From the Cambridge Dictionary:
- empathy: the ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person's situation
- sympathy: (an expression of) understanding and care for someone else's suffering
If you aren’t the target of an adversity, then your ability to empathize with targets of that adversity is limited. If you do not experience an adversity directly, then you are ignorant of what it is to experience that adversity, and all it entails. In fact, to presume to empathize with any experience that you do not share is disingenuous. As a white male, I am ignorant of the lesbian experience. I cannot empathize with the experience, and if I speak of the lesbian experience, I will misrepresent it in ways that I simply cannot understand.
One person cannot sufficiently empathize with the experiences of another only by being sensitive and receptive enough. It is a fool’s errand; we should not attempt it, and we should not expect it. A white American cannot genuinely empathize with the black American experience, and a white American does a disservice to black Americans when he or she presumes to able to. Of course, a white American can sympathize with black Americans. However, sympathy originates from empathy, and thus, any human can sympathize with black Americans from the common ground of the human experience. That is the common ground of empathy. Of course, the greatest adversities of black Americans do not arise from the human experience. Sympathy is genuine. Sometimes sympathy seems like it isn't enough, but it is honest.
In no way does this mean that we cannot, or should not take offense or react when we witness behavior that causes another harm. It only means that we should be genuine in our offense, and realize that the empathy we share is limited, whereas the sympathy is not. We are most beneficial when our defense of others originates from our own experience, and from our sympathy that originates from the commonalities of human experience.
I agree with the idea that empathy, in any given person, exists as a limited commodity. I believe that a person is by nature a limited being; there are bounds to all dimensions of experience, feeling, etc. Once a person gets into the appearance of having unlimited any-quality-within-the-self, it seems to me like we are now talking about gods or fictions. Or narcissists, I suppose. I have read that our daily ability to self-discipline is limited; that it shows a decline in performance over time when taxed. (Yes, I've also read articles that decry those same studies; seems like the jury is out on this topic. However, I've never seen a study demonstrating a human's unlimited quantity of -- well, anything.) I know for a fact that attributes of mine, such as patience or anger, certainly feel and appear limited as I engage in or with them. My general level of intelligence is limited by my brain and genes. My stamina and physical endurance are limited, as I begin to feel exhausted halfway through a 6 mile run. I can't even sleep forever; the body wakes me up when it's hit that particular limit, with no input from me on whether I agree. I think the thankful antidote or defense to this limited experience and limited mental/brain-i-al resources that all persons experience is the ability to switch off: when I recognize my empathy has reached a limit, I can switch gears from empathizing, perhaps, to trying my best to listen, or learn. When I am out of patience, I can divert my attention to something less trying. When I am out of reason because, perhaps, my emotions are too high -- I can realize this, consciously decide to stop engaging analytically (or to stop allowing myself to turn to 'logic' or overthinking) and practice letting go, or accepting that not everything can be proven, defined, known -- can be mathematic in nature, I'd like to say. There are limits to empathy, just like any other human trait or ability; knowing what our personal limits are allows us to recognize when we have reached them and to stop trying to wring a dry sponge, or get the car going by flooding the engine. It is useful to know when a given approach may no longer be viable due to resource constraints so that then, we can either admit this limit and step away from the task, or we can admit the limit and begin to try other, potentially also-valuable approaches.
Thanks. Well said. I'm not much of a baseball fan, to me, this quote below reflects much of how you've broken this down. Sort of a "Know thy enemy, know thyself" sort of thing going on here. Nolan RyanEveryone has limits. You just have to learn what your own limits are and deal with them accordingly.
