Monday, March 18, 2019

On Empathy

According to my availability heuristic, empathy might have the most skewed ratio of concepts evoked to concepts put into practice out of any abstract concept I can think of.

It's a confusing concept to me for more than one reason. For example Brene Brown a public thinker I respect defines empathy vs sympathy as Sympathy is seeing someone down a dark hole and saying 'oh you're down a dark hole, that's not good I feel bad for you.' and empathy is seeing someone down a dark hole and climbing down and sitting there with them and saying 'I'm here with you.'

By contrast Brett Weinstein another thinker I respect defines sympathy as 'empathy + alignment.' which is to say not only do you feel what they feel but you agree with their disposition to those feelings. Brett can speak for himself and much better than I can speak for him, as is true of Brene Brown and conveniently her definitions were perfectly extracted and animated here.

The etymology of sympathy is from the Greek word 'syn' together and 'pathos' feeling so literally 'feel-together' but apparently becomes 'fellow-feeling' and Wikipedia says this:

is the perception, understanding, and reaction to the distress or need of another life form.[1] This empathic concern is driven by a switch in viewpoint, from a personal perspective to the perspective of another group or individual who is in need. David Hume explained that this is the case because "the minds of all men are similar in their feelings and operations" and that "the motion of one communicates itself to the rest" so that as affectations readily pass from one to another, they beget corresponding movements.
Curiously, the wikipedia page on Sympathy has at the top of it's page 'not to be confused with Empathy' and the Empathy page similarly has 'not to be confused with Sympathy' which is precisely the state I find myself in, so way to empathize Wikipedia... or sympathize?
The English word empathy is derived from the Ancient Greek word εμπάθεια (empatheia, meaning "physical affection or passion"). This, in turn, comes from εν (en, "in, at") and πάθος (pathos, "passion" or "suffering").[3] The term was adapted by Hermann Lotze and Robert Vischer to create the German word Einfühlung ("feeling into"), which was translated by Edward B. Titchener into the English term empathy.[4][5][6] However, in modern Greek, εμπάθεια means "malice", "hostility".
Alexithymia is a word used to describe a deficiency in understanding, processing or describing emotions in oneself as opposed to in others.[7] This term comes from the combination of two Ancient Greek words: ἀλέξω (alekso, meaning "push away, repel, or protect") and θυμός (thymos, meaning "the soul, as the seat of emotion, feeling and thought"). Thus alexithymia literally means "pushing away your emotions".
I found all the above interesting, and Alexithymia is a useful concept and further reason to push away all my friends called Alex. But I feel in my lifetime empathy is actually a fairly recent meme in the common parlance, I feel like I remember a time where sympathy was thought of as good and sufficient and nuance was added later, possibly around the time Daniel Goleman first published 'Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ' which was around 1995, I was in my last year of primary school and a lot of my friends were being born that year.

And like many shiny new concepts it was ripped out of the box and nobody bothered to read the instruction manual and hence probably use 10% or less of it's functionality.

And because I'm trying not rehash other people's good arguments but I would sincerely recommend anyone prone to calling for more empathy to consider a thoughtful counterargument specifically Developmental Psychologist Paul Bloom's against empathy: the case for rational compassion.

To further complicate matters empathy comes in three flavors, affective, cognitive and somatic. Affective is the kind that changes our affect, feeling anothers distress, or stress, or anger, or calmness. You get the idea, hopefully, and hopefully can see how depending on context this is a double edged sword.

"Affective and cognitive empathy are also independent from one another; someone who strongly empathizes emotionally is not necessarily good in understanding another's perspective."

Cognitive empathy is perspective taking. I understand it to be the 'There but for the Grace of God goes John Bamford.' kind of empathy.
The pious Martyr Bradford, when he saw a poor criminal led to execution, exclaimed, "there, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford". He knew that the same evil principles were in his own heart which had brought the criminal to that shameful end.
It's this empathy I feel or suspect is what people think they are calling on us to practice. To find common ground and break bread with people we feel we hate, to stop living in our little bubbles, and consider not what separates us but what brings us together.

Obvious examples is men taking the perspective of a woman in this world, where you'd feel safe, not having the physical power to stop someone's advances, having your messages filled with a constant torrent of 'sup?' from unimaginative guys. Having panels of people that don't resemble you decide what is best for you with little to no consultation. Getting a constant cacophony of feedback on all the ways you are inadequate.

