You might be surprised to find that I actually agree with this take. I think that most of what people consider empathy nowadays i a performative thing to make themselves feel good, or to drop responsibility. It doesn’t really do me much good if someone sits around feeling bad for me. I don’t want them to feel bad either. I have empathy for them.
I don’t want my kids to walk round feeling bad for people and thinking that that’s some sort of noble actions. I want e them to actually look at what they can do for other people. And how they can help a situation and how, you know, sometimes when you can’t help a situation, what’s the second best the third best thing you can do. And uh, sometimes you have to act against your empathy like, you know, someone is gonna be annoyed at you for doing something, but you still think it’s the right thing to do.
( It won’t allow me to edit on my phone. And the original comment was voiced to text. So I’m going to submit this and then edit it, hoping that the interface will improve somehow in the process)
Performative ‘empathy’ can be a release valve for the pressures of conscience that might otherwise drive good actions. (And it can just be pure, empty signalling.) That doesn’t mean empathy is playing a negative role, though—the performativity is the problem. I’d be willing to bet that people who are (genuinely) more empathetic also tend to be more helpful and altruistic in practice, and that low-empathy people are massively overrepresented in the set of people who do unusually bad things.
It’s the association you note, of empathy = good, that I object to. And anyway you’re just measuring social sensitivity, no one who wants to be well liked isn’t going to pretend they’re super empathetic.
And that’s the point. It turns int pretend when it becomes its own goal.
You might be surprised to find that I actually agree with this take. I think that most of what people consider empathy nowadays i a performative thing to make themselves feel good, or to drop responsibility. It doesn’t really do me much good if someone sits around feeling bad for me. I don’t want them to feel bad either. I have empathy for them.
I don’t want my kids to walk round feeling bad for people and thinking that that’s some sort of noble actions. I want e them to actually look at what they can do for other people. And how they can help a situation and how, you know, sometimes when you can’t help a situation, what’s the second best the third best thing you can do. And uh, sometimes you have to act against your empathy like, you know, someone is gonna be annoyed at you for doing something, but you still think it’s the right thing to do.
( It won’t allow me to edit on my phone. And the original comment was voiced to text. So I’m going to submit this and then edit it, hoping that the interface will improve somehow in the process)
Performative ‘empathy’ can be a release valve for the pressures of conscience that might otherwise drive good actions. (And it can just be pure, empty signalling.) That doesn’t mean empathy is playing a negative role, though—the performativity is the problem. I’d be willing to bet that people who are (genuinely) more empathetic also tend to be more helpful and altruistic in practice, and that low-empathy people are massively overrepresented in the set of people who do unusually bad things.
It’s the association you note, of empathy = good, that I object to. And anyway you’re just measuring social sensitivity, no one who wants to be well liked isn’t going to pretend they’re super empathetic.
And that’s the point. It turns int pretend when it becomes its own goal.