The Problem With Empathy
Why Empathy Doesn’t Make Sense
Throughout history, we’ve had issues defining certain words. For example, in the era of Socrates, we had problems defining what justice is.
We weren’t able to pinpoint exactly what is just and unjust, and from here came Socrates’ “Republic” as an attempt to try and give an answer to this dilemma.
And despite us today having countless numbers of dictionaries that give us defintions of just about every word in existence, we have to remember that these definitions are just a consensus, and not the actual precise defintions of these concepts.
These defintions that dictionaries offer aren’t perfect and sometimes we find certain words or things that don’t exactly match their definition.
One example of this is the platypus, which is considered as a mammal. Now, everyone knows mammals dont lay eggs, but guess who does and is also a mammal (the platypus).
Let’s make this more abstract so that I’m able to explain the issue with empathy. If someone asks you “what is love for you?”, you would probably think of all the moments you felt in love throughout your life.
But there’s a small issue here, this issue is called the “human experience”, we all experience things in different ways, this includes love as well, and despite us understanding what that person meant when they asked about love, everyone experiences it in their own way.
However, when we think of love, we think of it through the lens of our OWN experience of it, not that of the person asking.
So, when someone tells you “I am in love”, you think to yourself “Oh they’re probably feeling the way I felt when I was in love”, which is innacurate because that person is feeling something different since they had a different experience of love.
The same thing happens with every other emotion like pain, sadness and even empathy. Taking into consideration what we said about definitions and the human experience, how can we say that we can be empathetic, that we feel what the other person is feeling when each human experience is unique.
Which is why I think that when someone vents to you, you shouldn’t say “I know how you feel” but rather “I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now” or something along these lines.
