Love, Intellect, & Higher Order Empathy
The skills we need to teach if we want greater equity and justice.
Many of our most revered social change leaders throughout history — those who have truly moved the needle toward greater equity and justice — have shared a unique capacity for “higher order empathy.” In this age of deep political and cultural division in America, understanding this capacity and working to develop it in ourselves could be the most important contribution we can each make to creating a more equitable, just, and sustainable world.
Empathy is a familiar concept to most. It’s that feeling of seeing someone who is hurting and relating to their pain. As humans, we’re either born with this capacity, or we receive a clinical diagnosis. While this empathy is helpful, it is seriously limited as a tool for social change when we don’t develop it. Seeing someone who has been hurt or oppressed by another often leaves one feeling distrust, anger, or even vengeful toward the perpetrator. While our empathy toward the injured may be an expression of love, it can also trigger feelings of hate.
Higher order empathy is something different. It is a commitment to loving the victim and the perpetrator, the oppressed and the oppressor. A person with higher order empathy considers it part of their duty to create a pathway for the offender to become a productive part of the community they are harming. This is the empathy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. referenced when he called upon civil rights workers to love their enemies. This is the end of the empathy scale that is incredibly difficult to master. The work begins by understanding higher order empathy’s two main components: Love and Intellect.
Love as Empathy
Dr. King spoke and wrote eloquently about love and intellect. In his 1957 sermon “The Power of Non-Violence,” Dr. King explained that ancient Greek philosophers had three forms of love, but that agape love was the form essential for those working to advance equity and justice.
We often refer to agape love as “empathy.” However, Dr. King defines a true commitment to empathy as a love for everyone — those who are oppressed and those who oppress. This framing of empathy requires us to recognize evil acts, but does not allow anyone to be seen as evil. It requires us to find love for all and have faith that all are capable of that same love. In equity and justice work, this means all stakeholders must be seen as essential partners for any solution, regardless of any previous or current acts.
One assumption that is essential to this kind of commitment to empathy is that everyone is capable of and wants to be loving toward others. Another essential assumption is that those who are violent or oppressive toward others do so because either they operate from a position of trauma that has thwarted their instinct to love, or because they are willfully ignorant to the harm they are causing others.
There is ample scholarship about the impact trauma has upon an individual, a community, and even a whole society’s ability to be loving to oneself and others. But, what is too often left undiscussed is the incredibly common condition of willful ignorance as a barrier to loving empathy.
Honest, Humble, and Determined Intellect
In Dr. King’s 1947 article “The Purpose of Education,” he shared reflections on the importance of intellect. To Dr. King, the development of intellect is not about identifying winning arguments or making a case for one’s side. It’s about pursuing truth.
The capacities necessary for success in wielding one’s intellect for the greater good are fairly simple. It requires honesty that does not ignore or rationalize difficult truths. It requires humility that admits a lack of knowledge and limited perspective. It requires determination to pursue truth with the purpose of empowering all rather than a few. This means giving equal value to the needs of each stakeholder. This means treating everyone as authentic sources of knowledge and truth. This means giving up positions of social, cultural, and political power that prevent the realization of truth.
But, as easy as it is to rationally understand the capacities necessary for such a powerful intellect, it’s difficult to name examples of it. And, that shouldn’t be a surprise given that our schools don’t actively develop these capacities in learners. As students, we’re rewarded when we find the “right” answer, as defined by the teacher or textbook, regardless of the dynamic, complex, and messy reality of our world. We’re graded on our ability to make a cogent argument or identify correct answers, not on our ability to identify meaningful questions and acknowledge the limits of our current thinking. We’re taught to compete for the highest grade in the class, the best standardized test score, and a spot in the most elite universities. Our education system actively develops the antitheses of the capacities we need for a great intellect that pursues truth honestly, humbly, and with determination. Instead, we’ve developed the capacities for willful ignorance.
Higher Order Empathy
Though they didn’t use the phrase “higher order empathy,” Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Dr. King all ascribed to the belief that this is an essential component of effective leadership toward equity and justice. Each wrote extensively about the importance of finding love for their oppressors. Each developed their intellectual capacities extensively. Perhaps most importantly, they each shaped their vision as social change leaders by naming and grappling with the inherent tension between love and intellect. Wrestling with this tension is the context in which much of the work for higher order empathy lives.
Love as empathy has the capacity to turn us into advocates — we relate deeply with the victim and feel compelled to protect them from or pursue accountability for the perpetrator. This can make us blind to the truths of the perpetrator and less willing to find love for them.
Intellect can lead us to find a rational understanding for each person’s actions, boiling events and relationships down to data points and causal chains of events. While this can be helpful in seeing many details and perspectives, it also runs the risk of dehumanizing all involved. Intellect left unchecked by love can lead to an interpretation of people, emotions, and humanity that is devoid of meaning, spirit, or faith.
The work of higher order empathy is in wrestling with this tension between love turning us into advocates who are blind to the truths of all but the victims, and intellect making us hyper rationalized thinkers blind to the dynamic joy, beauty, and tragedy of the human experience. It’s the space in which we work to reach across the societally imposed barriers of race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and an unending number of othering devices to see each person as fully human, deserving of love though capable of violence and oppression. It’s also the space in which we work to see ourselves as deserving of love though capable of violence and oppression.
When we actively develop the capacity for higher order empathy in ourselves and others, we build the ability to see our most divisive political and cultural battles in society as being waged by people just like us. We start to see that the truths and values we share as humans can provide a solid foundation upon which we can work to address our differences.
