Happy Empathy Day! 🎉🎊🎉🎊🎇🥳🥧🍰🧁🍬🍫🍩🍪🥂🍾🥳
This year's theme is: 'Empathy, Our Human Superpower', meaning "a special skill you can develop to transform your life, your relationships, and the world itself", according to the description given on the Empathy Lab website. So today I'd like to bring out two key concepts that I've always emphasized about empathy therefore I'm pleased they've been highlighted in this year's theme:
1: the human-based aspect of empathy
2: empathy is a skill anyone can develop
Empathy is a key concept in Humanism. As a Humanist and Secular philosopher, I developed an Humanistic concept of empathy, within an Humanistic Ethical framework in my Philosophy BA Dissertation, which is the building block for this blog and my long-term research project on empathy. In this way, I was developing the value of empathy as a social and ethical superpower and skill for all human beings to develop within a secular framework. That way, empathy becomes an ethical and social theory that is accessible to everyone, regardless of who they are, and no matter what their religious or non-religious belief systems. Why's that important? Because I think that it brings about social cohesion and helps combat prejudice, discrimination and tribalism.
For instance, one female Christian lecturer once said to me that Leibniz was more ethical than Spinoza because Leibniz was a Roman Catholic and the other one wasn't (Spinoza was Jewish). Although a bit later, during a conversation which included a woman Spinozist, she said that all her students liked Spinoza when she taught him. (How does that work?🤔) To which the Spinozist replied: I find they either love him ❤ or hate him! 😪
Both Leibniz and Spinoza were 17th century philosophers and both had been excommunicated by their respective religions. The difference being that if a Catholic is expelled from their religion (by the then Pope) then they cease to be a Catholic and cannot function as one, can't attend church, cannot take sacraments and so on. Whereas, for an excommunicated Jew, it's specific to that one synagogue and its rabbis so you simply go to the one 'round the corner instead! So no big deal. It's quite a common occurrence which is why most Jews belong to at least two synagogues.
Anyway, the point being that her attitude is called tribalism because she still sees Leibniz as a fellow Christian four centuries later, therefore perceives him as the more ethical one, despite his excommunication by the then Pope. Why doesn't she extend the same empathy towards Spinoza? This is where empathy should step in. The lecturer should be able to enter imaginatively into how Spinoza might have felt and thought about how he was being treated by the synagogue and how his unfair excommunication didn't reflect his ethical principles or (Jewish) religious beliefs. She should be able to respond appropriately in an empathetic manner.
Empathy is important in society because tribalism causes bias, conflict and division between people so it becomes a society of 'them and us', which generates prejudice and discrimination, leading to violence against the targeted groups. We can see how Jewish communities and individuals are targeted in the USA and Europe due to rising anti-Semitism.
Empathy is an emotional skill that if children and adults of all ages don't engage and develop then it dehumanises people who aren't in your tribe and this then can spill into hate speech, violence and crime. It can corrupt societal cohesion enabling political leaders to descend into tyranny. In some cases, it leads to genocide because a lack of empathy demonises others.
Empathy is open to all: it's not gender, race or age specific. It's not background, politics or religion specific either. This is why I answered yes to my supervisor's question: Do you think a Christian is capable of empathising with Holocaust survivors? It's also why, when asked by a current famous male philosopher, on handing him a copy of my dissertation post-degree at a regular Aristotelian Society talk series in 2016 we attended, if I thought empathy is something only women are capable of but not men, I replied no, it's something everyone can develop.
It did make me wonder though whether the concept of empathy doesn't struggle from being mis-understood as some soft, feminine, caring quality. But surely this would be a rather sexist assumption. I'm not sure why people would even associate it with women only when, ironically, empathy is not even popular in feminist theory/philosophy!
Empathy is also often conflated with sympathy, which is very different. Empathy is feeling with someone whereas sympathy is feeling for someone, but in a more pitying way. Empathy breaks down possible barriers between individuals or people from different social groups and promotes understanding. Sympathy, on the other hand, creates barriers because it encourages people to feel superior to those they pity. This creates emotional distance between people and undermines understanding their minds and emotions, as well as their general situation.
