Empathy – What makes it right and what makes it righteous?

Definitions:

• Empathy:

“The ability to understand and share the feelings and actions of another.”

• Right versus Righteous

"Right" generally means correct or just in a broad sense, while "righteous" emphasises moral correctness and alignment with a higher standard, often religious or ethical. Rightness focuses on actions being suitable or proper, whereas righteousness implies a moral character or disposition.”

The effects of empathy
Empathy is widely considered a positive human trait. However, whilst it leads to tolerance, social support and acceptance, it can have negative side effects too. It can foster stronger relationships, promote pro-social behaviour, and enhance well-being, but it can also lead to emotional stress, anxiety, and even aggression when taken to extremes.

The biology of empathy
Our brains have the ability to feel emphatic to others by copying emotional responses of others via so-called mirror neurons. That is the reason why we have to laugh when somebody else is laughing without even knowing why they do so. It is “infectious”. Same applies to crying (as many sentimental movies can prove to us) or fear responses, when we witness scary scenarios. A startle response of people in my vicinity make me startle too etc. In order to connect with others to make a supporting social group, evolution has favoured those genetics which allow us to copy and feel the emotions of others. Psychologist know of “theory of mind”, the ability to know what others feel, think, desire, experienced and expect. It is a system of heightened social inferencing.

Factors influences empathy
Lack of empathy is well documented in narcissists and sociopath. This can have many reasons, including genetical and lack of nurturing habits of empathy.

Social standards of individual resilience and hardiness, which change throughout time and culture, also play a role. The expectations of physical protection of individuals to enhance safety, for example, has changed dramatically over the last two generations. Children are now barely allowed to engage in physically risk-taking play, compare with those before us. This is not a sign that parents of previous generations had less empathy for their children. The threshold what is considered harm simply has changed.

Righteousness
Righteous people with a true emphatic, altruistic mind are of course wonderful people. They carry, rightly though, a badge of good, social or moral superiority. Displaying empathy will give the righteous person its positive reputation, which will be socially beneficial, if used well. Righteousness therefore is never entirely altruistic, but serves in the best of cases, both the sender and the receiver of emphatic actions.

However, we may want to discuss what makes a person truly emphatic or righteous. Generally speaking, acts of empathy like support, tolerance and understanding require a sacrifice on behalf of the righteous. This means that time, effort and economical goods may need to be shared. In our times it is, however, easy to appear righteous simply by sharing so-called prosocial and tolerant views and ideas. It has become a hallmark of our age that social media provide the platform for our ethical identities, which come to no cost or sacrifice at all. With other words, it has become cheap to appear righteous.

Righteousness and politics
Political agendas, as common in our time, seem to operate on the same “cheap” level. The benefits of appearing as a good leader, by demonstrating high levels of co-called empathy for one part of the population but not necessarily for all, seems to be the ticket into high political offices. It also allows for open doors into ever increasing laws and regulations, which officially only are motivated by the emphatic act of protecting the citizen, often from themselves.

Critique on empathy going too far
The American Psychologist Dr. G. Saad writes in his upcoming book “Suicidal Empathy” about the many negative effects of empathy when going too far. The Woke Culture seemed to lean heavily on “cheap empathy”, asking for a lot of sacrifice and change mostly from others, including those so-called working classes they seem to intellectually despise. We may want to discuss this.

So, let’s discuss:

• Who deserves empathy and who does not?
• Should actions motivated by empathy be altruistic and hence costly?
• Can empathy become exploited?
• The so-called self-inflicted harm and misfortune, a matter of ‘free will’ or simply empathy deserving bad luck?
• The many positive and negative influences of empathy.
• Tolerance versus empathy, is one possible without the other?