I am beginning to feel sorry for sympathy. It was once such an
honorable impulse. Humble, sincere, caring. Sympathy was meant for people who
suffered or had less. In its most modest form, a sympathy card sent to people
in grief.
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But sympathy has gotten a bad rap. Now considered the noblesse
oblige of emotions, it’s disdained as a facile “poor you” of a sentiment, the
equivalent of pity. Sympathy, in short, is to be avoided — something you are
warned not to give and would be loath to receive.
Its superior: empathy
Instead, we are to upgrade to its superior, empathy. Schools and
parenting guides instruct children in how to cultivate empathy, as do workplace
culture and wellness programs. You could fill entire bookshelves with guides to
finding, embracing and sharing empathy. Few books or lesson plans extol
sympathy’s virtues.
“Sympathy focuses on offering support from a distance,” a
therapist explains on LinkedIn, whereas empathy “goes beyond sympathy by
actively immersing oneself in another person’s emotions and attempting to
comprehend their point of view.”
Instead, we are to upgrade to its superior, empathy. Schools and parenting guides instruct children in how to cultivate empathy, as do workplace culture and wellness programs. You could fill entire bookshelves with guides to finding, embracing and sharing empathy. Few books or lesson plans extol sympathy’s virtues.
And from Proceedings, a publication of the U.S. Naval Institute:
“Sympathy has to do with sharing emotions but is still focused on the
individual who is sympathizing, rather than truly seeking to understand
another’s perspective.” Spare us your sympathy, in other words.
But what did sympathy do to deserve this treatment? And what
makes empathy so superior?Etymologically speaking, sympathy was here first. In use since
the 16th century, when the Greek “syn-” (” with”) combined with pathos
(experience, misfortune, emotion, condition) to mean “having common feelings,”
sympathy preceded empathy by a good four centuries. Empathy (the “em” means
“into”) barged in from the German in the 20th century and gained popularity
through its usage in fields like philosophy, aesthetics and psychology.
According to my benighted 1989 edition of Webster’s Unabridged, empathy was the
more self-centered emotion, “the intellectual identification with or vicarious
experiencing of the feelings, thoughts or attitudes of another.”
It is as if the two words had reversed
But in more updated lexicons, it is as if the two words had
reversed. Sympathy now implies a hierarchy whereas empathy is the more
egalitarian sentiment. Empathy, per Dictionary.com, is “the psychological
identification with or vicarious experiencing of the emotions, thoughts or
attitudes of another” while sympathy stands at a haughty, “you poor dear”
remove: “the act or state of feeling sorrow or compassion for another.”
No wonder, one educator said to me that he was told in a recent
diversity, equity and inclusion training program that “sympathy counts for
nothing.” Sympathy, the session’s leader explained to school staff members, was
seeing someone in a hole and saying, “Too bad you’re in a hole,” whereas
empathy meant getting in the hole, too.
The hole metaphor
Perhaps you have heard about this hole. Brené Brown, the bestselling
author, may be the one who popularized the hole metaphor, which makes a moral
distinction between sympathy and empathy. “Empathy is a choice and it’s a
vulnerable choice because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with
something in myself that knows that feeling,” she says in a YouTube video.
According to this vision, empathy is about sharing someone
else’s perspective, not offering your own.
Still, it is hard to square the new emphasis on empathy — you
must feel what others feel — with another element of the current discourse.
According to what’s known as “standpoint theory,” your view necessarily depends
on your own experience: You can’t possibly know what others feel.
In his new book, “The Identity Trap,” Yascha Mounk, a professor
of international affairs at Johns Hopkins, defends a modest version of this
theory, writing, “It really is easy for the comparatively privileged to remain
blind to the challenges faced by those who are less fortunate.” But in its more
extreme interpretations, Mounk cautions, it “wrongly claims that people from
different groups are incapable of empathizing with each other’s experiences of
injustice — and that it would be better for them to stop trying.”
In short, no matter how much an empath you may be, unless you
have actually been in someone’s place, with all its experiences and
limitations, you cannot understand where that person is coming from. The object
of your empathy may find it presumptuous of you to think that you “get it.”
Empathy is asking too much
“Empathy is asking too much,” Paul Bloom, a professor of
psychology at the University of Toronto and the author of “Against Empathy,”
told me. In an article in The Boston Review, Bloom asks us to imagine what
empathy demands should a friend’s child drown. “A highly empathetic response
would be to feel what your friend feels, to experience, as much as you can, the
terrible sorrow and pain,” he writes. “In contrast, compassion involves concern
and love for your friend, and the desire and motivation to help, but it need
not involve mirroring your friend’s anguish.”
Bloom argues for a more rational, modulated, compassionate response. Something that sounds a little more like our old friend sympathy.
Bloom argues for a more rational, modulated, compassionate
response. Something that sounds a little more like our old friend sympathy.
So why not on occasion hold out a hand to sympathy instead? Return
to the idea that charitable feeling from afar isn’t inherently suspect and that
in some situations, the best you can do is “merely” sympathize. That when
someone blubbers uncontrollably next to you, you may not need to blubber too,
and the person may not want you to anyway. You could instead say, “I’m truly
sorry” or “That’s so unfair.”
It is perfectly fine and perhaps better than fine to admit, “I
cannot possibly know what it’s like to have a miscarriage/fight in a war/get
cancer.” Why not say, as Leslie Jamison suggests in her book “The Empathy
Exams,” “I couldn’t even imagine!”
No need to be sorry about offering your sympathies.
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