On many occasions, I have been told to “be more empathetic.”
When I ask why, I typically get this reaction:
This is a ridiculous question. I am not going to answer it because it is so ridiculous.
Empathy is the right thing to do! You should feel bad for that person. We’re humans, after all.
These explanations never really helped.
*
Even after reading this, I am not sure the author really gets what is behind the request.
Rendello 3 hours ago [-]
From FBI negotiator Chris Voss' book, Never Split the Difference:
> There is nothing more frustrating or disruptive to any
negotiation than to get the feeling you are talking to
someone who isn't listening. Playing dumb is a valid
negotiating technique, and “I don't understand” is a
legitimate response. But ignoring the other party's position
only builds up frustration and makes them less likely to do
what you want.
> The opposite of that is tactical empathy.
> In my negotiating course, I tell my students that empathy
is “the ability to recognize the perspective of a counterpart,
and the vocalization of that recognition.” That's an
academic way of saying that empathy is paying attention to
another human being, asking what they are feeling, and
making a commitment to understanding their world.
Notice I didn't say anything about agreeing with the
other person's values and beliefs or giving out hugs. That's
sympathy. What I'm talking about is trying to understand a
situation from another person's perspective.
---
The respondent to the author is ironically showing why empathy is so important. By being non-empathetic and shutting down the question as "stupid", the author is bound to feel the respondent doesn't care to understand their position. If the respondent really cared about having the author understand their position, they would have first shown that they will try to understand the author's, even if they don't agree with it.
Those seem like particularly bad reasons. I'm not sure if they are the arguments that the author has been given or if that's what he perceived those arguments to be.
My take on it is to remember that the people you are talking to are real people with reasons for doing things. Very few people do things that they think are wrong at the time of doing them.
I would guess that the single most common cause of bad faith arguments comes from people jumping to the conclusion that the person they are dealing with is acting in bad faith.
Reflecting on it some more perhaps you can boil it down to the implications of dealing with real people.
If you don't act with empathy you can hurt people. Is it your intention to hurt people?
If it turns out your motivation is, in fact, to hurt people then the issue isn't empathy but your own motivations. Reflecting on your motivations and what you feel like you should be doing as a person is the path to take here.
ratelimitsteve 1 hours ago [-]
>Those seem like particularly bad reasons. I'm not sure if they are the arguments that the author has been given or if that's what he perceived those arguments to be.
I think this might have to just be axiomatic. At the bottom of every system is an axiom, whether it's identity in mathematics or "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" in USican politics or "empathy is good and to be pursued" in interpersonal relationships.
>If you don't act with empathy you can hurt people. Is it your intention to hurt people?
I dare say that if your mission is actually to hurt people as much as you can empathy will help you a lot in that goal because it lets you define strategies tailored to hurt the target based on their feelings. Without empathy you're limited to thinking about what would hurt you and then applying it to other people.
rass_clot 5 hours ago [-]
That's... What the article is about, right? That these didn't help him understand the request.
uberman 5 hours ago [-]
I believe the point they are making is that they believe the original author still does not "get it". I'm inclined to agree.
Recognizing that when people say one lacks empathy and rejecting what one believes they might mean by that and instead reinterpreting empathy to mean something they want it to mean is fundamentally a demonstration of a lack of empathy in what was likely the original context. Even if new interpretation technically aligns with the dictionary definition.
I want to be clear that recommendations that the post make are helpful and seeing the world as best one can from some others point of view is worthwhile.
At a fundamental level though saying I see your definition of empathy and reject it for my definition which I'll be happy to try to live by, while noble, likely is directly contrary to both parity's use of the term.
yesfitz 3 hours ago [-]
What is behind the request?
Gregaros 1 hours ago [-]
Impossible to say what was behind any specific request, but what is generally meant by “Have a little emapathy” and its kin is : “Stop criticizingjudging/etc. or communicating with the individual being discussed that sharply, because we feel the individual has good reasons/a good excuse/a good justification for sympathy and/or some leniency here.”
drakonka 5 hours ago [-]
I always thought of empathy as being able to really relate, emotionally, to what another person is feeling/going through. As a kid I'd sometimes see people crying together on TV when something bad happens to one of them and wonder if that really happens in real life. Even though it wasn't something that came naturally to me in the past, I still tried to be a decent person and adjust my behavior where relevant, and tried to learn to comfort people even when I didn't really "feel" much. I just had to reason/logic about how a person might feel sometimes rather than intuitively "get" it.
