We Need to Stop Talking About Empathy

It's almost impossible to achieve and mostly pretentious self aggrandizing bullshit.

Empathy is often considered a soft blanket, the comfort of understanding, the nurture of community, and a plush, warm shared experience. However, it is usually more a threadbare rug of exaggerated sympathy, stained by ego and not strong enough to hold together under the heavy footsteps of genuine suffering.

So when we open our communication toolkit, we should remove two tools:  unearned empathy and know-it-all ism. They are cousins. 

Chuck them.   

Unmerited empathy and know-it-all-ism purport to deliver information. However, so much of our lived experience is not captured by information alone; it is formed in a unique emotional context, so it is almost impossible for empathy to move past sympathy. But if the emotional context does not match the target of empathy, it is not genuine empathy; it is just threadbare sympathy masquerading as empathy; it is self-focused attention-seeking wearing the garb of empathy. 

The empath arrogates themselves to have walked in the recipient’s shoes, but this assertion is often based on hubris and self-delusion. It offers nothing to the recipient but requires them not to act annoyed when hearing the I understand your story while forcing them to express gratitude for the empathy missile that failed to launch. 

My friend was raised by her grandmother; her grandmother was a second mother by role and degree of attachment. Her grandma cared for her when she was young, and my friend cared for her grandmother when her grandmother was old.  They had a deep, meaningful, loving relationship; when my friend suddenly lost her grandmother, her heart was broken; she was devastated.  But she had other friends with grandmothers who had recently passed; their grandmothers lived in faraway lands, and they saw them every year or two, sent birthday cards, and exchanged pleasant shallow wishes.  

When the second type of grandmother passed, shall the second say to the first, “I lost my grandmother too recently; I understand what you feel.”  They may say it, but they should not.  

Empathy is often a conceit; it is a condescending conceit; it pretends to tell the recipient that they, like those blessed Liverpool fans, do not need to walk alone.  But, except in a few circumstances, it is hubris; the deliverer tells the recipient, “It’s not so bad; I've been where you’re at; I survived.”  It says, “I know how you feel right now,” but how can someone say that? - though we are not islands, we live alone; can we know the thousands of inputs and circumstances that have led one person to arrive at their mental position of grief, sorrow or anger?  

The desire to empathize frequently satiates the hungry ego of the empathizer, not the one being empathized with; it feels good to tell someone you understand. But if there are not enough similarities to rise from sympathy to empathy, it is condescending, painful, and demeaning. 

Let’s let curiosity drive sympathy before we stumble into all sorts of fake empathy. Compassion should be the endpoint; empathy should be pursued cautiously, with a complete inventory count before marching forth. 

I recently lost my father; it broke me; I was his closest child, and it left me tearful, hiding behind tinted windows in the parking lot; did one colleague, one supervisor who knew, say one word?  They couldn’t even reach sympathy, but they didn’t fake empathy.  An operations manager decided to have a snit because my papers were not organized on my desk in my private office, and he chose to involve no less than five people in his complaint.  I told him my dad had just died, and he did not flinch, not a word, not an eye movement, not a word of condolences.  

Recently, after thirteen years of teaching 16 courses a year, I was suspended based on the hurt feelings of a Palestinian zealot because he, along with the acolytes he had recruited, was miffed because I called Hamas Nazis - did one colleague or staff member tell me, “how are you doing, it must be stressful?”  After seven months of being banned from campus? 

Two did out of hundreds.  Most relatives and even immediate family members were no better. For most, sympathy is a bridge too far. 

We need to work on basic sympathy before even making any pretence at empathy. Sometimes, it works if one has walked in the other person’s shoes.  But I remember my mother’s funeral; shell shocked, barely out of my teens, I heard, “You must be so happy your mother’s in heaven.” I remember where I stood when that old lady said that - I’m sure she is now long since dead, I hope she and Jesus are doing well -  it was right outside the church gym.  

Later, someone wanted to connect with me in my grief by sharing the loss of Crickets, their tortoiseshell tabby. It did not help; I didn’t give points for effort, and it was insulting.   

First of all, according to Greek scholars, we have buggered the word empathy and reversed the meaning.

