nathanael.ink

Do you imagine you know how someone else is feeling? Well stop. Your thinking you do is the problem, and I can prove it. Whatever “problem” you think you are solving with such an exercise I propose is destitute upon arrival. On the contrary, my sense is that most problems between humans are caused by exactly this sort of thought experiment. I can think of (almost) no definition of empathy that escapes it from the criticism I intend to levy. What is that criticism?

Empathy is antithetical to conflict resolution. Have you ever worked up the courage to address the person whose behavior brought up the most profound pain in you? Only for them to say something like:

Well, I don’t understand why that bothered you so much, it wouldn’t bother me! In fact, it doesn’t bother every other soul I have ever said it to!

Ouch.
Have you ever heard something any more invalidating than that?! Well, news flash, that person just exercised empathy. They did just as we recommended to them. They imagined themselves in your shoes. They walked through what feelings might have come up for them if they were in your situation and they concluded… that you are the problem. Empathy has taught them that what you are *saying* you feel is flatly incorrect. Because they know how you feel! Maybe they truly have had an identical situation, and so they know just how they felt when in it. Therefore, they conclude, you are describing the feeling of that situation incorrectly. And if you are describing it incorrectly, it is presumably on purpose, or else you ought to allow them to more correctly tell you how you are feeling. And if you do not allow them to tell you how you are feeling then therefore you must be doing so for some ulterior motive. Thus, their mind begins racing “why, why is this person lying? Do they just want to get out of work? They want to manipulate me with their emotions? They want me to pity them so that they can get their way?” and on and on it goes. Arguments of this sort never truly end.

But Nathanael, you might say, that is just an example of someone who *lacks* true empathy! To which I respond: I disagree. Empathy is, as a matter of fact, a subjective experience. Definitions of empathy all hover around something like “understanding how another person is feeling and feeling it too.” The problem, it seems to me, lies in the use of this word understanding. A word whose definition gets even slipperier. Yet we can nevertheless notice that to understand is a subjective experience. The scientist studies objective things in such a way so as to bring about the subjective state of understanding. The tree does not care what we know about it. It makes no difference to the tree whether we understand it or not. Furthermore, neither I, nor the tree, can know when the scientist has or has not acquired understanding. Therefore, understanding is, in the most basic sense, a subjective mental state.

All this to say, when we take ourselves to understand someone else’s experience (yet alone to imagine we are experiencing it too) we inherently restrict ourselves from believing their firsthand testimony. To “empathize” just is literally for me to take myself to know what another person’s experience is like, an experience which, by all accounts I do not have access to. Nor do you.

The diversity of human experience is much too wide an array for us to think we might, after any amount of effort, suddenly know what another person is experiencing. Rather than empathizing, I propose we just start believing what others tell us about their internal experience. Make space for it.

 

Well Nathanael, you are saying to yourself, you truly have utterly eviscerated empathy… but then why does the title of this article include the word “usually” in parentheses at the end there?

That is a great question, and I will answer it.

We could well define empathy as something more complex like:

To believe others who describe when a need has not been met in them and subsequently imagining what it is like for you in cases when that need has also not been met in you.

Even this is not quite as clear as I’d like but at least it does not presume that our experiences are identical. I’d wish it to include more commentary on how problematic it is to take yourself to understand or know what another person’s experience is like. I’d wish it to include reference to the observation that all feelings are just ways that our bodies remind us of our underlying basic human needs.

Do I want to say more? Yes. Will I? No. Not here.

What is the antidote? In my opinion, it is non-violent communication.