What is Empathy? How Can We Get More Of It?

Question

With today being 9/11, I always think of empathy. I wonder where it went that morning and how people could have done something like that to other people. As a result, I wrote my English Lit dissertation on this subject because I needed to make some kind of sense of what happened that morning here in NY and Va and Pa. I wrote a 47 page dissertation and I still don't have the answer. What is it? Where did it go that morning? How do we get more? Pax - C

Answer 1

I am going to do something a little bit diifferent than some of the others who gave answers, no offense but you can look a word up in the dictionary so I don't think that is eactly what you are seeking.

Empathy as many wrote is a feeling. This overwhelming feeling inside of your head, your heart and soul requires that the person feeling it have actually expereinced an event so similiar to the person now experiencing an event that triigers the emotion that it is as if you are inside their shoes, you empathize with them because of your own life experiences have caused you to feel the same or extremely similiar emotion whether it be pain, sadness, hurt, rejection, fear, anxiety, hatred etc.

Since no two expereinces in life are ever the same it is difficult for people to truly understand what another is feeling. For example when a friend or co-worker has a close family member who dies, people natually tend to say "Oh I am so sorry, I know what you are going through" While people mean well this is not the thing to say, because NO< you do not know what that person is going through because even if you too lost your gandmother, husband etc. your circumstances will have been in some and many ways very different. No two people experience the same emotion when someone dies. Both you and your co-worker may have lost your husbands, however before making that statement make sure you know all the facts, which undoubetly you will not. Co-worker may be 41 years old and you do not know her on a social level. You may be 41 aw well so you naturally assume that you both lost a young husband, when in fact co-worker's hsband may have been 29 years of age, may have been murdered while his four small girls all ages 6 and under watched from a hidden spot under the table. His life insuance may have lapsed the day before and left her destitute and to top it off she disovered he was being unfaithful to her as it was his mistress who killed him when he broke it off because he loved his family too much. You on the other hand may have lost your 60 year old husband, have no children, his death was tragic, but expected and almost welcomed as he had suffered from cancer for the past three years. He may have left you a finacial windfall.

We sympathize with someone when feel an emotional surge within because what the other person is expereincing is something that causes most or normal people to feel. It is a feeling. I sympathize with the family whose house burned to the ground. I feel terrible realizing they lost everything, it MUST BE HORRIBLE I THINK

that is the key to the difference between empathy and sympathy : IF YOU FIND YOURSELF THINKING TO YOURSELF OR SAYING OUTLOUD , OG GOD THAT MUST BE TERRIBLE OR OH MY SHE MUST HAVE BEEN SO SCARED, "MUST HAVE BEEN" YOU can almost feel it but you do not actually feel it because it is an emotion your mind has never stored in your memory becasue oyu have only heard about, read about it, seen it on the televison. Your brain cannot store in its memory a feeling you have not truly felt.

I had two children die, two of my triplet girls and my surving girl is deaf from the antibioticcs necessary to sustain her life. Almost everyone I meet sympathizes with me and on rare occasion some truly empathize with me becasue they have lsot children. The death of a child is so different than the death of any other family member. we expect to bury our parents not our children, our spouses may die and peopel do recover so some degree, they can fall in love again and marry again, but nothing compares to the death of a child and only someone who has burried one can empathize.

You either have it or you do not. Some people are by nautre more compassionate than others so they feel things more intensly and more deeply, they feel other peoples suffereing, pain and agony in their heart. Some have it but are less compassionate, they feel bad for others but it effects them for about an hour or less and then it is forgot

Thiose who do not have it at all are why i sociopaths. they have not consious, that is why we can NEVER win the war on terrorism, think about it. We are at war with people whose hatred for us is MORE, RUNS DEEPER THAN THEIR LOVE FOR THEIR OWN CHILDREN. THEY HATE US SO MUCH THEY ARE WILLING TO KILL THEIR OWN CHILDRE IN SUICIDE BOMBING ETC

All we can do is be goot to all of mankind, pray and offer to help others and teach our children compassion from the day they are born

good question, i wish there was a better answer, it is a sad but true fact

Answer 2

Empathy is the ability to share what another person is feeling. It comes from experience.

While its true that it was a horrid event - there is no empathy for the terrorists. NOW PLEASE DO NOT BRAND ME A FOOL OR A TERRORIST. Why did they do it? What torture did they go through to warrant (in their minds) such a reprisal against America?

Having lived in the middle east I have an empathy for these folks that most Americans do not have. I DO NOT CONDONE WHAT THEY DID. But they are fundamental people who believe that GOD intervenes into their daily lives. They do not have the experience of: the enlightenment; the Protestant Reformation; the Magna Carta; 500 years of liberty/freedom. They are one step from where westerners were 1200 years ago - and have been thrust into the 21 century and are being told by Hillary that their women should take off their veils and by Rosie that they can be lesbians and by every other left-wing nut that their way of life is stupid and "you need to be like us." They don't care about oil or money or any of the things we think they care about - its their way of life that's in jeopardy.

This does not, in our eyes, give anyone the right to kill innocents. They see it differently. America (westernization) is attacking them, so they attack us. It ain't right - but if you want empathy it needs to cut both ways.

Answer 3

Islam my dear is not a particularly empathic religion unless you are Muslim, and sometimes not even then.

The answer to "Where did the empathy go?" is that it was never there to begin with.

