Empathy: Our vital social currency
Empathy is near-magical, hard to define, something more naturally felt than explained. It is our simple, genial ability to share and “feel” the same feelings as someone else. Different people will show different levels of empathy, as well as different requirements. Some will need to be very close to someone to experience it others will feel for someone they might have never met.
Empathy is what allows that one time when your sister got in trouble for you when she felt you were treated unfairly. It is that magic that weaves fates together, the antidote to a world sometimes too prone to calculation and transaction. Empathy can always grow given practice, listening, care and understanding (save only for advanced cases of psychopathy).
Empathy is different from sympathy which is a support, a togetherness. Empathy is “only” the ability of being able to see the world through someone else. Sympathy is affinity, sorrow or pity. Empathy shares a feeling, sympathy supports and commiserates. The two are related but not identical. Empathy can be more neutral, more grounded in the moment, to be able to share a feeling, a fear, a sense of anger or joy. Sympathy is a more structured relation hinging on a commitment towards a certain outcome (support, etc.)
“Nothing is more important than empathy to another person’s suffering. Nothing. Not a career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we’re going to survive with dignity.”
Alice Miller
Empathy: Why should you care?
Empathy is one of the most critical bedrocks of a positive relationship. In the real world, it is a group of actions (listening), sensorial ability (gut feeling) and psychological attributes (groundedness, openness to experience, etc.) Empathy is the most sincere form of social currency, that allows partners in a relationship to feel heard, to be supported when they need it, and to be able to connect.
Lack of empathy is common in personal disorders such as NPD (Narcissism Personality Disorder) or ASPD (Anti Social Personality Disorder) making an individual will more likely violate sound boundaries, or inflict hurt on his/her environment.
Empathy allows us to “feel” each other in many ways much more clearly and helpfully than words. It is more than just feeling, it also acts as a vital emotional-moral compass. It is what makes us more considerate and authentically bonding. It is what allows us to feel understood and that we are part of a common fate, narrative. It is profoundly related to intimacy, central to relationships.
Empathy is both a tool that can help relationships in many vital moments, it is also a pleasant and grounded emotion in its own right. As a tool it helps maintain relationships and provides safety to your partner. It allows us all to “feel” like we are in a real relationship, based on openness and care, not a transactional exchange of services or resources.
Relationships inevitably create vulnerability, being constantly with your loved one, often 24/7/365 for years on end will magnify any issue. The enormous amount of daily interaction between two partners means also that they will let their guards down and share emotions.
The enormous commonality of two partners’ lives, what they share (fate, family, finances) requires that a functioning couple makes many collective decisions together. And it is obvious that we all disagree about things, at least a healthy proportion of the times. Empathy is the nourishment and lubricant of relationships when they are challenged.
Empathy allows us to disagree with our partner on how to do something, but still agree to let them because we understand how much it means emotionally to them. It is all a matter of scale also, if we take that last example, we must emphasize that at least, you need to be in agreement on what you are doing at all (the how can be of lesser importance). Empathy is not an excuse for abuse or emotional blackmail of course. But it is an honest prop that makes a silver lining of appreciation flourish in your heart, as you compromise with a partner for your greater happiness.
“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes an instant?”
Henry David Thoreau
Empathy: Origins and links
As an emotion and a mental ability empathy sits very close to:
Intimacy
Without empathy little intimacy is possible. You need to be able to feel your partner’s emotions minimally at least if you are to provide the safety, the understanding, the care that brings intimacy.
Trust
Empathy breeds trust and trust breeds empathy. Whilst that may seem intuitive to realise it can be made much more challenging by childhood trauma, unhelpful scripts integrated unconsciously, self absorption and many other such hurdles. Building trust provides the direct safety that is required for an authentic, empathic relation to even be possible. When we damage the trust bond between partners, fear and resentment can soon “pollute” the relationship.
Our brains think all the time and one thing they are very commonly thinking about is simply how to not get hurt again. Seeing your trust being let down is typically intensely painful. And a mind beset by doubt or suspicion, bred from lack of trustworthiness, will often go further now and start seeing patterns where they may not be. What could have been a virtuous circle of growing trust, intimacy and empathy becomes a vicious circle of fear, hurt and emotional removal.
When we spend too little time together or are too removed emotionally it also becomes objectively harder to trust each other to know how to behave. Company, intimacy, communication, all breed trust and empathy. The more the better, the key thing to realise is that each relation needs a base minimum of empathy and trust. Below that threshold, relations become structurally difficult and resentful, marked by emotional stunting and growing resentment, repetitive arguing. Above that bar they start becoming increasingly more supportive and caring, more engaged and consultative.
