Understanding One Another
The Ability to Feel Empathy
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
A terminally ill child can move ahead of equally deserving patients once listeners are asked to imagine her pain. That experiment illustrates psychologist Paul Bloom’s argument in Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion: empathy behaves like a spotlight, illuminating one person while obscuring everyone else. Presenting Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History, Doug accepts the warning against limitless empathy — but rejects Bloom’s broader verdict.
A Note on the Original Text
Doug’s writings are presented as originally written. Spelling, punctuation, and grammatical irregularities have been retained to preserve his words and the integrity of the original record.
ORIGINAL WRITING
The content in this post is based on the book Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman.
We can step out of our bubble and into someone else’s shoes. We’re hardwired to feel, at an emotional level, what it’s like to be a stranger.
Not only can we do this, but we’re good at it. People are emotional vacuum cleaners. Just think how easily books and movies make us laugh or cry. For me, sad movies on flights are always the worst.
For a long time I thought this fabulous instinct for feeling another person’s pain could help bring people closer together. What the world needed, surely, was a lot more empathy. But then I read a new book by one of those baby researchers.
When people ask Professor Bloom what his book is about, he’ll say:
‘It’s about empathy.’
They smile and nod-until he adds:
‘I’m against it.’
Paul Bloom isn’t joking. According to this psychologist, empathy isn’t a beneficent sun illuminating the world. It’s a spotlight. A searchlight. It singles out a specific person or group of people in your life, and while you’re busy sucking up all the emotions bathed in that one ray of light, the rest of the world fades away.
Take the following study carried out by another psychologist. In this experiment, a series of volunteers first heard the sad story of Sheri Summers, a ten-year old suffering from a fatal disease. She’s on the waiting list for a life-saving treatment, but time’s running out. Subjects were told they could move Sheri up the waiting list, but they’re asked to be objective in making their decision.
Most people didn’t consider giving Sheri an advantage. They understood full well that every child on that list was sick and in need of treatment.
Then came the twist. A second group of subjects was given the same scenario, but was then asked to imagine how Sheri must be feeling: Wasn’t it heartbreaking that this little girl was so ill? Turns out that this single shot of empathy changed everything. The majority now wanted to let Sheri jump the line. If you think about it, that’s a pretty shaking moral choice. The spotlight on Sheri could effectively mean the death of other children who’d been on the list longer.
In practical terms, says Professor Bloom, empathy is a hopelessly limited skill.
And Professor Bloom is wrong. He is arguing about blanket applications of empathy. The empathic dealing with our fellow humans is essential to a healthy memory.