I have never seen these discussions of the limitations of empathy used for anything other than inoculating one group against criticism from another. You, for example, will never truly empathize with the people using the school that you've built. Therefore, your motives cannot be truly empathetic. Therefore, there is some other reason for your altruistic behavior therefore it is not truly altruistic. As a consequence, I can present myself as morally superior to you because I am not serving a false paradigm in order to buttress my (non-existent) empathetic characteristics. I am a better person - with more Purity Points - because I didn't try to prove something by selfishly helping others. My wife has a friend. Catholic. Doing pretty well. She blows two weeks of vacation a year to volunteer as a healthcare worker in Haiti. Every year. Since 2010. She'll never be Haitian. She'll never want to be Haitian. Yet I have heard her criticized for her cultural appropriation and insensitivity for bringing her white savior complex to Haiti instead of vacationing like a normal person. The argument is that since she can't truly understand the struggle of living in a cardboard shack in Port-au-Prince she can't help those who do without accepting and understanding that she should feel guilty for wanting to. More than that, she owes an obligation to people of color who don't go to Haiti for two weeks a year because their understanding of the struggle of being homeless in Haiti is more perfect than hers. My wife is in a bit of a thing right now. Of the six people she employs, four of them are minorities. Of the six students she's had at this clinic, five have been minorities. One of those students does not abide by the terms of the student/teacher relationship such that she will only follow instruction when it directly benefits her credential pathway. The work she does not desire to do, she does not do. Things came to a head over the weekend because we went on vacation. The student left without permission, didn't do any work and refused to take instruction from her supervisor (another minority). And, as this supervisor was wrapping up to go do NGO stuff in Africa for three weeks, it came to my wife to sort out how we're going to handle this with the student's school. Now - it doesn't matter to the school that the student has beef with a minority supervisor. It doesn't matter that the only reason my wife is interceding is that the supervisor in question is twelve thousand miles away. What matters, as far as the school and the student are concerned, is that my wife has no standing to judge the student's behavior because she's not a minority. That she's the only student with this problem (all three of which are minorities) does not factor into this. That no previous student has had this problem (all but one of which have been minorities) does not factor into this either. That my wife is acting in the interests of another minority who is unable to attend does not matter. Never mind the whole "it's our business, she signed a contract and we're just trying to get her to do what she agreed to do" angle to the thing. My wife, as a white woman, is being discouraged from requiring a minority student to adhere to the terms of her contract because she does not have the ethical standing to understand the struggle of minorities. Will we take more minorities in the future? Of course we will. We favor minorities because we believe that the world benefits from diversity and the promotion of minority opinions increases the richness of culture and improves the fairness of the human experience. but we'll do it cringing because if we only hired white girls we wouldn't have to worry about our ability to run our business. Worthy of note: my wife's profession is one practiced almost entirely by conservative menopausal white women. My wife is one of the youngest by far. You think a 55-year-old Trump voter is going to put up with this shit? You think choosing this hill to die on really helps minority advancement in the long run? But at least we have a nice, internally-consistent semantic argument.Other classmates accused us of having a "white savior" complex, but if nobody was being exploited and nobody felt bad about it who cares?
Something important to keep in mind is that when shit sucks, it's nice to hear "yeah wow that sounds hard, I'm sorry it's like that" (what I'd call sympathy?), but this should be just the first part of 'helping others'. Whether you want to call it empathy or compassion or whatever, we need to understand why shit sucks and what we can do about it. And, critically, we can't predicate that understanding on having been in the exact position someone else has been in! Whatever power we might have, we need to use it to make life better for those who lack that power, and the only way I see that happening is through empathy.
No. You are arguing that without perfect experience there cannot be understanding and that's a Ben Shapiro way of thinking. Stanislavsky created modern acting through the intentional application of empathy and the modern industry of theater by encouraging empathetic behavior. It requires no genius to argue that a cisgender white male will never perfectly understand the lesbian experience but it also requires a willful disregard of the human experience to argue that he shouldn't try. An attempt at empathy is a necessity for understanding and empathy foe the imperfection of the attempt is essential to bridge the misunderstandings inherent in any diverse society. You are arguing that humanity would be better off if we all retreated to our silos, whixh is the fundamental message of white nationalism.