For white people to take the perspective of people of color, what it's like to be constantly questioned where you're from. To be stereotyped by your beliefs and customs and culture. To be singled out for harassment, or treated with suspicion. To have people talk to you slowly or feel the discomfort and self censure of friends at social events. To have to consume entertainment where nobody resembles you, or the people that do never play any role of import, or create expectations of your own behavior that you don't wish to live up to.

For straight people to take the perspective of queer people. To spend time imagining what it is like to have second class legal status. To feel rejected or abandoned by your own family. To hear your orientation employed as a term for when things are uncool or crappy. To fear for your safety when you express yourself. To have your culture mocked and ridiculed in media. To see people on the news attacked for acting out the very form of love you feel. To see heads of state and theocratic demogogues condemn you for who you are. To be dragged by parents in front of professionals to attempt to 'cure' your deviant behavior.

For able bodied people to take the perspective of someone differently abled. The disappointment of turning up to a venue or concert only to discover it isn't accessible to you despite advertising. To have to speak up at everybody and have them talk down to you because there's no way to elevate your eye level in a wheelchair. To be treated as though you are stupid, because you are deaf and unable to speak, or excluded from the invite list to concerts or dance raves because your friends assume there's no point because of your hearing impairment. To be mocked and jeered at or even innocently pointed out by children wherever you go.

While it's true that few people bother to do this exercise in cognitive empathy. I would describe these as the easy exercises in empathy. Because by Brett Weinstein's definition, you can empathise without fearing that you may actually align, it's easy to align and identify and express solidarity with the oppressed and downtrodden, and I don't mean easy in a bad way either. It's a good, valuable exercise.

Having said that, I feel that most people would clue in that it's unwise to just walk up to a person in a wheelchair and say 'hey, just wanted to let you know, I know what it's like to be you.' I predict this would be regarded as obnoxious and insensitive.

Which highlights another complication with empathy, how do you know if you are empathizing or just projecting? And I may be technically using psychological projecting incorrectly here. What I have in my lifetime observed is a phenomena where a person believes themselves to be highly empathetic when in practice what they describe appears to be an assumption that the people they are 'empathizing' with think just like they do. I was in a priviliged position to detect it, because they were divulging their experience of what it is like to be me, and it sounded a lot more like what it was like to be them. (I just found out this is called the 'false-consensus effect'.

And it's been a while since I've cited any Musashi Miyamoto but here is some pearls from my Thomas Cleary translation of the Book of 5 Rings, the Fire Scroll under the sub heading 'Becoming the Opponent'

As I see the world, if a burglar holes up in a house, he is considered a powerful opponent. From his point of view, however, the whole world is against him; he is holed up in a helpless situation.

That's as clear a demonstration of the value of cognitive empathy as I could imagine. 'Becoming your opponent' brings us to our next degree of difficulty.

Consider this:

factor 16x^4 - 1

Some people despite my terrible notation, will know exactly what they are looking at and know how to factor it out. I'm not one of those people but I used to sit in classes with them and their ability to recognize a difference of two squares was like a fucking magic trick to me. It still is, largely because I've neglected mathematics since high school. But most of us if asked 6 = 2x -3 can go okay so 2x = 9 therefore x = 4.5

If the latter 'solve for x' is the relatively easy task of empathizing with the sympathetic, then the former represents (for me at least) the difficult task of empathizing with the unsympathetic.

Take for example the task faced by a White Supremacist having to find common ground, common humanity with a Muslim or Jew? I'm neither of these three things so on one hand it makes it a far more difficult, speculative task but also at my remove perhaps easier. But let me try, the White Supremacist might take the perspective, these people predominantly just want to go about their lives. They love their families, they value their communities and look out for each other. They feel they've inherited a tradition and identity to be proud of and that has value, they probably also look to history both recent and ancient and fear persecution and perceive threats constantly to their place in society. They have the courage and conviction of their beliefs to proudly and defiantly practice them out in the open despite criticism and condemnation.

The idea being that one could no longer be a White 'Supremacist' once they actually consider that 'there but for the grace of God go I.' Or basically see the world through the eyes of someone they fear and revile and actually contemplate or entertain how they could be them.

The opposite of this cognitive empathy or rational compassion, I presume is tribalism, given away by double standards. For example when the Republican controlled whatever refused to hear a confirmation of Obama's chosen Supreme Court nominee to replace Anthony Scalia or whatever sighting that the election should be used as a referendum on who the American People wanted on their Supreme Court, then proceeded to rush through Brian Kavanaugh's confirmation before the Midterm elections of last year.