Digging into "sympathy," which conveniently hails from the Greek prefix “syn” (no, not “sin” - it just means "with" or "together") and the noun “pathos” (passion, suffering, emotion—you get the gist). So, when we talk about "sympathy," we're referring to a delightful mix of compassion, liking, and that warm fuzzy feeling of fellow feeling.

On the flip side, we have "empathy," which stems from the Greek prefix "en" (meaning: in, on) and, you guessed it, “pathos” again. But here's the kicker: "empathy" had a not-so-charming connotation in its original Greek form, implying an over-the-top display of personal emotion and passion flung onto another person. 

Fast-forward to today, and in English, "empathy" has evolved into something much more noble—an emotional identification with someone, a profound understanding, and a warm blanket of comfort. However, empathy was never designed to feel together; it was intended to move toward resolution. It is based on listening, not speaking.  

Empathy did not deserve the step up; it should have kept its place. The language was changed, but its advancement was not warranted.

Genuine empathy exists; if you are lying at the bottom of a broken elevator shaft next to some similarly injured fellow, he can empathise with your needs.  Perhaps if you both lost a parent and neither of you were those horrid children who think nothing but the will all through the funeral - maybe then you can understand one another’s pain. 

But modern empathy promises a lot; it tells you you can walk in their shoes, and you get it.  So what’s the harm? Can’t people automatically downgrade it to sympathy?  No empathy creates enormous pretence; false or misinformed empathy makes it worse for the receiver. Am I supposed to feel that? False empathy is not primarily cognitive but a desire to share pain.  

But if your empathy has no valid reason to present itself as walking in the other’s shoes, considering none of us can tell what others are feeling, are we not just taking on an event in their life and arrogantly and thoughtlessly assuming it’s close to our own without reason? It hurts people. We need to tread much more softly. 

Empathy, if it misses the mark, can be just gaslighting. If they say that losing Crickets, their cat, helps them draw closer to you as you have lost your mother, it doesn’t help; it makes things worse for the person who has lost their human loved one. 

We live in these great vessels of meat, electricity, chemicals, and blood and think, feel, and live such different lives.  Empathy, if false, causes pain, diminishes, and misinterprets; sympathy at least acknowledges that it does not presuppose to stand in your place. 

Empathy, if legitimate, can be powerful.  I recently heard of and hoped to meet an MP who was falsely accused of an offence that spread wickedly and cost him his party nomination; while not presupposing to understand his position, I wanted to meet him because at my university, during a suspension caused by my offending of an anti-semite when I had the affrontery to call  Hamas Nazis, I was banished and banned from all communications with my community. The implicit guilt of my banishment on even the first day had staff, faculty and students jumping in and saying, amongst other things, that I was suspended because I had assaulted a student in class.  This story spread quickly and became accepted wisdom; management refused to deny it (though they knew it was false; there was no camera, no police report, and no witnesses) because they delighted in the opportunity of keeping me in a bad light. 

So when I had the chance to meet Kevin Vuong, the falsely accused MP, I lept at it. He could offer me genuine empathy. 

Even the Bible never mentions empathy; it calls for compassion; compassion is outward-focused. It is directed toward the person in need. It doesn’t shine the light on the empathiser and say, look at me; look how the golden rays of empathy cover me and how I can join you in such a glow.  

Compassion focuses on the receiver. It is when sympathy meets action.  Most of all, it is driven by love, the word that should have come up earlier, which has been rejected but should be front and centre.  Empathy without love is theatrics and sympathy without love is a formality and good manners.  

As to the first cousins of false empathisers - Know-it-alls are just like over-empathizers. They have a deep infatuation with their own words. They want to hear their voice; that is their impetus. Like empathisers, they tell themselves they are just there to help, but their weakness is their lack of self-awareness, and poor self-awareness is not an excuse to commit oneself to being an expert in everything.  Like false empathisers, they should learn to listen, end the love affair with their voice, and recognise that they are not experts in all things; they are likely just lacking in self-awareness regarding their intellect and skills. 

So, while undeserved empathy has been well marketed and comes wrapped in shiny packaging, let us leave it on the relationship shelf with its annoying brand extension, know-it-all ism. 

Let us be compassionate.