Can you have too much empathy? Most people would agree you can have too little but can you also have too much? My answer would be yes, you can indeed. If empathy is not balanced by intelligence and wisdom or, at the very least, common sense, it becomes destructive.
This is true even insofar as real empathy is concerned. How much more true it is for the fake empathy we have these days. Jesus said in Matthew 9:5-8, “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men … but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen.” The hypocrites here are like the modern empathisers who display their empathy as a way to feel good about themselves and show off their virtue. This is hardly news. It is human nature, or a symptom of the fallen part of it, and just takes new forms. The underlying character weakness remains the same.
But let's forget about that and assume all empathisers feel real empathy. Unless this emotion, for that is what it is, is counterbalanced by proper discernment it simply opens the door to being taken advantage of and used. A culture that over-emphasises empathy will soon be destroyed because it lacks a functioning immune system. It will allow anything to enter its body without discriminating between the good and the bad, the healthy and the unhealthy, the nutritious and the poisonous. To the pathologically empathetic this will sound wicked and cruel but they forget we need the wisdom of the serpent as well as the innocence of the dove, and sometimes a dove's innocence is an excuse for evading moral responsibility.
It's pleasant to feel empathy but to a certain psychological type it is also an indulgence, a wallowing in sentiment. In life we need steel as well as silk and too much of either leads to imbalance and disharmony. A virtue exaggerated or exercised without its complement is a vice and one the devil well knows how to exploit for his own ends.
Dear Mr. Wildblood,
ReplyDeleteyou forgot the worst kind of empathy; and that is empathy used as an excuse to do evil.
It is most widespread today:
-Look, people are suffering on the Ukraine! So let us create a nuclear war with Russia.
-Look, planet Earth suffers! So let us destroy our whole technical civilization.
-Look, women are suffering! So let us destroy both men and women.
In fact, it is this kind of empathy that is one of the most powerful weapons evil has in its arsenal in these times.
You might say you noted this empathy in your article; but as far as I can tell, you talk only about a bona fide empathy, where the basic intention is to do good, only unbalanced, prideful etc.
But in the weaponized empathy, empathy is employed as a weapon, in a clear effort to do evil, with evil intention.
Lao'C.
I know what you mean but that's not real empathy. It's a kind of poisoned empathy that actually arises from hatred. But you're right. There's a lot of it about. Vice disguised as virtue is very common these days.
ReplyDeleteIn my medical training, although it was not explicitly stated, a good deal of effort was put into bringing our ordinary spontaneous empathy under control (e.g. by repeated exposure to situations, by practicing Not-reacting); so that empathy would not overwhelm the doctor in an emergency and reduce his ability to do what was best for the patient.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, empathy is essentially the same phenomenon as 'sympathy' which originally meant feeling the same as someone else (as with a sympathetic resonance in acoustics) it is a somewhat passive response.
But if a doctor is - for example - performing a painful procedure like taking blood; it is important that he does Not feel the pain he is inflicting (for the patient's own good). This was something I had to learn - at first I felt a bit dizzy when taking blood, because I co-experienced some of the pain; until repetition made me able to focus on doing the job well (rather than being overwhelmed by feelings).
When I was a psychiatrist, I was sometimes excessively affected by empathy e.g. for patients with severe endogenous depression. This may have clouded my judgment, and put me off the work; and did not help the patients.
Of course, it is at other times very valuable for a doctor to feel empathy, in order to understand the patient's situation and experiences.
My point is that empathy is not always a good thing, and is sometimes a bad thing - despite that a capacity for empathy is part of what makes us human.
In other words, empathy is Not the highest value, and ideally needs to be regulated by higher values.
Excellent observations, Bruce. I remember my grandfather who was a doctor telling me exactly the same thing. Too much feeling clouds judgement.
ReplyDeleteThis goes back to your recent post about pitfalls. This is one of my favorite quotes from C.S Lewis.
ReplyDelete"He (the devil) always sends errors into the world in pairs--pairs of opposites...He relies on your extra dislike of one to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.”
Empathy is an important value. Jesus certainly displayed compassion. However, we need to remember as 1 Cor. 13 states that "love does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth". A popular phrase among my generation is "love is love". This is used to justify primarily sexual sin, but it can be used to whitewash any sin. Love can be mistaken for sentimentality. However, this is a false love that will do far more harm than good.
Empathy, as you say Lady M, is an important value but it is not love for, as you also point out, real love delights in truth. We need to think as well as feel. Either one without the other becomes a fault and leads to evil.
ReplyDelete