Empathy is a basic, innate psychological and emotional capacity that creates a cooperative society. A cooperative society is a more cohesive society, which promotes psychological well-being, and so good mental health and happiness. Empathy is known to actively reduce anxiety in people. For instance, when one person empathises with another, both the empathiser and the person with whom they are empathising feel calmer, less tense, less stressed, less anxious, and less distressed. Even physiologically their well-being improves too, because their immune system functions more effectively and their recovery from illness, should they suffer ill-health, is faster and more complete.
There are, however, still many errors people make when thinking about empathy.
One myth is that it's too difficult and asking too much of people. Understanding empathy neurologically is still underdeveloped but we already know that it's an innate capacity in all humans as well as within the animal kingdom, but nonetheless, it's something that can be trained and improved. It's an on-going process. There is no point at which you can stop and say - I'm an empathetic person, so job done! Life throws all sorts of things at people which can create empathy blockers in them or traumatize them which sometimes numbs them into a reduced ability to empathise. So it's a continual process of not just gaining empathy from a young age, but also encouraging, maintaining and enlarging the ability to empathise with others all throughout life.
Another myth is that sympathy and charity is enough, without needing empathy. Some erroneously think religious ethics is a stronger, more stable basis than a secular, human-based approach, because it's based on a certain established, conventional interpretation of scriptural codes of conduct.
Another myth is that empathy leads to over-identifying with someone, that the process is all too emotionally demanding, you'll become confused, lose your own identity, your own emotions, and conflate your life with theirs. Some worry that people lose a sense of who they are as they start to only see things from other people's point of view. In fact, it's quite the opposite: If you are over-identifying with the other, then you are not actually empathising with them because you are only empathising with yourself because you are seeing yourself in them. Hence, to empathise, you need to see the person as having a distinct identity from yourself, no matter how similar or different they are to you. That way, you can empathise with them but without objectifying them as an other.
In empathy, you can use your imagination to enter into what they must have felt and thought. You probably never can feel exactly as they do (or did) but it gives you the ability to experience it at least to some extent, giving you a type of empirical knowledge of others. But not in a cold, calculating, data gathering way, but through an emotional connection which will lead to ethical action, such as being less likely to behave unethically or in a dehumanising way towards others because you've broken down the 'them' and 'us' barrier, making it feel more real. Whereas sympathy cannot generate an understanding of other people, their experiences and events in history. So we are more likely to repeat bad history.
One such example is the Holocaust - Is it sympathy or empathy people feel when learning about the Holocaust and listening to survivors' stories? I've always argued that Holocaust education will not be effective if all you engender is a type of sympathy for Holocaust victims whereby you feel sorry for them in an emotionally distant way and think - how terrible for them! However, if Holocaust education is designed to engender empathy then you have a better chance of achieving the right emotional response to what they have experienced and finally achieve the goal of humanising the social groups that were victimised: Jews, LGBTQIAPD, Roma, women, mentally and physically disabled, so that history is not repeated and globally one can live up to the motto of 'Never Again'. The empathic reaction to their suffering will stay with you, become part of your ethical and social outlook and lead to action, big or small, for instance, standing up for them against prejudice and bullying; and supporting who they are and their human rights.
It is only when this is accomplished on a small scale, as well as more broadly, that the global community will be able to say 'Never Again', mean it and act in a way that shows they mean it. Empathy isn't tribal therefore it will extend to all genocides no matter where they occur or who the victims are. And this empathy will naturally extend to all marginalised groups irrespective of the degree of suffering and whether it's in a tyrannical society or a democratic one.
For related, detailed discussions on this blog, see:
https://theroleofempathyinourlives.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-instinct-and-emotion-of-empathy.html
https://theroleofempathyinourlives.blogspot.com/2021/06/dignity-and-empathy-on-empathy-day-10.html