Care & Support
Empathy is an essential component of a caring relationship in the sense that it is simply the best tool we have to feel and know what our partner needs. Obviously it does not mean that we will always agree with our partners or once again that empathy should be confused with abuse. But at least, having decent empathy in a relationship ensures that you disagree (and/or argue) less often, less intensely and with more potential for positive change. If you can attune to a point to his/her worldview, you can at least start arguing from closer positions so to speak.
You will naturally understand that there is nothing malicious for example behind your partner having a different way to see/do things. Or that they may do things differently but they still aim for a key goal of your shared ambitions. All these emotional cues help partners feel understood, and make them more likely to rally to your opinion, than throwing a tantrum, or trying to hurt each other by ignoring each other etc.
Empathy enables care.
Romance
Maybe a more surprising choice for our final one here but one interesting one: Empathy is romance. And romance empathy. Romantic ideals, as we know them from the western tradition in any case, highlight the primacy of passion over reason. The romantic lover gives him or herself without counting, without fear. Without calculation, without “keeping score”, authentically, ready for the experience whatever it might be.
Empathy Testing: The Milgram experiment
Let’s have a look maybe quickly at the opposite of empathy if at least to contrast. In early 1961 started the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem a prominent case. Confronting Nazi barbarity in a court of law obviously grabbed a lot of the zeitgeist, and many psychological, societal, sociological debates were raging on the nature of that evil.
How can anyone enter this level of lack of empathy? How could seemingly normal people get to commit atrocity? Key to that reflection was the related concept of obedience to authority: Many ex Nazi war criminals had invoked the general defense of “only obeying orders”. Could it be that anyone, given the right context could follow authority to any degree?
And so a few months later, in 1961 still, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a famous experiment on empathy testing with terrifying findings. Real-life results of the experiment went way further than Milgram himself had anticipated.
In the experiment, patient 1 (the “Teacher”) is asked run a verbal test to patient 2, (“Learner”) strapped and hooked to electrical circuitry, that the “Teacher” can activate at different voltages. And patient 1 needs to administer an electrical shock (of growing intensity) to patient 2 for every mistake. Now, the testing protocol is that patient 2 only is in on the experiment, for patient 1 this is all real. Patient 2 does not really get the electrical shocks (and mimes writhing agony) but patient 1 does not know that. The “Teacher” who was recruited for the experiment wholly believes the shocks to be real.
The incredible result is that 100% of participants delivered shocks of at least 300V, and most (65%) delivered the full 450V. Most participants effectively fried patient 2, going through the entire span of the electrical torture. Even when the patient, for the last 30% at least of the experiment, showed (mimed) clear signs of excruciating pain and failing life signals.
Before undertaking the experiment, Milgram had widely consulted in his faculty at Yale and across the psychology industry of the time. Most experts, and that sample size included hundreds, predicted that only 1.2% to 3.5% of the participants could go all the way.
Another depressing aspect of that study is that similar experiments run across time and different locations yield very similar results.
All patient 1’s in the test had been welcomed by an austere, intelligent looking scientist in a white coat.
This study had a profound impact on modern sociology and psychology. It demonstrated that our natural empathy can be easily hijacked by simple things, such as a lab coat and an air of authority. To astonishing degree. Most participants exhibited signs of moral confusion and painful dilemma, but the truly depressing aspect of the study was that in the end, a very high majority went all up the dials and inflicted lethal damage on a fellow human being.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Empathy in art and history
On a side note, the notion of organic soul and natural empathy (or lack thereof) has long fascinated artists and philosophers too. We’ll quote a couple of better-known examples:
“Heart of darkness” by Josef Konrad – Another dark view on empathy, Josef Konrad explored through art in 1899 already, what our empathy was made of. The central message is that our civilisation, our sense of fairness and honesty, all of those can fly through the window if we find ourselves in a less supportive environment.
That empathy and civilization are in truth much more of a thin varnish ready to crack at the first challenge than an eternal impregnable law of human decency. In the novel the lead protagonist is sent on a far trip to what was openly described at the time as “savage” land. Lunacy is another pregnant theme in this novel, the target agent he is sent to find and repatriate having apparently “lost his mind”. A prodding exploring of sanity is also served as backdrop.
As the main protagonist plods up through the long river his usual “checks and balances” disappear. No society of his peers around him to see what he is doing. No possibility to solve a variety of problem simply by calling for a police officer or another representative of an absent law. As the protagonist gets finally closer to his target, the overall impression is that he has become as “crazy” as the person he was meant to replace.
Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations comments helpfully on empathy and blame, providing a simple tip:
“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself: What fault of mine most nearly resembles that which I am about to criticize? And you will find your agitation lessened.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