Over the last couple of years, that kind of empathy has stated coming more easily/naturally to me. On one hand it seems to have unlocked a richer range of relatability, but on the other it also seemed to open the door more to anxiety, self-doubt, and other not so easy emotions that I didn't really feel much of before.
vintermann 5 hours ago [-]
Yes. I'd go so far as to say empathy has nothing to do with being nice, it's simply the ability to feel, often involuntarily, what other people feel. It's the part of you which makes you wince when you see someone stub their toe.
It's a type of feelings which can inspire you to be nice to other people, but it can also actually make you not nice to them. When people make you feel things you don't want to feel.
An example of that is "cringe" - you see someone do something embarrassing, which would at least have embarrassed you if you were in their situation, even if it doesn't embarrass them. And so you feel vicarious embarrassment, embarrassment on their behalf - and you can easily get angry at them for this.
At an extreme, we may even dehumanize people, try to stop thinking of them as the same thing as us, because involuntary empathy with them would otherwise mess us up emotionally.
balamatom 5 hours ago [-]
>vicarious embarrassment
Boy did I hate this one being taught to me back in the day, by my country's first privately owned TV channel.
b2ccb2 2 hours ago [-]
In German we have a word more specific, I'd argue: "Fremdschämen". It means literally "foreign-shame". It is the feeling of exactly that, seeing someone doing something embarrassing, and feeling ashamed for them in their perspective. Which I would say is a form of empathy.
rco8786 4 hours ago [-]
Oh dang every sentence of this had me relating more and more as I read it.
The last 10ish years of my life have been an emotional education journey, where previously I was a “logic above all else” kind of person. Like you, I feel like I can relate to other people now in a way I never thought possible. And also it’s brought about anxiety and self-doubt that was never here before.
mbg721 4 hours ago [-]
Some life-events are just "big", and it can be very-difficult-to-impossible to relate to that experience if you haven't had one of a similar scale yourself. I still struggle with expressing the emotion "I have fortunately not had that happen to me, but what you have lived through is awful."
some-guy 4 hours ago [-]
Your story is very similar to mine, but it was unlocked even further when I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult at 38 years old, and began stimulant medication. I feel goosebumps from music, I’m much more likely to cry (in a good way I think)
drakonka 2 hours ago [-]
I've also been more likely to cry at movies. Not so much at people's sad experiences in real life, but I've found myself tearing up sometimes with someone I really care about sharing a dream or nostalgic childhood memory. Fortunately I've experienced goosebumps with music (frisson!) since I was a kid, and even tried to learn how to induce it on command (has not reliably worked).
Overall my ability to empathize still feels a little dulled sometimes. But it's hard to tell since you can't really compare it directly to another's experience, only observe how others seem to react... Maybe in its own way this is a bit of a "What is it like to be a bat?" situation.
nilirl 5 hours ago [-]
Instead of asking people why they're asking you "to be more empathetic", maybe you should ask yourself why you're prompting such a request?
yesfitz 3 hours ago [-]
This is addressed in the post:
> "Usually, 'be more empathetic' was a veiled request for me to modify my behavior or thinking towards someone (e.g. they thought I was rude to someone and wanted me to apologize and change my behavior)."
And you actually illustrate the entire point of the post.
Imagine that someone's upset with you and tells you to be more "gropulent". Many people have said this to you, but gropulence doesn't come naturally to you, and the term is bandied about in a wide variety of situations, making it hard to pick up context clues. There are people who call themselves "gropules" who can't explain how they use gropulence to support the claims that they make about others, and they sound an awful lot like psychics, who we all know are frauds.
How would you start learning to be gropulent?
I hope you'd be as curious and thorough as the author of TFA.
nilirl 1 hours ago [-]
'be more empathetic' is not a veiled request, it is openly declared. The author subverts the ask for behavior change by a) calling it veiled and b) not treating it as the main argument against which they're trying to make a point.