The dividing line being I presume, in this example, the Democrats think they know best, where we the Republicans, know best.

I do believe with some conviction that it is only through a lack of empathy that one can hold the worldview that everybody basically knows what's right and what's wrong, and just some people are fucking it up.

One privilege I enjoy being a white male (and I enjoy and appreciate all of them) is that because of our standing in the world, people feel quite comfortable calling on me to own the actions of a group identity.

Thus, I'm encouraged and invited to 'own issues' and to be charitable, I suspect in practice what I am supposed to be doing is just joining a chorus or mob to condemn and disavow. However, Musashi was an influence long before I even started writing on this blog, and thus when people call on me to empathize, and own issues and problems, I tend to take on the task of 'becoming the enemy'.

Just to be clear, I don't view progressives or feminists or anyone who criticizes white men as 'the enemy' what I mean is that I typically ask myself questions like these:

How similar am I to Donald Trump?

Well we both have small hands, we both tend to speak with near complete disregard for how our statements will be taken or interpreted. We both like to tackle subjects and topics for which we have no expertise.We can both disregard our own unpopularity. We both struggle to perceive the limits of our competence. We are both unfit to be heads of state. We both have very little experience with answering to supervisors or having any accountability. We both like cheeseburgers. We both don't drink. We've both lost someone we love to addiction and the underlying causes of that addiction. We're both incredibly superficial. We both struggle with the opportunity cost of committing to one woman. We both value loyalty.

Now tempting as it is to point out all the ways Trump and I differ, I do find it actually helpful to empathize with Trump without having to be sympathetic to him at all.

Now remember 'factor: 16x^4 -1' my friends with the magic brains in my specialist math's class had this distinct advantage over me. They could tell when I hadn't done the exercise, because they had done it themselves. Their brains could see that 16x^4 -1 is the same as (2x+1)(2x-1)(4x^2+1)
and that if I'd said it was 4(2x^2+1)(2x^2-1) that I didn't get it.

And maybe empathy like maths, is something that cannot so easily be taught. For example, a hypothetical radical feminist might ask:

How similar am I to Donald Trump?

We are both ambitious. We both get frustrated by the system being rigged against us. We both are abused, degraded and treated as the but of jokes. We are both outspoken. We both feel our opponents position is illegitimate. We both refuse or are reluctant to condemn our support base. We both like presenting strength. We both hate criticism. We both wish criticism would just go away. We both wish life and our pursuit of happiness was easier for us...

and again there's transparently a world of difference between a radical feminist and Donald Trump. And perspective taking is a function of cognitive empathy, so strictly speaking to take anothers perspective isn't just to notice similarities but to notice the differences as well. In the example of the burglar holed up in the house provided by Musashi, he actually begins with his own perspective as one of being fearful, and the Burglar fierce. The common ground achieved by shifting perspective is that he realizes the Burglar is also fearful, and to the burglar he appears fierce.

And this is crucial, for Musashi concludes by saying the burglar in the house is a pheasant and you are the hawk, because Musashi beyond being a profound thinker, was also a martial artist and therefore aggressive. However his initial perspective is that he is a pheasant. Without shifting his perspective to 'the enemy' the burglar, he is unwittingly similar to the burglar. By shifting his perspective he allows himself to become something else, by recognizing that the burglar is right to be scared, the burglars situation is hopeless. Musashi can then put down his fear and proceed with confidence.

So that might be a little convoluted to follow Musashi a burglar a pheasant and a hawk and keep it all straight, and though I enjoy the translated writings of Musashi, I'm told many people find him too esoteric even for native Japanese speakers. So I'll offer this summary.

Tribalism is bad because operating from a basis that says what's crucial isn't how we conduct ourselves but that people agree with me, isn't good enough. You are going inevitably to run into conflict between your tribe who feels justified by the conviction that you understand what's what and another group that feels equally justified by their conviction that they no what is what. We have a long history of these tribal disputes.

Taking the perspective of someone who is opposed to you by turns may make you more sympathetic to them but not necessarily so. Instead it can help you identify what is actually problematic in both your and their behavior. It can also diminish your fear of them and allow you to proceed with increased confidence and increased chance of achieving what you actually want to accomplish.

By using perspective taking you can better avoid becoming the moral equal of who you are opposed to.

People who have done their homework can tell who hasn't done their homework.

I find it most helpful and stimulating to ask myself 'who's perspective do I least want to take?' and start there.

Empathy though is really hard, which is perhaps why it takes a rare genius like Mark Twain to say  'The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.'

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