This helps. I'm talking about the limits of empathy, not understanding. I can be very educated about the lesbian experience, and still not have it. This has a lot to do with what I am getting at. I can understand things that I cannot empathize with, and understanding doesn't require perfect experience. Our empathy is limited. That's not to say that we cannot better understand, nor try to better understand. Of course, we should. But empathy and understanding are different things. We cannot understand our way to a place where we can speak on the behalf of someone that faces adversities we do not. We can speak in support of, but not for. My understanding can grow, but I am fooling myself if I think that my empathy will continue to expand along with my understanding. At some point, somewhere around the point it is to have been, to be, and continue to be that other person, my empathy cannot extend. I added the definitions before posting, because I knew this would likely be misinterpreted due to definitions. I'm not a silo kind of person, and we aren't better off limiting our interactions to similar folk. The converse is true. I felt the need to write this, because I've been trying to better understand why some behavior that ostensibly aligns with my ideals feels disingenuous to me.You are arguing that without perfect experience there cannot be understanding and that's a Ben Shapiro way of thinking.
It requires no genius to argue that a cisgender white male will never perfectly understand the lesbian experience but it also requires a willful disregard of the human experience to argue that he shouldn't try.
You are arguing that humanity would be better off if we all retreated to our silos, whixh is the fundamental message of white nationalism.
The first problem with your reasoning is that you're asserting "there are limits to empathy" as if it's an unassailable maxim, rather than an assumption grounded in nothing. Presume you're right - I can never fully empathize with the experience of an Uyghur in a concentration camp. So fucking what? Can I empathize with an Uyghur in a concentration camp enough to put myself in their shoes? Oh, but I can understand an Uyghur in a concentration camp, I just can't fully empathize with them. Because understanding and empathy are different things, and somewhere nebulous where we don't know where it is it ceases to be empathy and becomes understanding. Let's talk Anne Frank. Neither one of us is a fifteen-year-old Jewish girl. We cannot have "perfect" empathy for her experience. But which of us has more "empathy" and which of us has more "understanding?" By blood, I'm an Ashkenazi jew. Never mind that I grew up completely divorced from the Jewish experience, under Nazi rules of engagement I was destined for the camps. But I'm also a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nordic-lookin' sonofabitch so it probably wouldn't have cost me beer money to get that cleared out. You, on the other hand, have a Polish surname. Maybe you have a better understanding of Anne Frank's experience. But maybe Tomi Lahren has a better grasp of the Anne Frank experience because she was once a 12-year-old girl. I'm sure she would cheerfully subscribe to your reasoning: what you're doing is eliminating the effort and obligation of understanding those with a different experience by arguing it's scientifically impossible (at some nebulous point best left to theory). This explains why Trevor Noah's gutting of her philosophy shouldn't be considered - he can understand with the condition of being a 20-something blonde racist with rich parents but as a black South African he'll never truly empathize with it. More importantly, though, where's the utility of your discovery? Presume you're right. What does that get you? You're injecting a purity test so that you can stomp other people. It will not surprise you to discover that I've encountered this reasoning before: A white dude living in New Zealand who's been a lifelong member of the Freemasons and who has an MFA in acting from USC told me to "check my privilege" as a way of arguing that JD Vance was full of shit (PROTIP: he is): You've basically independently discovered intersectionality bingo: not the concept of intersectionality, but the practice of stacking your repression credibility in order to win an argument instead of using logic, reason or evidence. He who is most oppressed wins the discussion because nobody else can truly empathize with their struggle and whatever you're talking about, you can easily make it about struggle. You have discovered nothing useful here. More than that, what you think you've discovered is useless nonsense. Let's get to the true problem: I will bet you anything it's because you've been watching a few games of intersectionality bingo. I felt the need to write this, because I've been trying to better understand why some behavior that ostensibly aligns with my ideals feels disingenuous to me.
