion. Where in the world can US inner city people migrate to in order to escape the gangs controlling the court yards downstairs?
I'm going to give a very different answer. In fact, I'll vehemently disagree, but more on important technicalities and misunderstandings than in sentiment. Still I think this is presented incorrectly.
Let's start with important definitions and distinctions:
- Sympathy is the ability to feel pity for another person's misfortune.
- Compassion is being sympathetic and also doing something to try to reduce suffering.
- Cognitive empathy is the intellectual ability to understand another person’s feelings, perspective, or thoughts objectively, without necessarily feeling those emotions oneself.
- Emotional empathy is actually experiencing the same emotions as the other person.
I think most people, including this article, may refer to empathy and instead mean sympathy (feeling pity) or compassion (meaning reducing suffering). When people talk about "toxic empathy", they are usually refer to emotion empathy, which I would argue is usually a bad thing.
For example, you do not want an emotionally empathetic pilot. If you hit rough turbulence and the passengers are all freaking out, you do not want a pilot that is also freaking out. You want a pilot that is calm, controlled, can ignore the passenger as needed to fly the plane well, and -- if possible -- has compassion that can help calm the passengers. More realistically, the pilot will focus on flying and another member of the flight crew, who is also not empathetic (freaking out) but is compassionate and can help to calm the passengers.
What we ideally want is cognitive empathy, not emotional empathy. If you think I'm splitting hairs and agreeing that we still want empathy, consider that the difference here is what makes a sociopath, and also important differences to autistic people. A sociopath usually has intact cognitive empathy, but lacks emotional empathy, sympathy, regret, and guilty feelings.
That doesn't mean they treat anyone badly. Autistics, including Asperger's Syndrome, also tend to lack emotional empathy as well as cognitive empathy. We don't of them as treating people badly; perhaps insensitively, but not intentionally harming people. Both sociopaths and autistics understand reciprocal altruism and the value of competence and kindness.
Arguably we may want sympathetic pity to some degree, but not too much. For example, we may want a surgeon who makes a mistake in surgery that will cause problems for the patient later to feel a little pity and compassion to do more to help alleviate the future suffering and to improve their competence so as to not cause these problems later. But, one need not have any emotions at all to understand the value of all of the above. These can all be understood and acted upon intellectually and built in to personality and habits without the need for the actual emotion.
This is where I think people misunderstand the value and purpose of emotions. They are not really the thing we want. We think of "having" emotions like sympathy as something desirable, but really what we want are the behaviors associated with them, typically acting as signals for what to expect from this person. Emotions like sympathy are not really motivations to help other people, but rather internal motivators by trying to avoid bad internal feelings and make good internal feelings happen, right down to the chemical level.
Emotions exist so that people will act in a way that aims to improve outcomes for others and reduce the suffering of others. There is an underlying intellectual reason for that. In fact, it is the underlying intellectual reason that actually matters. Emotions for the sake of emotions are pointless or a hindrance.
In my opinion, this preference for having motivations driven by hormones rather than intellectually understanding is irrational and perhaps even reversed. People acting on their emotions are not generally driven by intellectually understanding a situation. Mob violence and bar fights are driven by emotions. The scared passengers on the above flight are driven by emotions. The pilot is not.
Emotions are not some universal good on their own. They are nature's more direct motivators that code for certain behaviors. It's what they code for that matters, and being able to understand that situational intellectually and adapt accordingly rather than driven by the emotion is a much better result in general. Neuroticism and phobias are driven by misfiring emotions.
It's a bit strange that some people feel more scared of less emotional people. A MENSA meeting is much less scary than a meeting of highly emotional people. Highly emotional people are more likely to attack you, or become a real burden to you, or be highly unpredictable and inappropriate for the situation.
What I suspect is that people don't understand the purpose of emotions or haven't thought through the intellectual equivalent understanding that they code for.
As a result, I suggest we ideally want the intellectual understanding first, such as understanding how to minimize risk to people in the justice system through segregation of the criminal, rehabilitation, and deterrence of self and others. That could include cognitive empathy.
Next, we'd want compassion, which includes some appropriate sympathy/pity as a minor emotion. Lastly, we probably rarely -- if ever -- want emotional empathy. It doesn't seem to have any value in any modern context. Maybe it can help cheer people up if those around you are happy, but if you become anxious when others are anxious, that's not of value.
Just as it is vital to not reject empathy, it is vital to recognize that almost any virtue can be exaggerated to the point of self-destruction if acted upon in counter-productive ways. It is possible both for empathy to represent the salvation of the world AND for there to be such a thing as Suicidal Empathy, empathy for some to the extreme expense of others.
In my experience, those claiming to be the most empathetic have actually been the least. You cannot hate "them" if you are actually empathetic.
This article conflates empathy with wisdom. They are not the same thing, and empathy without wisdom is what toxic or suicidal empathy is. Trying to tie it to King Solomon and the Bible is just an attempt to steer a narrative. The King was the law, and he was trying to determine the facts.
