Whenever I hear and share information about the multitude of human rights tragedies happening throughout the world, I often wonder why people don’t seem to care very much, if at all. As I strive to raise awareness of these social and political issues, rightly identifying their root causes is a logical next step on the path to an ultimate solution.
Two words that come to mind when I think of human suffering are sympathy and empathy, but what’s the difference between them?
Sympathy And Empathy Defined
Both words end in -pathy, which comes from the Greek pathos, which means “suffering, feeling, emotion.” The difference between the words, however, is found in the way we relate to these feelings regarding someone else’s circumstance.
The word sympathy, comes from the Greek sympatheia, which means “having a fellow feeling, affected by like feelings.” Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia, which denotes a “passion or state of emotions” from “within.” In fact, empathy is a term that originated in art appreciation, with the theory that the appreciation relies on the viewer’s ability to project his personality into the viewed object.
So, as we consider these etymologies as the basis for the definitions of sympathy (feel sorry for; feel pity for; feel bad for) and empathy (identify with or experience vicariously another’s thought, feeling, or attitude), we see that there is a significant difference in how the individual relates to the object of the sympathy or empathy.
With empathy, we actually co-experience the situation with the person, but with sympathy, we only feel sorry for them without stepping into their shoes.
Examples Of Sympathy Versus Empathy
When someone passes away, we often express our sympathy in the form of a greeting card or personal note to their family. Suppose that a co-worker’s father passed away and you are a person whose father is still living. How would you feel about the loss of your co-worker’s parent? Most people would at least feel some level of sympathy–feel sorry–for their co-worker’s loss. But, would you feel empathy–co-experience–the loss of the co-worker’s father? Would you voluntarily choose to subject yourself to the emotional pain of imagining how you would feel if you lost your father? This is exactly what you’d have to do in order to empathize with your co-worker.
Now, consider how the same senario might change (in terms of how you relate to your co-worker’s situation) if you lost your father before you learned of the death of your co-worker’s father. It would almost certainly bring back memories of your own loss. It’s easier for someone who’s been in that situation to empathize with someone they see in that scenario. Upon learning of the death of your co-worker’s father, you’d almost certainly co-experience the feelings a child has when they lose a parent. This is empathy.
It’s not to say that you cannot empathize with a person unless you have actually experienced the same thing, but rather that it takes a deliberate effort to empathize with a person when you haven’t actually experienced the situation yourself. Also, just like in the scenario above with the person who hasn’t lost a patent, there are reasons that we may deliberately avoid empathy in order to avoid the mental anguish that putting ourselves in their shoes might cause. Another reason we might avoid empathy is because we have a negative view of that individual, whether we know them or not.
For instance, what if the the previous scenario involved the the father of a stranger who was killed–perhaps the Palestinian father you heard about on the news? Do you have empathy for the children and family of this father? What about sympathy? Do you even have sympathy?
Whether we know a person and how we feel about them has everything to do with whether we choose to be sympathetic or empathetic toward them. Empathy requires an emotional sacrifice that we often refuse to pay for people of whom we either don’t approve or people we don’t want to place on our own level of humanity.
Why Sympathy Alone Is Not Enough
Now, let’s get back to peoples’ response to hearing about instances of human suffering. I submit that in many cases, it takes more than sympathy to call a person to action. All sympathy says is, “I feel bad about this or that,” but feeling bad alone isn’t enough.
People need to actually identify with the suffering person–they need to co-experience the situation, either through memory of a similar circumstance they endured or vicariously by putting themselves in the other person’s shoes. When we allow ourselves to imagine what the person is actually going through, we are more likely to do something in attempt to alleviate that suffering.
The Problem With Empathy
The problem with empathy is that it requires us to see ourselves as “those people”–as individuals equally as capable of meeting the same fate as the suffering person. We feel comfortable with sympathy because we can maintain our distance, setting ourselves apart from those experiencing suffering–we are not “those people.”
Our desire to be better than the suffering is a form of denial of our own circumstances. It is impossible for us to co-experience with the suffering AND be set apart from them at the same time. So instead, if anything, we are sympathetic, but that is rarely enough to move us to action.
The Case For Empathy
If we want to be “doers,” then we must take action. Exactly what action is up to us as individuals, but we must actually do something more than just feel sorry. As this issue specifically relates to social and political challenges people face, let’s challenge ourselves to move beyond our own hangups and be more empathetic toward those who need it most.
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