Man, I hate this comment. mk has an idea you disagree with? Fine. But you jump to personally insulting language, and, I think, a misunderstanding of why they posted this to begin with. I mean, you read THIS sentence: ...and think that he's advocating for a siloing off, and that he's falling into the mindset of white supremacy (and yet, simultaneously, Intersectionality Bingo) where no one gets to have an opinion about anything? For fuck's sake, he's trying to figure out how he should interact with experiences he hasn't had. The utility of this discovery is to fucking discuss it and suss out how to best do that. Your example of Trevor Noah, Tomi Lahren, and Anne Frank? That's clearly, clearly not the world mk is demanding. He isn't, and I'm not sure why you think he is. He literally says, "[My] understanding can grow, but I am fooling myself if I think that my empathy will continue to expand along with my understanding." If anything, he's putting forward in his reply to your comment that we can't have a perfect understanding of something, but that our limited perspective still has utility and we should be honest about the limitations of our understanding while we "react when we witness behavior that causes another harm." Hubski is a discussion-based website, and I hate how often the discussions dissolve into a dismissive, "I will bet you anything it's because you've been watching a few games of intersectionality bingo."In no way does this mean that we cannot, or should not take offense or react when we witness behavior that causes another harm. It only means that we should be genuine in our offense, and realize that the empathy we share is limited, whereas the sympathy is not.
You are arguing that without perfect experience there cannot be understanding.
My daughter is going through a phase right now. She'll misuse a word and when we correct her, she'll say "well that's the way I use it." Then we'll explain that the whole purpose of words is to communicate ideas between people and that if they don't agree on what the word means, then they aren't communicating. More than that, when they use a word wrong and insist that their way is right because they want it to be right, they're making everyone else wrong just so they don't have to get along with anyone else. Of course, she's not yet seven. MK doesn't have an idea I disagree with: he's redefining words for his convenience so he can judge the behavior of others. And while he may personally put forth a disclaimer saying that he still believes in good behavior, he lets stand that that behavior can be judged only on his terms, and subject to his understanding of the world. Never once does MK say "I" am going to be offended, he uses "we" which means I'm included under this edict, as is the rest of the world. Culture is controlled through language. Generally it's the conservatives griping about the changes made by liberals: political correctness is their touchstone but really, whenever you tell a group of people their language is offensive that group will lash out. And in this circumstance, there is no outgroup whose culture is being protected. Let's say I personally define marriage as being between a man and a woman. If I keep that to myself, do I impact the LGBT community? Certainly not as much as if I strive to repeal equal marriage laws. But in any interaction I have with anyone else, my backwards notion of union are going to color my perspective and theirs. I have an old definition that allows me to embrace a reality that has passed and gives me an anchor to keep myself from being swept into the present. I can define a girl as someone born biologically female - and make a self-righteous stink about bathrooms. Will that affect more than me? Or will my attitude impact everyone I interact with? You're arguing that since MK is not personally intending to use his ideas to circumscribe my behavior, there's no way my behavior will be circumscribed by his ideas. Yet as I previously discussed, this very approach has been used time and time again in any number of debates that I have personally taken part in. Triangulating to motive is the fastest and easiest way to disregard the actions of others - yeah sure Chick Fil A gives their employees Sundays off they also sponsor anti-gay legislation therefore we don't have to acknowledge anything good that they do. MK is asserting, with no evidence or discussion, the idea that empathy is a limited commodity. he is further arguing that since empathy is a limited commodity (QED), we should all behave as if we lack it. Your lack of empathy has hindered your ability to understand how MK's understanding and philosophy hinders his impact on my understanding and philosophy - you are here arguing that MK is allowed to argue that people have limited amounts of empathy but that I'm not allowed to call him out for it. You're trashing one of us. It happens to be the one you disagree with. And your sole contribution to this discussion is to attack me.
What's the point of the anecdote with your daughter? To compare me and mk to a seven year old? "Words have meaning" would have sufficed. The same anecdote without "Of course, she's not yet seven" would have served your rhetorical purpose. So why include that line? To belittle? My sole contribution to this conversation is to try and open the fucking dialogue up past, "Your idea is stupid, and you're dumb for saying things that are already a foregone conclusion in my mind," because ilex just made your exact point in a way that doesn't treat mk like an idiot for posting something. Nobody was compared to a seven year old, an overly sensitive liberal, or a white nationalist.