Like the author, you're constructing a similar straw man argument: selecting a specific use of the word and making that the main point to argue against.
'be more empathetic' is an argument to behave differently with the people around you. Not think differently; behave differently.
yesfitz 24 minutes ago [-]
Can you tell me which specific use of the word "empathy" I am arguing against? Because I don't think I'm arguing against any definition at all.
I think I'm arguing that telling someone to behave a way that they don't understand is unhelpful. That could be "empathetic", "thankful", or "gropulent".
**
Taking the author at their word, they don't understand the request.
When they ask for clarification, they don't receive it.
In that way, it is veiled, similarly to my "gropulent" analogy.
In other words, the author is being asked to behave differently, but not given guidance on how to behave differently. Which is why they wrote this piece about what empathy is.
I think the author would have gotten a lot further by asking how rather than why, but the author admits that they thought that requests to be empathetic were requests "to be fake and lie". (i.e. They misunderstood what "empathy" meant.)
balamatom 5 hours ago [-]
That's a tautology and already answered in TFA. You're prompting the request because you are not being sufficiently obedient.
nilirl 4 hours ago [-]
That's setting up a straw man.
By framing an argument against semantics or social obedience, you're ignoring self-implicating behavior; you're intentionally ignoring people's needs.
Why not ask "What am I doing wrong?" instead of "Hmm ... what is the nature of empathy? How may a linguist view the word? What is it's function? Ah! Is there an interesting generalization I can find here? Wow, let us dig deeper, this is no time to consider how I treat other people."
Rendello 2 hours ago [-]
I think that's a good point. I think the author says a lot of good things about empathy in the article, the nature of which goes deeper than "how may a linguist view the word?", but if they're being prompted with "be more empathetic" often, perhaps their behaviour really should be modified.
brudgers 3 days ago [-]
But having empathy does not necessarily mean you need to change the way you behave or feel.
Growth does and that's what "being more empathetic" requires.
patcon 5 hours ago [-]
I read this as a framing that allows the author and people like them to warm to the idea, as part of a longer iterative process -- Understanding first, then decide what's warranted, assess how you feel about the thing you did, repeat.
I can't say if this affects the author, but I am aware that some people have a neurotype that is very opposed to "being told what to do", especially when they can't reason to it themselves. and sometimes being able to anticipate needs in advance is an important first step to meeting those needs more often <3
I share this as someone who is [un]fortunate to have easy access to empathy, but also has some tendencies of "pathological demand avoidance". For me, empathy is an innate skill, and I am who I am because my identity is shaped by how I use it to anticipate needs in advance, so that I can react more generously (and won't be caught by surprise when someone "demands" something of me that I didn't expect)
brudgers 2 hours ago [-]
I am aware that some people have a neurotype that is very opposed to "being told what to do", especially when they can't reason to it themselves. and sometimes being able to anticipate needs in advance is an important first step to meeting those needs more often
Lifelong direct and intimate familiarity with a person of the “neurotype” you describe is actually what drew forth my comment.
To be more clear, a real person with the “being told what to do” interpretation of the world you mention was forced to my thought by what the author said.
balamatom 4 hours ago [-]
>decide what's warranted
Bingo. Having the right to decide what's warranted in a situation a.k.a. essential human autonomy: a thing which isn't meant to somehow cancel out with being considerate of others or having a role in society. That's the question which IMO the post and most comments here are either vaguely getting at, or studiously avoiding.
It's essential to empathize. Few things are more worthwhile than understanding others. It's by empathy that I've learned how when someone actually says something about "eMpAtHy" at you, they're usually trying to scam you out of genuine emotional labor. Beware this - chances are your own sorry ass would be your only recompense.
Tbh I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say this particular one to me (or anywhere around me, maybe I'm too unapproachable hehe) but do I tend to hear "you should be more empathetic" as "someone other than you has already decided what's warranted, which you're supposed to telepathically infer, except there's no such person and we don't actually understand in what ways we need you to modify your behavior or why; so you're gonna have to come up with that by yourself, too - on your own time ofc"
This happens because they don't have sufficient empathy to have a mature conversation with you about what's what, but have heard the word on the influence grapevine and are quick as ever to brand themselves with it.
