What Empathy Isn't

A lot of us think we're doing empathy when we're not. And real empathy is essential.

The reactions to the flooding in Texas that killed dozens of people, including taking the lives of young children attending a sleep away camp, is making me sad.

I know a lot about climate change and the importance of data to the ability to prepare and remain resilient against things like storms and flooding. I was one of the first among my friends to clock that the cuts being made to NOAA and to the use of data around weather were going to have impacts that would include more people dying in climate-related weather events.

But right now, the only thing I want to say about what happened in Texas is that I wish the blessings of the gods upon the families who are so devastated by the unspeakable losses caused by the flood.

Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash

I know that that's not the chatter that's happening out there in social media land. It's a deluge of hot takes about how "we saw this coming" and "we can expect more of this" and "look at all the ways that the GOP government of Texas or the GOP controlled National Weather Service caused this awful disaster." And on the other side it's yet another round of the tired game of "Blame Biden even though he hasn't been President now for six months." It's all about wanting to be the first with the hot take or the choice info that will help "set the narrative" (and place the blame politically) around this tragedy.

There is a rant here that I could unpack about people on social media pretending they are journalists when they aren't. You are not Walter fucking Cronkite or Hunter S. Thompson or Christiana Amanpour and it's not your job to "break news" for the American public. We have a lot of legit journalists here on Substack and most of them have spent a lifetime learning how to do that work responsibly. Your Uncle Walter is not a football coach, despite his rantings about how his favorite team is screwing it up by the numbers, and likewise your armchair efforts at journalism are equally sad. Unless you were actually there, whether its on the football field or in the flood zone, at best what you're offering is commentary.

But commentary is not always the best and most human thing we can offer at a time like this. Empathy is.

And a lot of people seem to be confused as to what empathy is and what it isn't.

First and foremost, empathy centers the experience of the other person, in this case the people afflicted by tragedy. I get that a lot of people's wish to focus on how the GOP actions might have caused or exacerbated this tragedy comes from a desire to "help" somehow, to make sure that the narrative around this tragedy addresses the growing fear among the populace that the draconian cuts to government agencies made by this Administration are going to not only diminish our quality of life, but actually kill people. Believe me, I have that fear as well. I've said as much to others all the way back in February.

But now is not the time for taking a victory lap of "I told you so." Parents who lost their four year old daughter do not want to hear me say, "I told you so." Nor do they want to hear me say, "this is just a harbinger of worse things yet to come." It's not about hand-wringing about how afraid you are about what this means for the future of our country, or about what will happen in your town as hurricane season and wildfire seasons ramp up. These kinds of comments are centering our fear, not their pain. They are not empathy.

Rushing to place blame in some need to provide "accountability" or "justice," especially when so many of the facts about what happened are still being uncovered and reported on (by actual journalists and people who were actually there) is also not empathy. Don't get me wrong. We DESPERATELY need accountability. But rushing past people's suffering so that you can lay judgement and place blame without bothering with the facts is not empathy. It's not even real accountability. In order to hold someone to account for an act of wrongdoing, you need to fully understand the wrong that has been done. And that full understanding requires empathy. That moment of empathy is not a waste of time. It's a necessary and vital component to really understanding the injury for which someone needs to be held accountable for. Skipping over it, blowing past it because you want to get to the judgement part isn't actually serving justice. If I don't make an effort to really empathize with how you have been hurt, how can I give you real justice for that injury?

Empathy is also not inserting yourself into the situation and imagining how you would feel if it were you. I know a lot of people who do this. And they have the best of intentions when they do this. They want to do the right thing, empathy-wise, and so they try to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes." But that also isn't quite empathy either. Because you aren't them and they aren't you. If all you can do is project yourself into their situation, you're not really understanding their experience. You're still placing yourself at the center of the moment. You are making yourself a tourist in their life, and thinking that as a visitor you know what it's like to live there.