All the arguments you say I could have made simply I've made: You either did not see them, did not understand them or did not acknowledge them until I brought up my six-year-old daughter. Why did I include it? To either aid, encourage or force you to acknowledge my point. Your argument before is that I'm a meanie and I have no point. Your argument after is that I'm a meanie. Fine. The point stands that definitions proscribe behavior and whether or not mk wants to proscribe my behavior, his attempt at redefining words has that effect. More than that, I'm the only one arguing that empathy is not an inherently limited commodity despite the fact that mk offers no evidence or discussion to back up his assertion. mk's core argument is that we must use emotions other than empathy to shape our behavior because there isn't enough empathy to go around. ilex is arguing that we should be nice to people, veen is arguing that other definitions are more important and katakowsj is bringing up a book on the Dalai Lama. I'm the only one making a counter-argument of mk's core point and now, in addition to attacking me for disputing his right to shape my behavior through definition, you're attacking me for not responding to your obscenities kindly enough.An attempt at empathy is a necessity for understanding and empathy for the imperfection of the attempt is essential to bridge the misunderstandings inherent in any diverse society.
Agreed. I see compassion as the understanding of pain occurring and taking action to alleviate it. I tend to see empathy and sympathy as passive while compassion is an active process that can be very empowering. Too often, I think intended empathy and/or sympathy can devolve into pity. No alleviation of pain occurs for anyone. I’ve read the Dalai Lama’s “Book of Joy” a year or so ago. It was there I think I remember reading similar discussion about compassion and our need to foster compassion to alleviate more pain in ourselves and those around us.
Here's where I get itchy. We've got four terms being bandied around here: empathy, sympathy, understanding and compassion. We've got one concern: helping others. We're all agreed: help others. But simply by indulging in the semantic argument about what each of the four terms means, we're creating a hierarchy of help. This term has been elevated over that term, this term is worse than that other term, and this other term becomes yet another term which everyone knows that everyone knows is bad ("Too often, I think intended empathy and/or sympathy can devolve into pity. No alleviation of pain occurs for anyone. ") The mere fact that we're arguing about what each of four terms means that none of these terms are settled. None of these terms have a commonly-accepted definition, at least as far as their application to mercy. Yet here we are, arguing that one is good and another is bad and we should feel entirely okay for judging someone else on their practice of empathy instead of pity or sympathy instead of understanding or not using enough compassion but practicing too much empathy and give me a fucking break. Here's where this started: That's mk wondering whether he is morally pure in feeling judgmental over someone doing something he agrees with. Yes? No? Maybe? I know that this sort of hair-splitting does no one any fucking good, I know that any time a group of people argues whether or not they're allowed to pass judgement over another it better be over deeds not words and I know that he who first argues definitions loses and this is one big fat loser of an argument. You know what? If you feed the homeless you're doing good. If you restrict access to abortions you're doing bad. Is the good outweighing the bad? Most of the time, probably; I've had to learn an absolute fuckton about abortion in the United States lately for reasons we don't need to get into here and what I can tell you is that the fuckin' day-after pill is rapidly mooting the whole fuckin' discussion. I can also tell you we're talking about the Salvation Army and that I can further tell you I don't give them money because one of those bell-swinging jackholes stood idly by and watched someone steal my fucking bicycle and you're goddamn right I'm painting the whole of an organization for the actions of one dumb shit volunteer in Marina Del Ray and that's neither sympathetic, empathetic, compassionate or understanding and I give no fucks because charity oughtta make me feel good and all I can think whenever I see those assholes and their red pails is the dick who watched my bike ride away. Don't make charity feel bad. Don't cut up the world so you can judge someone for being charitable. Don't squint your eyes so you can stand in judgment over someone attempting to make the world a better place just so you can question their motives. There's little enough to go around.I felt the need to write this, because I've been trying to better understand why some behavior that ostensibly aligns with my ideals feels disingenuous to me.