It's always fun to pretend to take these dog whistles in good faith, the Pavlovians don't know what hit 'em. Your own dam treadmill, that's wha
erokar 4 hours ago [-]
The premise of this piece and the way it's written gives me the feeling this applies to neurodivergent people on the autism spectrum, not dummies in general.
You probably even saw some of them around, they have a very distinctive yellow cover.
graboy 5 hours ago [-]
To the extent empathy is "do onto others as others would do onto you", empathy has a moral justification derived from Kant's categorical imperative.
mallowdram 5 hours ago [-]
The collapse of Theory of Mind entails the development of a new form of words and explanations that current language is unable to deliver.
balamatom 5 hours ago [-]
Theory of mind: it's just a theory!
mallowdram 5 hours ago [-]
Worse than that, it doesn't exist, yet it's a scientific theory based in empirical evidence.
Which is how only a new language and level of explanation solves that paradox.
balamatom 7 minutes ago [-]
Hey, you're fun! :-)
ajuc 4 hours ago [-]
> Empathy is when you try your best to build an accurate model of someone else’s world in order to better understand them.
That's cognitive empathy.
What most people ask you for is emotional empathy = experiencing (as opposed to modeling) the emotions of others.
It's not even that important to experience actual emotions of others. Even empathetic people are often mistaken about what emotions other people feel. Somebody might be sad for different reason than you think. Or they might actually be happy just pretending to be sad. An empathetic observer would still feel sad for that person, and it's still empathy even if the information it's based on is wrong.
What's important is the intent and the consequences of experiencing the possible emotions of other people. If you feel bad when somebody else is suffering, you're more likely to treat them well and less likely to abuse them.
That's what people are asking you for - to treat others better and not to abuse them.
BTW some people don't have emotional empathy, and it's not their fault. You can still be a decent human being. It's just harder.
3 hours ago [-]
Fricken 5 hours ago [-]
Empathy is not sympathy. If my sports team beats your sports team, I can empathize with your feelings of loss but I don't sympathize. We win and you lose, lol.
Conversely, as someone who has never experienced a terminal disease, I'll admit that I cannot really empathize with someone who is experiencing such a thing. I've read books and watched movies and heard testimonials, and yet still I don't really know what it's like. I can imagine what it might be like, but I'm just imagining things. Nonetheless, I can still sympathize.
uberman 4 hours ago [-]
You have it backwards at least as how the terms are defined. I admit though that they are often used as synonyms.
> Empathy involves actively sharing in the person’s emotional experience.
hm, i think Fricken has it right: He is actively sharing in the other persons emotional experience, it just is that he is feeling glee about it.
Actually the higher the empathy (knowing that the other person is a superfan and knowing how much the other teams losing sucks for them) the higher the delight.
It is similar in war: If you are in the trenches you know exactly how your enemy in their trench is feeling (and know how they are feeling about you). But that doesnt mean they get your solidarity or mercy.
ericyd 5 hours ago [-]
Wouldn't it still be possible to empathize with a terminal patient by recalling experiences of powerlessness, fear, grief, anger, etc? I thought empathy was not limited to experiences you've literally had, but could be extended to understanding the underlying emotions another person is feeling?
user2722 5 hours ago [-]
Agree in general. But if I'm really sad my team, which played very well recently but had a disastrous game, lost, you can not be so aggravating like you could be if I had taunted you before yours team sucked (and not in a jest manner, of course).
Samething happens on both cases, one deserves less sympathy for my feelings.
Is this being an empath? Idk. But if we can dial the knob of fun (for us and others) up and the dial of sadness for others (who don't deserve the sadness) a bit down, you're not lying nor faking, just trying to redirect a bit of your happiness for others too feel less bad. Which doesn't mean you can't be a playful ass and say "yah, they had been playing very well, it's kinda a pity. But my team still won. Come on, the winner pays you a beer and the loser pays me another! Wink, wink!"
My take at least. USA is either regressing or too far along in the future. I'm not sure which.
cindyllm 3 hours ago [-]
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5 hours ago [-]
dogleash 5 hours ago [-]
"Empathy" is one of those words that's used as a proxy for a lot of related ideas, but splitting those hairs can be interpreted by some as disagreement with those ideas themselves.
