Empathy – the ability to understand and share the feelings of another – is a natural, innate characteristic of being human. It is a natural inclination we share with other social creatures. It enables us to live in community where understanding and caring for one another is essential.
The capacity to feel empathy is usually considered a good thing. We all appeal to empathy sometimes when we want to want others to better understand us understand. Politicians, aid organizations, advertisers and others employ empathy in ways that are familiar. We regularly employ appeals to empathy to persuade others or it is used to persuade us.
But over the last year we have seen that there are some who are suspicious of empathy. Elon Musk characterized empathy as a “fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” But he is not alone. There are many who have criticized empathy, referring to “toxic empathy,” “untethered empathy,” and “weaponized empathy.”
Others have responded to this criticism of empathy, e.g., Mark Clavier. For responses to the underlying misogyny of the criticism of empathy, see Beth Felker Jones and Dani Treweek. I won’t repeat what they have said. I’ll just make a few observations before addressing what I think is the shadow side of empathy.
It is certainly true that empathy can be used not only to persuade us but to manipulate our emotions. We can probably all relate to that. But it is also true that whether empathy is being used to persuade (good) or manipulate (bad) is in the eye of the beholder. For example, both pro-choice and pro-life advocates appeal to empathy. Depending on your own convictions, you will feel differently about those appeals.
Those who talk of toxic empathy are concerned that just “feeling” for others can lead to a sort of codependence that negates moral boundaries have a point. But I can respond with empathy to a friend sharing about frustrations with their marriage without endorsing their affair. Empathizing with the victims of crime does not need to lead me to supporting the death penalty. But those who are making much of weaponized empathy are quite selective. For example, sharing the stories of immigrants and refugees is toxic. But weaponizing the crimes committed by some undocumented immigrants is not.
It is also the case that people can find themselves unexpectedly feeling empathy for those they are not supposed, e.g., the enemy or others whose feelings or anguish is otherwise inconvenient. And that, it seems to me, is at the root of the “anti-empathy” impulse. Feeling empathy for those considered beyond the pale can compromise group solidarity and lead us to wonder if those my group considers beyond the pale are really so.
And that gets at what I think is the shadow of our natural empathy.
As I said above, empathy is a natural, innate characteristic of being human that we share with other social creatures. But, along with many other species, our natural empathy is naturally parochial. We are more inclined to feel empathy for those who are like us, those we like, and those who are part of our group. Chimpanzees, for example exhibit lots of empathy within their group, but are suspicious and unempathetic toward those outside their group.
Franz de Waal writes of this in The Bonobo and the Atheist,
“[One
lesson of the Parable of the Good Samaritan] is that everyone is our neighbor,
even `people unlike us. Given the parochialism of human and animal empathy,
this is the more challenging message. Even with a simple measure, such as yawn
contagion, identification with strangers is hard to demonstrate. Both
chimpanzees and people join the yawns of familiar individuals more readily than
those of outsiders. Empathy is hopelessly biased, as was shown, for example, in
a study at the University of Zurich, which measured neural responses to the
suffering of others. Men watched either a supporter of their own soccer club or
a supporter of a rival soccer club getting hurt through electrodes attached to
their hands. Needless to say, the Swiss take their soccer seriously. Only their
own club members activated empathy. In fact, seeing fans of rival clubs getting
shocked activated the brain’s pleasure area. So much for loving thy neighbor.”
In Wisconsin we can imagine how this experiment would play out had it been Packers fans and Bears fans with electrodes attached to their hands. We can go from preaching to meddling and wonder which parts of our brains would be activated if instead of rival football fans receiving the shocks were a man wearing a MAGA hat and a man wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. What about a Christian vs a Muslim? An American vs an Iranian? A transgender person vs a cisgender person? An ICE agent vs a protester? The list could go on.
As much as most of us would like to think we would have equal empathy for all, or least not take pleasure in anyone’s pain, the evidence suggest otherwise. To be otherwise requires a watchfulness of the movements of our own hearts and discipline and practice to engage every other with something more than empathy.
Suspicion of the outsider – xenophobia – is another natural inclination we share with other social creatures. It is part of our neurobiology. Our brains constantly judge whether circumstances or the people we encounter are safe. And our immediate impulse is to trust the familiar and mistrust the unfamiliar. We have a natural tendency to be wary of the other.
While xenophobia might seem like the opposite of empathy, I think they are related. Shared feelings within a group and suspicion of those outside the group build a sense of belonging. Belonging is good. But when those two reinforcing tendencies are amplified, belonging can become a toxic exclusionary bonding that divides the world into “us” vs. “them.”
The leaders of cults and political demagogues are geniuses amplifying these two natural inclinations. They cultivate a toxic solidarity in which members of the group become the good, the innocent, the righteous while others are identified as guilty, threatening, dirty, sick, inhuman, vermin. People are particularly susceptible to being enticed by such unhealthy belonging in time of anxiety, uncertainty, and conflict.
Those who reject empathy as toxic seem too often, intentionally or not, to be falling into this trap.
Some of those who reject empathy are arguing for “Kinism” which is the belief that Christians have a duty to prefer the members of one’s family – and by extension, one's ethnic group over any appeal to universal care. That basically endorses the selective empathy as natural and of God. This is a false teaching.
The are others who are suspicious of compassion as a feeling because fellow-feeling can sometimes lead to sympathy for those who are supposed to be rejected and condemned, making it harder to turn one’s heart from them. Those who talk of toxic empathy often sound like what they are really about is excusing the hardness of heart toward those whose anguish is inconvenient.
We can agree that more empathy is not the answer. It is too fickle and too parochial. The inclination to have more empathy for those with whom I identify than with those with whom I do not might be natural in a biological sense. But it is not natural in the theological sense of what we are made for as being created in the image of God. It is not the way of the kingdom of God.
Christians are called to something more than mere empathy – compassion, mercy, and solidarity with all. Our mercy and compassion are to be perfect as is that of our Father in heaven, making no distinctions (Matthew 5:45-48 & Luke 6:36). Christians are commanded to love even their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Matthew 5:44). Even as we resist those who are violent, deceitful, greedy, tyrannical, etc. we are called to do so with compassion and mercy toward them.
This is hard. It requires prayer and practice and discipline. And grace. But it is the better way.
