You destroy anything when you withdraw empathy from it. When you don’t care about anything you are on the path to destroying it. You destroy a country when there is no empathy for its institutions or cultures. When you withdraw empathy from a countries values and principles you can find it easy to destroy them. You destroy people when you don’t have any empathy for them. When you withdraw empathy from anyone or anybody it is easy to destroy them.
It has ever been the same formula throughout history. From the Ancient World to the Medieval World to the Industrial World and now to the Information World, destroy empathy for the things and people you hate and then you can destroy them.
What is empathy you ask? How is empathy different from sympathy and compassion and mercy? I won’t bore you with any dictionary definitions or twist your brain with some pure academic definitions. Here are my thoughts on what empathy is:
Empathy puts you in the other person’s shoes, heart, soul and mind. When you have true empathy for someone you stand inside them not beside them. Mercy, compassion and sympathy leave you outside the person. I feel sorry for you. I feel bad for you. I will give you something to make you feel better or to help you out. However, I do not feel the pain that you do when I simply have sympathy for you. My friend Jaine says that empathy is essential for mercy and compassion. I think she is right, but we must start with empathy. Without empathy, we are merely kind and thoughtful. We have empathy for one another when we become one with the other. Their heartache is our heartache. Their suffering is our suffering.
The other day while waiting for my wife to finish her Senior Fit class at the Casa Grande Community Center, I picked up the local newspaper. The Casa Grande Dispatch had an article about a new bill being proposed by the Republicans in the Arizona Senate. The bill SB-1268 would require hospitals to inquire whether or not the patient was here legally before providing healthcare treatment. Many empathetic people are concerned that it would deter people who needed treatment from getting it. The bill’s sponsor said that she does not care. “They should stay in their own countries if they want to have care”, said Wendy Rogers during a hearing on her legislation. What do you think Ms. Rogers would say if this was her mother or father or sister or brother? What if it was a friend or relative of yours? What would you say? Is Ms. Rogers one heart short of empathy? Do you think she ever read the inscription inside the Statue of Liberty? One stanza of the inscription therein states the following:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Why don’t we just knock down this wretched statue? It would appear that its message is no longer accepted or believed in by millions of Americans. I am sure Elon Musk would approve of its destruction. He could use Ellis Island as a new departure point for his Mars expedition. After all, here is what Musk had to say about empathy:
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
This lack of empathy seems to be a major theme running throughout the Republican Party.
I asked my wife’s pastor one day why he thought that so many conservative Christians wanted to post the Ten Commandments of Moses from the Old Testament in city halls all over the country, but I had never heard of one effort to post the Eight Beatitudes from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount any place. Would not Christians be more expected to support the words of Jesus than the words of Moses? His comment was that many conservative Christians felt the words of Jesus were kind of wimpy. Interesting that Jesus’s empathy for humanity is regarded as wimpy.
It had not been 12 hours since the new pope was elected before the so-called Christian Right was attacking him. Following in the footsteps of his predecessor Pope Francis, the new Pope Leo XIV would seem to be a human who had empathy for the poor and hungry and dispossessed.
Transcript: MAGA Fury Boils Over at New Pope’s “Anti-Trump” Views
“Leo is known to share some of the same priorities as Francis, particularly when it comes to the environment and outreach to migrants and the poor, according to The College of Cardinals Report, a resource created by a team of Vatican journalists.” Google AI
Read closely and you will see why Pope Leo XIV is anathema to Trump and his supporters.
- He would protect the environment
- He would protect immigrants
- He would protect the poor
Imagine a Christian who would dare have empathy for these people and the world.
Now if I seem biased and oblivious to the limitations of empathy, let me point out that throughout history, there have been many great leaders who have had little or no empathy for humanity. Some of the most notable people and notable categories are:
- Attila the Hun
- Genghis Khan
- Mussolini
- Stalin
- Hitler
- Most slave owners
- Climate change deniers
- Greedy billionaires
It certainly seems like you can go far in this world by substituting cruelty and greed for empathy and compassion. I will end this blog with the following thoughts on empathy:
“Our bodies have five senses: touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing. But not to be overlooked are the senses of our souls: intuition, peace, foresight, trust, empathy. The differences between people lie in their use of these senses; most people don’t know anything about the inner senses while a few people rely on them just as they rely on their physical senses, and in fact probably even more.” ― C. JoyBell C.