I've witnessed people extol the virtues of empathy to me, while on other occasions they talk about people they dislike with venom and disdain. A level of disdain that I have never held in my heart against anyone, but they throw it around casually. And they're gonna tell me about empathy?
Sometimes you just gotta agree with people out loud and figure out what you believe in offline.
weeb 4 hours ago [-]
There are commonly used terms for different types of empathy[1] which makes these conversations a lot easier. People often generalise, or misinterpret a lower level of one type of empathy for another - for example, some autistic individuals have lower cognitive empathy but heightened levels of affective empathy. The definition in this blogpost focuses entirely on cognitive empathy, but I bet the people telling them to be "more empathetic" were talking more about compassionate empathy.
I've observed this as well. It feels like we need an equivalent to "humble bragging" for empathy. Empathy bragging?
It's like they've tricked themselves into thinking that they're very empathetic when what they really feel is particularly strong in-group/outgroup affinity/antipathy.
bitlax 8 minutes ago [-]
So I've taken a deep dive into the mind of the local fentanyl dealer. I feel every emotion he has. I'm motivated by his motivations. He doesn't want to go to jail for dealing fentanyl. He doesn't care about the people who die from using his fentanyl. What was the point of this exercise?
balamatom 3 minutes ago [-]
To demonstrate that you are in fact unable to deep dive into the mind of the local fentanyl dealer, who is probably a much more fascinating human being than the role you have attributed him in your thought experiment (or in your society) would ever permit you to comprehend.
apwell23 4 hours ago [-]
> But if you are like most people, you will tend to be too uncharitable. Consciously self-correcting to the charitable side can help.
well you will be taken for a ride in modern workplaces if you go the opposite direction. you need to weed out snakes.
palmotea 4 hours ago [-]
>> But if you are like most people, you will tend to be too uncharitable. Consciously self-correcting to the charitable side can help.
> well you will be taken for a ride in modern workplaces if you go the opposite direction. you need to weed out snakes.
You do, but usually it's better to be more on the charitable side by default and only be uncharitable when someone has behaved in a way that proves that to be necessary.
apwell23 41 minutes ago [-]
its usually too late by then. you always need to be one step ahead.
yapyap 5 hours ago [-]
If people (multiple)are straight up telling you to be more empathetic it probably means you are being a dick.
jfengel 5 hours ago [-]
That's true. Though "be more empathetic" is not the most helpful way to note that. He's right: it's not a very empathetic way to put it.
You can unpack it: "You have made this person unhappy, and you didn't notice. Here are things that you may not have noticed about this person: X, Y, and Z. They see this encounter like thus-and-such. Now that you know that, you can interact with them in a way that makes both of you happier."
Some people observe that more easily than others. It seems to be the case that some are neurologically lacking the ability to do it at an intuitive level, though you can do just as well with conscious observation and rational conclusions. That is more effort, but "whoops, it's just too hard" has never been a good excuse for anything. It gets easier with practice, and when you're too tired to make the effort, you can learn tactics to cope. (Such as, "Hey, I don't think I can have this conversation right now. I'm sorry about that. Can we please resume this later?")
Too many people, including some very prominent ones, have decided that any effort is too much, and that they are better off being dicks. I can't necessarily refute that. But I can say that if you're a dick, people are going to treat you like a dick, and that is likely to end badly for you.
cpfohl 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah, there was definitely a communication gaffe on the part of the person trying to address OP's behavior. Some people (OP included it appears) need very direct communication that would be rude if directed at _other_ people.
Unfortunately the indirection ("be more empathetic") is the safe/polite/un-hurtful bet for a huge percentage of the population. The majority of people hear that and pick up on the implied request to be more sensitive.
1 hours ago [-]
rob74 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah, "being a dick" is kind of the opposite of "being empathetic".
