Taking Stock of Empathy

Today I am thinking about empathy, the ability to see the world through the eyes of another person, to understand the world as they understand it and to feel what they feel. 

Each of us differs in our basic ability to empathise with others, and once again

it comes back to the way our brains are wired.  Recent findings in neuropsychology have found particular brain cells called mirror neurons which fire when we see reactions in others, so that we experience what we think they are experiencing.  We share their experience.  We empathise.

When we get caught up in a story, our mirror neurons are firing as we share the plights and joys of fictional characters.  We reach out to our loved ones in need because we understand their distress and want to lend them comfort.  We feel joy when we celebrate our loved ones’ successes.  We do this to a greater or lesser extent dependent upon our biology.

To whatever level is available to us, we tend to focus our empathy on those who touch our lives most closely, our nearest and dearest.

When people are distant from our own lives it is harder to empathise.  When we hear stories about people en masse it is much harder. We may or may not be moved by stories of individual hardship, courage or joy.  But when a population are involved it is harder to see the humanity involved.  It is too big for us to feel.  We fear being overwhelmed.

At some point we switch between seeing people as people, as individuals, and start to see people as a mass of humanity and our empathy switches off, our mirror neurons cease firing.  Our perception flips between seeing two faces and seeing the vase. When do we flip into objectivising people?  When we see others as a ‘them’? When we label people by their nationality, religion, when we describe our customers as ‘the market’, then we find it difficult to summon up empathy, to tune into their humanity, to feel their lives.

Are we fixed and limited in our empathy?  Is it possible/desirable to extend the boundaries of our compassion?  Or do we feel that we will be diminished in some way, that if we give more we will have less ourselves? 

Or is it entirely the opposite?  In the words of the Dalai Lama, ‘The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes’.

Is it in fact a win-win after all?