The WTC was attacked because Osama bin Laden was angry because he felt American GIs, while defending Saudi Arabia from Hussein, had defiled sacred Muslim soil, by putting their unholy infidel boots on it.

Americans had to die, because the people we sent to defend Saudi Arabia weren't Muslim.

There isn't 47 pages here. You can buy a burka or support the men trying to kill sick bastards like Osama.

You can only get more empathy by refusing to tolerate those who have none.

Answer 4

I think that empathy (as opposed to sympathy) requires an element of having been through the same thing. On that basis, I'm not sure (on my understanding at least) that it's necessarily something that is tied to the events of 9/11. Except perhaps from the perspective that those who supported and perpetrated the terrorist acts that day do not appear to have placed any particular emphasis on the ways that terrorism and global politics affects civilians in their own societies.
I think what went missing that morning (and what is in fact missing in most acts of terrorism) is any feeling of humanity (as encapsulated in the greek concept of Agape) for the huge number of individuals whose lives are devastated either directly or indirectly by what are really just symbolic acts against society as a whole.

Answer 5

Contrary to popular belief, empathy is understanding another person's difficulties and feelings, and the reasons for those feelings, and feeling compassion or deep care for that person in connection with those difficulties and feelings and the reasons for them. It does not involve sympathy. So, what's sympathy?

Sympathy, on the other hand, involves actually experiencing the emotional part along with the other person -- SYMPATHETICALLY. That is similar to when you yourself might have a pain in your foot, and you get a sympathetic pain in your other foot. It is not the original pain. It appears sympathetically. It rises to meet the occasion, so to speak. Like the sympathetic nervous system. That is not empathy; it is sympathy.

1. Learn and perform the attention-heart-breathing-gratitude technique you'll find talked about at heartmath.com, and
2. Experience many facets of life.

This is not a philosophy question.

Answer 6

Empathy is feeling what another person feels, whether it is pain or sorrow. It is not something you can acquire. You either have it or you don't.

I just checked my dictionary, and it has an excellent description: The projection of one's own personality into the personality of another in order to understand the person better; ability to share in another's emotions, thoughts or feelings.

I think on that day in 2001, a rare thing happened; I believe millions of people had empathy with the families of those who were lost that day.

I think that since then, we have put those feelings on the back burner and turned to other things. I can't help but believe that thousands of people have allowed the memory of those events to diminish until they have become insignificant in their minds.

Answer 7

Empathy and sympathy were two different subjects. Sympathy is to feel sorry for someone. Empathy, on the other hand, is beyond sympathy. It goes with piece of mind. Empathy is to put yourself to somebody else's place to feel what that person's feeling. Do I make myself clear?

Answer 8

Sympathy is, "i comprehend the way you experience." Empathy is, "i've got confidence the way you experience." the two sympathy and empathy are important. yet of the two, empathy is truthfully greater important the incorrect we do to others and what we go through are weighed in any different case. Empathy on my own is a important characteristic of a incredible character. those with empathy ask themselves this question: "How could i've got confidence if somebody taken care of me that way?" study here A boy went to the puppy keep to purchase a domestic dog. 4 of them have been sitting jointly, priced at $50 each and every. Then there grow to be one sitting on my own in a corner. The boy asked if that grow to be from the comparable muddle, if it grow to be on the marketplace, and why it grow to be sitting on my own. the keep proprietor spoke back that it grow to be from the comparable muddle, it grow to be a deformed one, and not on the marketplace. The boy asked what the deformity grow to be. the keep proprietor spoke back that the domestic dog grow to be born devoid of hip socket and had a leg lacking. The boy asked, "what's going to you do with this one?" the respond grow to be it may be positioned to sleep. The boy asked if he ought to play with that domestic dog. the keep proprietor mentioned, "specific." The boy picked the domestic dog up and the domestic dog licked him on the ear. straight away the boy desperate that grow to be the domestic dog he had to purchase. the keep proprietor mentioned "that's no longer on the marketplace!" The boy insisted. the keep proprietor agreed. The boy pulled out $2 from his pocket and ran to get $40 8 from his mom. As he reached the door the keep proprietor shouted after him, "i don't comprehend why you may pay finished funds for this one once you need to purchase a solid one for the comparable cost." The boy did no longer say a be conscious. He in simple terms lifted his left trouser leg and he grow to be wearing a brace. The puppy keep proprietor mentioned, "I comprehend. pass forward, take this one." it fairly is empathy.

Answer 9

'Empathy, true empathy is the ability to experience the feelings of another. It is a difficult and often painful ability to have.

To develop empathetic understanding is the skill of putting yourself into another's place and imagining how they feel about a situation...or how you would feel in their place.

Either way the drive to achieve this understanding is, as you say, distant at best these days. Possibly we need to arrange to teach it?

Answer 10

Try to get inside their twisted, deeply resentful, devastated inner-child mind for a sec...

The enraged fire-ants have a lot of hatred, and very little empathy for the Giant they wrongly perceive is smashing them into the ground with his gargantuan feet...

So their evil adult minds found a face-less, fictional enemy to suicide swarm all over...albeit...for a brief moment...and for little gain except...

To end their hate-filled existence with a bang...

I don't empathize with them...or sympathize...in fact...it's difficult for me not to hate their kind...(but it's hard to hate the dead)

But I know how they got so twisted up inside...

Their existence sucked...and they needed something to blame it on...and to them...

The U.S. was perfect for that...