This isn't reddit, you don't need to inject politics where it does not belong.
mariusor 5 hours ago [-]
...or neurodivergent. Please try to be more empathetic!
chrisweekly 5 hours ago [-]
Er, no. Respectfully, "neurodivergent" describes a characteristic, but "being a dick" (or "more empathetic") describes behavior.
mariusor 3 hours ago [-]
Let's not split hairs now, but oftentimes disorders that are grouped together under the pop nomenclature of "neuro-divergence" are characterized by very direct speech which makes no affordances for the way the words would be interpreted by the dialogue partner. This is many times perceived by less empathetic people as "being a dick".
balamatom 5 hours ago [-]
>neurodivergent
Don't teach HR any more new words, please.
cindyllm 58 minutes ago [-]
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wishgreen 5 hours ago [-]
TLDR: Empathy and sympathy are different things. When most people ask form empathy, they are usually asking for sympathy.
Glad we needed an essay on that.
mbfg 4 hours ago [-]
TLDR: I can manipulate you more for my benefit by being empathetic.
Rendered at 18:23:28 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Even after reading this, I am not sure the author really gets what is behind the request.
> There is nothing more frustrating or disruptive to any negotiation than to get the feeling you are talking to someone who isn't listening. Playing dumb is a valid negotiating technique, and “I don't understand” is a legitimate response. But ignoring the other party's position only builds up frustration and makes them less likely to do what you want.
> The opposite of that is tactical empathy.
> In my negotiating course, I tell my students that empathy is “the ability to recognize the perspective of a counterpart, and the vocalization of that recognition.” That's an academic way of saying that empathy is paying attention to another human being, asking what they are feeling, and making a commitment to understanding their world. Notice I didn't say anything about agreeing with the other person's values and beliefs or giving out hugs. That's sympathy. What I'm talking about is trying to understand a situation from another person's perspective.
---
The respondent to the author is ironically showing why empathy is so important. By being non-empathetic and shutting down the question as "stupid", the author is bound to feel the respondent doesn't care to understand their position. If the respondent really cared about having the author understand their position, they would have first shown that they will try to understand the author's, even if they don't agree with it.
Edit; on the other hand:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45517577
My take on it is to remember that the people you are talking to are real people with reasons for doing things. Very few people do things that they think are wrong at the time of doing them.
I would guess that the single most common cause of bad faith arguments comes from people jumping to the conclusion that the person they are dealing with is acting in bad faith.
Reflecting on it some more perhaps you can boil it down to the implications of dealing with real people.
If you don't act with empathy you can hurt people. Is it your intention to hurt people?
If it turns out your motivation is, in fact, to hurt people then the issue isn't empathy but your own motivations. Reflecting on your motivations and what you feel like you should be doing as a person is the path to take here.
I think this might have to just be axiomatic. At the bottom of every system is an axiom, whether it's identity in mathematics or "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" in USican politics or "empathy is good and to be pursued" in interpersonal relationships.
>If you don't act with empathy you can hurt people. Is it your intention to hurt people?
I dare say that if your mission is actually to hurt people as much as you can empathy will help you a lot in that goal because it lets you define strategies tailored to hurt the target based on their feelings. Without empathy you're limited to thinking about what would hurt you and then applying it to other people.
Recognizing that when people say one lacks empathy and rejecting what one believes they might mean by that and instead reinterpreting empathy to mean something they want it to mean is fundamentally a demonstration of a lack of empathy in what was likely the original context. Even if new interpretation technically aligns with the dictionary definition.
I want to be clear that recommendations that the post make are helpful and seeing the world as best one can from some others point of view is worthwhile.
At a fundamental level though saying I see your definition of empathy and reject it for my definition which I'll be happy to try to live by, while noble, likely is directly contrary to both parity's use of the term.
Over the last couple of years, that kind of empathy has stated coming more easily/naturally to me. On one hand it seems to have unlocked a richer range of relatability, but on the other it also seemed to open the door more to anxiety, self-doubt, and other not so easy emotions that I didn't really feel much of before.
It's a type of feelings which can inspire you to be nice to other people, but it can also actually make you not nice to them. When people make you feel things you don't want to feel.
An example of that is "cringe" - you see someone do something embarrassing, which would at least have embarrassed you if you were in their situation, even if it doesn't embarrass them. And so you feel vicarious embarrassment, embarrassment on their behalf - and you can easily get angry at them for this.
At an extreme, we may even dehumanize people, try to stop thinking of them as the same thing as us, because involuntary empathy with them would otherwise mess us up emotionally.