REAL empathy requires the abandonment of your own circumstances and experiences and viewpoints. It is not enough to imagine how you would feel if it were you. You need to imagine how it feels for them given who THEY ARE, with all their history, circumstances and viewpoints intact. That's why empathy is so hard, and why so many people resist it. It's not easy as a white man to really comprehend what it feels like to be a Black woman. It's not easy as a young woman to place yourself in the position of what it's like to be an old man. Many people's thinking is too rigid to really perform that kind of exercise, to really step out of their own identity enough to really think about what another person's experience might look like from their point of view.

There is an effort that needs to be made to educate yourself about the other person’s experiences, and viewpoints. And many folks are not curious enough about how other people experience the world to really learn and embrace a full understanding of what the world might look like from that other perspective.

They think their perspective is what's "normal" and anything else is just "lacking in objectivity." They cling to that normative view of reality because it makes it easier to process the world and make decisions when there's some kind of bright line you can point to and say "that's okay" and "that isn't" based on some externalized idea of what's "normal" or "natural."

People who say that there's some sort of "objectivity" that they can apply (implying thereby that you can't) are full of shit, by the way. The human brain is INHERENTLY lacking in objectivity. We all look at life through the lens of our identity, experiences and circumstances. And those things are different for every single human being on this planet. The idea that there is some naturally decipherable "objective" standard or perspective that applies to everyone is bullshit.

Agreed upon social norms are decided on by the collective, and while many of those norms (like "don't kill people") can be found across many different kinds of societies, that's really because they are kind of important to maintaining social order. You could order a society around the idea that killing people was okay, but it would be very tough to do much of anything in such a society. And the fact is, our society, despite the fact that we don't think killing people is okay, does in fact excuse killing in a wide range of situations as a practical matter. We say killing isn’t okay, but there are a lot of exceptions to that supposed rule. Our social norms are not as easy to navigate as many would have us believe.

"Normal" is merely a perception that arises based on your experinces with the social norms of the community you are living within. The fact that you are more comfortable or literate with the social norms of the society you live in doesn't make you "objective." It's a sign either of your relative privilege within the society because your identity and circumstances make it relatively easy to conform to the social norms, or of your capacity to mask or code switch to adapt to the society's demands.

The nice thing about being a witch is that you know that none of these ideas of "normal" are set in stone. They're all things that humans have arbitrarily decided are real. Poke at them with any intention and they blow away like smoke. Your worldview already embraces the idea that what you think you know doesn't have to be what is. You've already acknowledged that reality is a bendable proposition that can hold more than what appears at first glance. And yet, witches struggle with empathy as much as the next person. Because it's HARD.

But empathy is also the most deeply human thing we can do. Empathy is the thing that is going to help us connect to each other in productive ways, and solve our problems more effectively. Contrary to what Elon Musk says, empathy isn't a problem to be solved. It's a tool to be cultivated. And the people who do it best are among the most emotionally and mentally strong humans I know. Because it takes mental and emotional discipline to drive towards real empathy instead of one of its cheap substitutes. It takes creativity and flexibility and courage because what you find when you embrace real empathy will challenge what you think you know about the world you are living in. You might find that a situation you thought you understood is actually very different when viewed from another perspective. You might find that the things you thought you were doing to help are actually hurting.

Empathy, contrary to the bleating of the manosphere, is not for "wimps" or people who are weak. It is for people who have a strong enough sense of themselves that they can embrace the idea that what they think they know might be wrong, and who are committed enough to their ideals to change what they are doing based on what they learn from being empathic with those around them.

Empathy is essential to creating a society where everyone can belong and everyone can thrive. That's why authoritarians hate it so much, and why you hear so many people who want to create hierarchical structures pooh-pooh it as unnecessary. Because if they can successfully kill off the capacity for empathy in our culture, they have a chance of succeeding. And if we remain committed to empathy, REAL empathy, the forces of democracy and justice and equality cannot lose.