My takeaway from this post is that there are several properties of relating that people expect to converge, but in your case (and in some contexts) don’t. With empathy, there’s:
1. Depth of understanding of the other person’s experience 2. Negative judgment 3. Mirroring
I mention 3 because I think it’s strictly closer to the definition of empathy than 1, but it’s mostly irrelevant to this post. If I had this kind of empathy for the woman in the video, I’d be thinking: “man, my head hurts.”
The common narrative is that as 1 increases, 2 drops to zero, or even becomes positive judgement. This is probably true sometime, such as when counteracting the fundamental attribution error, but sometimes not: “This person is isn’t getting their work done, that’s somewhat annoying...oh, it’s because they don’t care about their education? Gaaahhh!!!” I can relate to this.
Regarding relating better without lowering standards, the questions that come to my mind are:
1. Is this a case where things have to get worse before they get better? As in, zero understanding leads to low judgement with suspension of disbelief, motivational understanding leads to high judgement, but full-story understanding returns to low judgment without relying on suspension of disbelief. Is there a way to test this without driving yourself crazy or taking up an inordinate amount of time? 2. Can you dissolve your moral judgement while keeping understanding constant? That is: “this teammate isn’t doing their share of the work because they didn’t care enough to be prepared...and this isn’t a thing I need to be angry about.” If this route looks interesting, my suggestion for the first step of the path is to introspect on the anger/disgust/etc. and what it’s protecting.
My takeaway from this post is that there are several properties of relating that people expect to converge, but in your case (and in some contexts) don’t. With empathy, there’s:
1. Depth of understanding of the other person’s experience
2. Negative judgment
3. Mirroring
I mention 3 because I think it’s strictly closer to the definition of empathy than 1, but it’s mostly irrelevant to this post. If I had this kind of empathy for the woman in the video, I’d be thinking: “man, my head hurts.”
The common narrative is that as 1 increases, 2 drops to zero, or even becomes positive judgement. This is probably true sometime, such as when counteracting the fundamental attribution error, but sometimes not: “This person is isn’t getting their work done, that’s somewhat annoying...oh, it’s because they don’t care about their education? Gaaahhh!!!” I can relate to this.
Regarding relating better without lowering standards, the questions that come to my mind are:
1. Is this a case where things have to get worse before they get better? As in, zero understanding leads to low judgement with suspension of disbelief, motivational understanding leads to high judgement, but full-story understanding returns to low judgment without relying on suspension of disbelief. Is there a way to test this without driving yourself crazy or taking up an inordinate amount of time?
2. Can you dissolve your moral judgement while keeping understanding constant? That is: “this teammate isn’t doing their share of the work because they didn’t care enough to be prepared...and this isn’t a thing I need to be angry about.” If this route looks interesting, my suggestion for the first step of the path is to introspect on the anger/disgust/etc. and what it’s protecting.