Boy did I hate this one being taught to me back in the day, by my country's first privately owned TV channel.
The last 10ish years of my life have been an emotional education journey, where previously I was a “logic above all else” kind of person. Like you, I feel like I can relate to other people now in a way I never thought possible. And also it’s brought about anxiety and self-doubt that was never here before.
Overall my ability to empathize still feels a little dulled sometimes. But it's hard to tell since you can't really compare it directly to another's experience, only observe how others seem to react... Maybe in its own way this is a bit of a "What is it like to be a bat?" situation.
> "Usually, 'be more empathetic' was a veiled request for me to modify my behavior or thinking towards someone (e.g. they thought I was rude to someone and wanted me to apologize and change my behavior)."
And you actually illustrate the entire point of the post.
Imagine that someone's upset with you and tells you to be more "gropulent". Many people have said this to you, but gropulence doesn't come naturally to you, and the term is bandied about in a wide variety of situations, making it hard to pick up context clues. There are people who call themselves "gropules" who can't explain how they use gropulence to support the claims that they make about others, and they sound an awful lot like psychics, who we all know are frauds.
How would you start learning to be gropulent?
I hope you'd be as curious and thorough as the author of TFA.
Like the author, you're constructing a similar straw man argument: selecting a specific use of the word and making that the main point to argue against.
'be more empathetic' is an argument to behave differently with the people around you. Not think differently; behave differently.
I think I'm arguing that telling someone to behave a way that they don't understand is unhelpful. That could be "empathetic", "thankful", or "gropulent". ** Taking the author at their word, they don't understand the request.
When they ask for clarification, they don't receive it.
In that way, it is veiled, similarly to my "gropulent" analogy.
In other words, the author is being asked to behave differently, but not given guidance on how to behave differently. Which is why they wrote this piece about what empathy is.
I think the author would have gotten a lot further by asking how rather than why, but the author admits that they thought that requests to be empathetic were requests "to be fake and lie". (i.e. They misunderstood what "empathy" meant.)
By framing an argument against semantics or social obedience, you're ignoring self-implicating behavior; you're intentionally ignoring people's needs.
Why not ask "What am I doing wrong?" instead of "Hmm ... what is the nature of empathy? How may a linguist view the word? What is it's function? Ah! Is there an interesting generalization I can find here? Wow, let us dig deeper, this is no time to consider how I treat other people."
Growth does and that's what "being more empathetic" requires.
I can't say if this affects the author, but I am aware that some people have a neurotype that is very opposed to "being told what to do", especially when they can't reason to it themselves. and sometimes being able to anticipate needs in advance is an important first step to meeting those needs more often <3
I share this as someone who is [un]fortunate to have easy access to empathy, but also has some tendencies of "pathological demand avoidance". For me, empathy is an innate skill, and I am who I am because my identity is shaped by how I use it to anticipate needs in advance, so that I can react more generously (and won't be caught by surprise when someone "demands" something of me that I didn't expect)
Lifelong direct and intimate familiarity with a person of the “neurotype” you describe is actually what drew forth my comment.
To be more clear, a real person with the “being told what to do” interpretation of the world you mention was forced to my thought by what the author said.
Bingo. Having the right to decide what's warranted in a situation a.k.a. essential human autonomy: a thing which isn't meant to somehow cancel out with being considerate of others or having a role in society. That's the question which IMO the post and most comments here are either vaguely getting at, or studiously avoiding.
It's essential to empathize. Few things are more worthwhile than understanding others. It's by empathy that I've learned how when someone actually says something about "eMpAtHy" at you, they're usually trying to scam you out of genuine emotional labor. Beware this - chances are your own sorry ass would be your only recompense.
Tbh I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say this particular one to me (or anywhere around me, maybe I'm too unapproachable hehe) but do I tend to hear "you should be more empathetic" as "someone other than you has already decided what's warranted, which you're supposed to telepathically infer, except there's no such person and we don't actually understand in what ways we need you to modify your behavior or why; so you're gonna have to come up with that by yourself, too - on your own time ofc"
This happens because they don't have sufficient empathy to have a mature conversation with you about what's what, but have heard the word on the influence grapevine and are quick as ever to brand themselves with it.
