The Baby in the Well – The case against Empathy by Paul Bloom

Article Summary

 

The word “Empathy” comes from the Greek word ‘Einfühlung’, which means “feeling into.” The word in itself is only a mere century old, but what’s more interesting is its moral implication.

 

Empathy is said to be ‘placing ourselves in other person’s shoes’ i.e. feeling what they’re feeling.  But what is so important about it that even Barack Obama used to stress upon it a lot?

 

In this article, Paul Bloom, writes about Adam Smith who observed that only sensory experience alone are not capable of spurring us toward sympathetic engagement with others. What makes it possible is our imagination. Empathy is an instinctive mirroring of other’s experience, such can be observed while one is watching movies.

 

Social Sciences support what psychologist, C. Daniel Batson calls “the empathy-altruism hypothesis.” It is found that simply instructing one person to take another’s perspective made them more caring and more likely to help. As the focus on emotions is increasing, the research on empathy is thriving too. From children to other mammals, researchers are not leaving any stones unturned to know more and more about empathy.

 

This interest in empathy though, is not entirely theoretical. If we understand empathy actually works, we can only gain from it. There are people who have a lot of empathy for others and those who don’t have much due to reasons which may vary from bad genes to bad experiences. And then there is this 1% who are termed as psychopaths who lack empathy altogether.

Jeremy Rifkin, and Paul R. Ehrlich and Robert E. Ornstein, in their respective books have described how empathy has contributed towards the growth of humanity and how we need more of it to progress further. There is a lot of literary material about empathy.

 

However, unfortunately, our enthusiasm about it is misplaced, empathy among us is often misplaced and narrow minded. As the author, Paul Blooms puts it, we’re often at our best when we’re smart enough not to rely on it.

 

People often respond to one adverse situation, more than the others. This is due to the attention-getting power of new events, which makes us ignore other events which are less relenting relatively. All incidents, unless we heard them or know something about them, are nothing but just mere humming which fade into the noisy background of our lives.

 

It is important to note the difference between hearing about something happening and something actually happening. It actually affects our sympathy. Number of victims doesn’t matter much, what matters id that little psychological difference mentioned above. Why feel numbers are so important is not because of empathy but because of reason.

Just because empathy is important and is generally a favorable trait in most humans, doesn’t mean there is no dark side to it. Empathy towards victims often leads to a feeling of retribution. Also, it is easy to manipulate empathy by giving certain matter more importance than the other. Often, our concern for specific individuals today means neglecting crises that will harm countless people in the future.

 

Empathy requires more than anything, moral judgment. And it is more than putting ourselves in other person’s situation. It is about deciding what’s right and what’s wrong. It is all about differentiation.

 

Although empathy towards all is necessary, it is impossible to feel it towards everyone. The underlying fact here is that even if we don’t necessarily empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as ours. Doesn’t mean we should cut it all together. Often it is more about morals than empathy, for some people, like those who suffer from Autism. But those morals familiarize them with empathy which is otherwise deficient in them.

 

Empathy is the force which binds humankind and is a rather paradoxical concept. Its power will always bring our moral concerns into the pointed focused attention. We need to consider everyone and yet in a justified manner. There will be prospects, calculations and reasons but our hearts will always go to that one baby in the well, because it is the measure of our humanity.

Ruchika Verma

 

You can read the original article here