Is Empathy a Good or Bad Thing?

 

First, let's define the term itself. It often sparks debate, and people assign different meanings to it.

Empathy refers to three interrelated elements of human interaction.

1. The ability to perceive another's emotional state, feelings, or experiences.

2. Experiencing these feelings as if they were your own.

3. Creating in the other person a sense of being understood and empathized with.

Accordingly, when speaking of empathy, some mean only the first element; some - first and second; and some all three.

It's easy to imagine situations where these three elements arise and manifest separately.

For example, an experienced investigator interrogating a suspect might be able to perceive their emotions and use this information to their advantage. However, they are unlikely to empathize with the suspect. This is a case where element #1 operates without the others. In fact, the ability to read another's state can be used against them in many situations, and then it would hardly resemble what people call "empathy" in everyday life.

Another situation, encompassing elements #1 and #2, can arise when a person literally experiences something similar to the feelings of another (whom they read). If the person next to me is in pain, and this hurts me, this, most likely, should be called empathy in the true sense.

However, empathy for another still leaves the question: does the recipient of the empathy know about it? If empathy itself is accompanied by the ability to help another feel what you feel, this will be the most complete form of empathy, creating a two-way connection. Otherwise, a situation may persist where you fully empathize with someone, but they themselves are unaware of it and may even consider you callous, dry, and heartless.

Let's now focus on the fact that the first two elements already form the concept of "empathy" (and the third element, when present, complements it). We won't call the first element "empathy" without the second.

Now we shall try to answer the question of how good and beneficial this empathy is for the individual who possesses it, and for society as a whole.

On the one hand, the benefits are obvious and easily proven. If I feel what others feel, then I will try to make them feel as much good and as little bad as possible. After all, I don't want to feel pain. But if I feel the pain of others, then I will try not to cause it to them. And I very much want to experience joy and pleasure, so I will give them to others.

This is an understandable observation, leading many to the conclusion that empathy is important for people. It will help them do more good and avoid evil.

However, there are many situations in which empathy can be harmful. After all, if it forces one person to experience what others experience, it has the potential to replicate and spread any negative emotion indefinitely. If everyone were maximally empathic, the pain of one person could spread like a virus, instantly becoming the pain of billions. Would these many people then be able to cope with this pain? Or would it make their lives, and perhaps even their future behavior, worse?

For this reason, people who face frequent negative experiences typically suppress their empathy —simply to avoid unnecessary suffering and being influenced by negative emotions. For example, doctors can be excellent at reading their patients' conditions (element 1 on our list), but they perceive them detachedly, not identifying with them in any way. If they empathized with their patients, they likely wouldn't be able to withstand such a large amount of pain and wouldn't be able to continue their important and necessary work.

Something similar happens with psychologists, and especially psychiatrists. When constantly dealing with those living with various traumas and disabilities, the most important thing is to maintain your own health and avoid becoming like them. For similar reasons, empathy is dulled in police officers, prison guards, emergency services workers, and the like.

Empathy can be especially insidious in personal relationships between two close (or just-becoming-close) people. Here, people often overlook many factors and naively think that strong empathy would solve all problems, but in reality, it can lead to the opposite.

Indeed, in relationships, people often tend to experience unfounded fears and anxieties. Moreover, their emotional state becomes strongly tied to and dependent on the other person's reaction. For example, I begin to doubt myself because I feel like my loved one doubts me and our relationship. But if I knew otherwise, and that I am loved and valued, all my anxiety would immediately disappear, and I would no longer doubt myself. I guess everyone would agree that this is a familiar and common situation.

If I now, purely empathetically, read another's emotional state, filled with doubts, worries, or suspicions, and, without knowing their true causes, begin to experience them myself, then these essentially baseless suspicions are doubled, and it becomes more difficult for both of us to overcome them. On the other hand, if I were a completely unempathetic person, I wouldn't even notice this worry or suspicion and would behave carefree, as if nothing had happened, radiating love and joy. And seeing this behavior, my loved one would also understand that there is nothing to worry about, and that any fears are groundless, after which they would immediately disappear. As we can see, in the case of any unfounded fears, it is precisely the lack of empathy that can prove to be an excellent prerequisite for their dispel.

We can conclude that reading another's emotional state in most cases benefits the reader. Whether this will be a benefit to others or to society as a whole depends on how one uses these advantages.

The ability to empathize, that is, to experience another's state as one's own, can be both beneficial and harmful. The benefit will be greater if a person, while experiencing similar feelings, can still separate themselves from these feelings, put their mind and will above them, and act based on the desire for good.

Therefore, the best advice is not to always be an empathic person, but to develop empathy as one of the available tools in your arsenal, having the ability to turn it on and off at will. It's good to turn on empathy only if you know you can turn it off at any moment.

In general, it should be noted that empathy is a direct manifestation of the law of similarity — the most fundamental law in the universe. At the micro level, it constantly operates, forcing some to become more like others in some way. When we see someone yawning, we want to yawn. When someone eats, our appetite is whetted. When we see people having sex, we ourselves experience arousal. A smile begets a smile, laughter begets laughter, anger begets anger, fear begets fear, and so on. People constantly imitate one another. If this doesn't happen, it's likely simply because at that moment a person is more drawn to imitating not this, but something else. Small children generally develop primarily through imitation. They begin to try to speak, mechanically imitating what they see and hear in adults. If they grew up alone in the middle of a wild forest, their ability of speech would never develop.

If this resemblance had no boundaries, all living things would merge into a single lump. However, boundaries inevitably exist, and they are linked to the desire to be unique, exceptional, and therefore somehow separate. These two forces — assimilitude and isolation — create a balance in which people (and all beings) draw closer, but only to a certain degree, while also maintaining some distance.

However, I say that the law of similarity is the most important, because both of these forces—assimilitude (coming closer) and isolation (moving further apart)—stem from man's desire to become like God.

God is one and unique. Striving for unity, man desires to unite with others. Striving for singularity, he desires to be unique and inimitable. In God himself, these qualities coexist in absolute harmony, but in man they create a conflict that man is called to resolve, each time on a new level and in new situations. To resolve this conflict, man incarnates in a separate material body, being able to build his relationships with the rest of the world in different ways. The conclusion I made earlier regarding empathy helps fulfill this important task.