Monday, October 10, 2011

Empathy

A couple weeks ago, New York Times columnist David Brooks drew attention to what he calls the latest craze in American culture: empathy.
There are shelfloads of books about it: “The Age of Empathy,” “The Empathy Gap,” “The Empathic Civilization,” “Teaching Empathy.” There’s even a brain theory that we have mirror neurons in our heads that enable us to feel what’s in other people’s heads and that these neurons lead to sympathetic care and moral action.
Brooks argues that empathy, while a key ingredient in pro-social action (i.e., "sympathetic care and moral action"), is ultimately inadequate. 
The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.
Those who turn feeling into action 
feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes. 
He goes on to note that these codes can be religious and non-religious. Their sacredness does not emerge from some eternal, objective order, but rather comes from deeply ingrained notions of social connection and disconnection. 
Think of anybody you admire. They probably have some talent for fellow-feeling, but it is overshadowed by their sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code. They would feel a sense of shame or guilt if they didn’t live up to the code. The code tells them when they deserve public admiration or dishonor. The code helps them evaluate other people’s feelings, not just share them. . . .
The code isn’t just a set of rules. It’s a source of identity. It’s pursued with joy. It arouses the strongest emotions and attachments. Empathy is a sideshow.
We now have had the strange but fortunate opportunity to be the sustained object of many people's empathy and "sympathetic care and moral action." In fact, if you're reading this blog, it is almost certainly the case that you have given to us in this regard. In any case, Brooks's column has stuck with me. 

Empathy for SB has been overwhelming. Whose heart doesn't break at the mention pediatric cancer? Whose breath doesn't catch when hearing of a four-and-a-half-year old boy facing a sudden life and death struggle? But empathy's fire needs tending if it's to keep its heat. Does that mean it's "a sideshow"? I think that Brooks is on to something here.

The most enduring "sympathetic care" we've been shown has come from individuals who appear to be moved by more than empathy. I'm not sure their moved by a "social code," as Brooks argues. But they at least seem to be moved by a heightened sense of who they are and who they should be. I suppose that could be a social code. Brooks says, "It's a source of identity." But the source isn't a code but rather a conception of their best selves.

Perhaps I'm projecting. Because at the end of a long day, exhausted and running on mainly on the fumes of stress and caffeine, my first reaction to SB's whininess or general recalcitrance is anger and dismissiveness. What snaps me out of it? Well, I don't always snap out of it. But when I do, it's not because I draw on an endless well of empathy in my soul. I snap out of it because I suddenly realize what the father I want to be would do. 

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