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I had a *lively discussion* with my wife today about empathy and compassion where she thinks empathy is an important trait to possess and I strongly disagree as to its importance. In fact, I would go as far as question whether empathy is a positive trait at all.

Well, *not positive* might be too harsh but at the very best in my mind, empathy falls short of where it needs to be to be useful. And at the worst is actually harmful.

My reasoning is that empathy is an emotional state that attempts to take the perspective or the same feeling as another person. Those that claim to be empathetic work under a very large assumption and that is, that they know another's perspective and how they actually feel.

I have always questioned an individual's ability to truly understand the position of another as even similar people with similar experiences can have completely different world views on a host of important factors. This means that their empathetic position is not based on the reality of the other persona's experience, because it can't be.

This plays out in many circumstances as people rightly claim that someone cannot understand because they haven't lived in the same skin. Empathy is the imagination saying 'I know how they feel' when that is an impossibility based on the experience of the one empathising and has no connection whatsoever to the person feeling it, other than them being a trigger mechanism for an emotional response.

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But, the worst part of empathy is that at it's best, it mimics well and that puts both people into the same emotional state of affairs. If one is in the gutter, now there are two. Empathy does not require action and more than likely may hinder it instead as it draws two people into the same poor frame.

Again from my view, compassion is the better state to take as it is an active feeling which means that from a compassionate position, action is required. Yes, one may feel some emotional mirroring of another but I don't think that it is even necessary to still act.

Being compassionate means to be able to recognise that someone is in a vulnerable position and then take the step to help them out of it. This need not require an emotion at all, just the recognition and the value systems required to help.

From my thinking, this circumvents the requirement to be able to be in their shoes or have any understanding of why they feel that way in the beginning at all. From a position of compassion, a rational approach to solving whatever problems there may be can be taken without even having the heartbeat raised, although that is likely quite rare.

People seem to be continually subscribing to the frame that without empathy people won't help but I think that this in itself is causing a lot of conflict and suffering. It means that people in need are unable to get or accept the support of others because the helper can't 'possibly understand' how they feel.

This is another flawed position. One does not need to understand how a person feels in order to help them out of a predicament. One can facilitate the experience of another without having to be in the same group or from the same background. One can discuss possible solutions and problems facing various people or groups without actually needing to be from that group.

The issue I keep seeing reverberated off every social platform and social wall is that people act from emotional positions without having the sensitivity to actually look at the issues themselves. When people do try to approach issues, they are shouted down if they do not come from the same group as they cannot empathize with the problems.

If I am in a bad way, if I am in trouble and need help, I don't want someone to sit in the gutter with me and cry, I want someone that will be activated enough to actually lend me a hand. Empathy in my opinion is the way to make it feel like one is doing something without actually having to do something. Compassion on the other hand is the active way to help without actually needing to feel an emotional connection.

This means the compassionate person is able to help anyone they recognise as suffering rather than just the people who they think are similar enough to themselves that they *feel* they can emotionally bond with. In my view of the difference between empathy and compassion is that one is practiced, the other felt.

The smallest act of assistance to someone in need always beats even the most perfect mirroring of their emotional state.

Taraz
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