“Highly sensitive people are too often perceived as weaklings or damaged goods. To feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness, it is the trademark of the truly alive and compassionate. It is not the empath who is broken, it is society that has become dysfunctional and emotionally disabled.” ― Anthon St. Maarten
“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” ― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
“Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection – or compassionate action.” ― Daniel Golema
This Link leads to a thread on Facebook with some interesting quotes and comments on empathy in America today: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1125366842958078
Some Recent News Reports Showing a Complete Lack of Empathy for Humanity. If you have any please share in my comments and I will post as an addendum to this blog.
“DOGE Is Bringing Back a Deadly Disease”
Silicosis is typically caused by years of breathing in silica dust at work, and can worsen even after work exposures stop. In recent years, after decades of inaction, the federal government finally took several important steps to reduce the incidence of this ancient and debilitating disease. Under the Trump administration, all that progress is going away, in but one example of the widespread destruction now taking place across the federal government. —- The Atlantic,
Tennessee’s GOP leads the fight to deny public education to children without documents
The sponsors of the proposal have largely downplayed denying children the right to education, but instead have focused on the fiscal impact states are facing in educating children residing in the U.S. illegally. —– US News, AP
Aging Capriciously 
May 10, 2025 @ 09:06:25
Yes, your country under the current administration is utterly and totally without empathy, John. But you knew that already! Fascinating and disturbing reply from your wife’s pastor. Honest, I suppose, but how does that make someone a CHRISTian?!
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May 10, 2025 @ 09:41:52
Hi Jane, Congrats on your new PM. Looks like chump was helpful for your elections. I understand it was still pretty close. I like your capitalization of the word Christian. I think most of these right wing fundamentalists are what some call “cultural Christian.” Whatever that means, i really leaves the Christ out. Hope you are doing well and have a great summer. I am winding down my teaching. John
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May 10, 2025 @ 12:33:47
It leaves Christ out of it, all right. Yes, we’re very pleased with our election results, as are the Aussies. And, as a non-believer but serious humanist (woke!), I am very impressed with the new pope!
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May 10, 2025 @ 12:46:50
Me too. I liked Pope Francis a great deal. I read two of his books and all three of his encyclicals. Quite a remarkable human being. I hope this new Pope will follow in his shoes.
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May 10, 2025 @ 12:34:48
P.S. As someone of the same age, I am beyond impressed that you’ve continued teaching this long. Bravo!
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May 10, 2025 @ 12:45:43
Thanks Jane, I am only subbing in the local HS two days a week. I enjoy being with the kids and trying to make some difference in their lives.
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May 10, 2025 @ 10:08:43
Thanks for this John.
I like and agree with Daniel Goleman. There’s too much talk about ‘inner growth’ which turns out to be about “self”, “self”, “self” and more “self”. Look where it’s got us. We’re an extremely “SELFish” society!
I agree we need to be more empathic but to be honest with you I’m not sure it’s realistically achievable. Are we really able to “stand in someone else’s shoes”? I don’t think so. But it shouldn’t stop us from trying.
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May 10, 2025 @ 10:11:46
I think you are right Margaret about the difficulty. However, I have seen it done. Perhaps by people more sensitive than I ever will be but I have seen the effects and they are nothing short of the miraculous. I think if I could even get halfway there with some one it would be worth doing. I do better at charity and sympathy. John
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May 10, 2025 @ 12:33:38
The difficulty for me John is querying whether it’s possible to ‘completely’ “stand in someone else’s shoes”. I don’t think it’s possible due to the different genetics and psychological background. We may be able to get close – dependent on all sorts of variables – but apart from identical twin relationships how ?
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May 10, 2025 @ 12:51:28
My MS Counseling professor (Dr. Rimel) showed us it was possible by learning to see language as metaphors and then trying to link into our clients metaphors by some analogy that showed we really deeply understood what they were saying. I had a client in a lab who came in and when I asked her how she was feeling she said: “Like hanging myself.” I thought that sounded bad and simply reflected back what she was saying. I lost her but Professor Rimel stepped in and showed how it was done. She quickly established a report with the young woman after asking her “what does wanting to hang yourself feel like?” I had assumed I knew but really did not. They went on to develop more rapport and the young woman left feeling more confident and not suicidal.