It's always fun to pretend to take these dog whistles in good faith, the Pavlovians don't know what hit 'em. Your own dam treadmill, that's wha
You probably even saw some of them around, they have a very distinctive yellow cover.
Which is how only a new language and level of explanation solves that paradox.
That's cognitive empathy.
What most people ask you for is emotional empathy = experiencing (as opposed to modeling) the emotions of others.
It's not even that important to experience actual emotions of others. Even empathetic people are often mistaken about what emotions other people feel. Somebody might be sad for different reason than you think. Or they might actually be happy just pretending to be sad. An empathetic observer would still feel sad for that person, and it's still empathy even if the information it's based on is wrong.
What's important is the intent and the consequences of experiencing the possible emotions of other people. If you feel bad when somebody else is suffering, you're more likely to treat them well and less likely to abuse them.
That's what people are asking you for - to treat others better and not to abuse them.
BTW some people don't have emotional empathy, and it's not their fault. You can still be a decent human being. It's just harder.
Conversely, as someone who has never experienced a terminal disease, I'll admit that I cannot really empathize with someone who is experiencing such a thing. I've read books and watched movies and heard testimonials, and yet still I don't really know what it's like. I can imagine what it might be like, but I'm just imagining things. Nonetheless, I can still sympathize.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/sympathy-empathy-dif...
hm, i think Fricken has it right: He is actively sharing in the other persons emotional experience, it just is that he is feeling glee about it.
Actually the higher the empathy (knowing that the other person is a superfan and knowing how much the other teams losing sucks for them) the higher the delight.
It is similar in war: If you are in the trenches you know exactly how your enemy in their trench is feeling (and know how they are feeling about you). But that doesnt mean they get your solidarity or mercy.
Is this being an empath? Idk. But if we can dial the knob of fun (for us and others) up and the dial of sadness for others (who don't deserve the sadness) a bit down, you're not lying nor faking, just trying to redirect a bit of your happiness for others too feel less bad. Which doesn't mean you can't be a playful ass and say "yah, they had been playing very well, it's kinda a pity. But my team still won. Come on, the winner pays you a beer and the loser pays me another! Wink, wink!"
My take at least. USA is either regressing or too far along in the future. I'm not sure which.
I've witnessed people extol the virtues of empathy to me, while on other occasions they talk about people they dislike with venom and disdain. A level of disdain that I have never held in my heart against anyone, but they throw it around casually. And they're gonna tell me about empathy?
Sometimes you just gotta agree with people out loud and figure out what you believe in offline.
[1] https://embrace-autism.com/the-different-types-of-empathy/
It's like they've tricked themselves into thinking that they're very empathetic when what they really feel is particularly strong in-group/outgroup affinity/antipathy.
well you will be taken for a ride in modern workplaces if you go the opposite direction. you need to weed out snakes.
> well you will be taken for a ride in modern workplaces if you go the opposite direction. you need to weed out snakes.
You do, but usually it's better to be more on the charitable side by default and only be uncharitable when someone has behaved in a way that proves that to be necessary.
You can unpack it: "You have made this person unhappy, and you didn't notice. Here are things that you may not have noticed about this person: X, Y, and Z. They see this encounter like thus-and-such. Now that you know that, you can interact with them in a way that makes both of you happier."
Some people observe that more easily than others. It seems to be the case that some are neurologically lacking the ability to do it at an intuitive level, though you can do just as well with conscious observation and rational conclusions. That is more effort, but "whoops, it's just too hard" has never been a good excuse for anything. It gets easier with practice, and when you're too tired to make the effort, you can learn tactics to cope. (Such as, "Hey, I don't think I can have this conversation right now. I'm sorry about that. Can we please resume this later?")
Too many people, including some very prominent ones, have decided that any effort is too much, and that they are better off being dicks. I can't necessarily refute that. But I can say that if you're a dick, people are going to treat you like a dick, and that is likely to end badly for you.
Unfortunately the indirection ("be more empathetic") is the safe/polite/un-hurtful bet for a huge percentage of the population. The majority of people hear that and pick up on the implied request to be more sensitive.
Case in point: the current US administration (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sin-empath...)
Don't teach HR any more new words, please.
Glad we needed an essay on that.