Solomon was wise in how he did so; in my opinion because he knew from his own experience that a mother who has lost a child would not object to someone else losing theirs, but a mother whose child is alive would give it up rather than see it killed. This is not necessarily empathy.
It's a two way street. My observation is when our nation , a group of people or the west in general extend a hand, it gets bitten. Of course it must be because of past injustice they will say.
Let's hear the philosophies from other parts of the world concerning empathy.
Enriching cartels by open borders isn't compassion. Where in the world can US inner city people migrate to in order to escape the gangs controlling the court yards downstairs?
I'm going to give a very different answer. In fact, I'll vehemently disagree, but more on important technicalities and misunderstandings than in sentiment. Still I think this is presented incorrectly.
Let's start with important definitions and distinctions:
- Sympathy is the ability to feel pity for another person's misfortune.
- Compassion is being sympathetic and also doing something to try to reduce suffering.
- Cognitive empathy is the intellectual ability to understand another person’s feelings, perspective, or thoughts objectively, without necessarily feeling those emotions oneself.
- Emotional empathy is actually experiencing the same emotions as the other person.
I think most people, including this article, may refer to empathy and instead mean sympathy (feeling pity) or compassion (meaning reducing suffering). When people talk about "toxic empathy", they are usually refer to emotion empathy, which I would argue is usually a bad thing.
For example, you do not want an emotionally empathetic pilot. If you hit rough turbulence and the passengers are all freaking out, you do not want a pilot that is also freaking out. You want a pilot that is calm, controlled, can ignore the passenger as needed to fly the plane well, and -- if possible -- has compassion that can help calm the passengers. More realistically, the pilot will focus on flying and another member of the flight crew, who is also not empathetic (freaking out) but is compassionate and can help to calm the passengers.
What we ideally want is cognitive empathy, not emotional empathy. If you think I'm splitting hairs and agreeing that we still want empathy, consider that the difference here is what makes a sociopath, and also important differences to autistic people. A sociopath usually has intact cognitive empathy, but lacks emotional empathy, sympathy, regret, and guilty feelings.
That doesn't mean they treat anyone badly. Autistics, including Asperger's Syndrome, also tend to lack emotional empathy as well as cognitive empathy. We don't of them as treating people badly; perhaps insensitively, but not intentionally harming people. Both sociopaths and autistics understand reciprocal altruism and the value of competence and kindness.
Arguably we may want sympathetic pity to some degree, but not too much. For example, we may want a surgeon who makes a mistake in surgery that will cause problems for the patient later to feel a little pity and compassion to do more to help alleviate the future suffering and to improve their competence so as to not cause these problems later. But, one need not have any emotions at all to understand the value of all of the above. These can all be understood and acted upon intellectually and built in to personality and habits without the need for the actual emotion.
This is where I think people misunderstand the value and purpose of emotions. They are not really the thing we want. We think of "having" emotions like sympathy as something desirable, but really what we want are the behaviors associated with them, typically acting as signals for what to expect from this person. Emotions like sympathy are not really motivations to help other people, but rather internal motivators by trying to avoid bad internal feelings and make good internal feelings happen, right down to the chemical level.
Emotions exist so that people will act in a way that aims to improve outcomes for others and reduce the suffering of others. There is an underlying intellectual reason for that. In fact, it is the underlying intellectual reason that actually matters. Emotions for the sake of emotions are pointless or a hindrance.
In my opinion, this preference for having motivations driven by hormones rather than intellectually understanding is irrational and perhaps even reversed. People acting on their emotions are not generally driven by intellectually understanding a situation. Mob violence and bar fights are driven by emotions. The scared passengers on the above flight are driven by emotions. The pilot is not.
Emotions are not some universal good on their own. They are nature's more direct motivators that code for certain behaviors. It's what they code for that matters, and being able to understand that situational intellectually and adapt accordingly rather than driven by the emotion is a much better result in general. Neuroticism and phobias are driven by misfiring emotions.
It's a bit strange that some people feel more scared of less emotional people. A MENSA meeting is much less scary than a meeting of highly emotional people. Highly emotional people are more likely to attack you, or become a real burden to you, or be highly unpredictable and inappropriate for the situation.
What I suspect is that people don't understand the purpose of emotions or haven't thought through the intellectual equivalent understanding that they code for.
As a result, I suggest we ideally want the intellectual understanding first, such as understanding how to minimize risk to people in the justice system through segregation of the criminal, rehabilitation, and deterrence of self and others. That could include cognitive empathy.
Next, we'd want compassion, which includes some appropriate sympathy/pity as a minor emotion. Lastly, we probably rarely -- if ever -- want emotional empathy. It doesn't seem to have any value in any modern context. Maybe it can help cheer people up if those around you are happy, but if you become anxious when others are anxious, that's not of value.
You make many sensible points. If you are unfamiliar with Stoicism, you might find it to be in accord with your thinking.