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May 10, 2025 @ 12:57:30
Yes, I can identify with that John 👌
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May 10, 2025 @ 14:20:59
I once was feeling like I would never be able to establish rapport and empathy with my clients. I went to Dr. Rimel’s office to see her. I asked her how she was able to do it. She said “I was lucky. I had two parents who were very caring. I grew up feeling loved and confident.” She was a remarkable woman.
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May 10, 2025 @ 10:12:50
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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May 10, 2025 @ 10:14:19
Thank you Frank for taking the time to read my post. Readers are the opiate of my soul. John
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May 10, 2025 @ 19:40:50
Thank you once John for a thoughtful piece. I don’t believe your Country has lost its soul or meaning but certainly a large portion of the people have and unfortunately that is the part that makes news.
And I definitely don’t think this is new, it has been building for several generations but our current obsessions with wealth and self interest have made it worse.
So I think it is incumbent upon those of us who are not selfish to point it out and help to alleviate it when possible.
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May 10, 2025 @ 20:06:33
Thanks Wayne for a very thoughtful and insightful comment. I agree it is not new. We have been getting greedier and more and more amoral by the decades. I can only hope we can get enough people to see this and rebel against the brainwashing.
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May 10, 2025 @ 19:58:41
Thank you, John! It’s a cruel and scary world we live in.
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May 10, 2025 @ 20:04:21
Yes it is and getting crueler by the minute it would seem. Thank you for commenting. The more voices we have the better our chances will be of making it through this horror and helping others as well.
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May 10, 2025 @ 20:31:31
I pray to see the day. I wonder why this is happening? We were supposed to be going forward, not backward into the most base of times. 2025 and here we are. It’s mind-boggling.
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May 11, 2025 @ 07:16:26
You are right. It is beyond sad. It is tragic. I cannot understand why either. It defies everything I learned in life and school. I could only read about Hitler and his Brown Shirts but here we are with trump and his cohorts departing people without proper authorization and the courts are looking the other way. I told Karen, it is a slippery slope and we are on it and headed to concentration camps and perhaps worse unless we all speak up and stand up. IMHO. Thanks for your comments and sharing. John
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May 12, 2025 @ 14:25:23
I pondered that despicable statement made by Musk and went so far as to read his total comments made during his March interview this year with Joe Rogan.
There was no justification I could find that would explain why he made such a cruel comment, but then I thought it could very well be explained away by his spectrum of autism. Forgive me any and all who have a family or friend they love born with this affliction. I do not mean to categorize those who have this illness into a group of unsympathetic and un empathetic human beings, but it could be one explanation/excuse for this disgusting man’s actions.
Great blog and good for thought.
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May 15, 2025 @ 20:49:12
What an excellent post … I love your definition of empathy. We need so much more of it in the world today, not just here in the U.S. I don’t understand how anybody can be so cruel as to deny rights to people simply because of the colour of their skin or their country of origin or the language they speak. These days, I feel like an alien in my own country. Thank you for this wonderful post, John!
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May 22, 2025 @ 12:07:42
John, I really liked your essay on empathy. And especially how you differentiate it from sympathy and compassion. The Buddhist literature I’ve read focuses a lot on compassion, not so much on empathy, and now I wonder why, since compassion maintains duality, whereas empathy erased it. Anyhow, thanks.
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May 23, 2025 @ 21:25:26
Thanks Dennis. I appreciate your comments. Always nice to see someone take the time to comment. I asked ChatGPT how she/he/it defines the difference between empathy and sympathy. Here is what she said:
Empathy
Definition: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another person.
Perspective: Involves putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, imagining their experience from their point of view.
Emotional Connection: Creates a deeper emotional bond because you’re feeling with the person.
Response: Often sounds like, “That sounds incredibly hard. I can imagine how painful that must be.”
Sympathy
Definition: The feeling of care or concern for someone, often with a sense of pity.
Perspective: You acknowledge their suffering but remain more emotionally distant.
Emotional Connection: Less personal; you’re observing their pain rather than entering into it.
Response: Might sound like, “I’m sorry you’re going through that.”
In Practice
Imagine a friend loses a loved one:
Empathy: You sit with them, listen, and might say, “I can’t imagine your pain, but I’m here with you.”
Sympathy: You might send a card or say, “I’m so sorry for your loss,” and then keep some emotional distance.
Empathy tends to foster deeper connection, while sympathy can unintentionally create a divide, even if well-meaning.
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