The ability to feel someone else's pain or joy, as one's own, is considered a boon and a necessary ability for many professions a doctor, teacher, psychologist. But how not to cross the line beyond which empathy is harmful not only to those who empathize, but also to the object of our sympathy?
“Most people believe that empathy is the ability to put oneself in the shoes of another person, to“ walk in his shoes Psychologists say that this is empathy with a person’s state, but without losing their sense of self. There are two types of empathy. Emotional reflection of the feelings of the other with your feelings. And cognitive the ability to understand how a person thinks.
Our vision of empathy as the basis of kindness and morality is very clear. But upon closer examination, it is a bad moral guideline, because it makes it impossible to help in the long run. It provokes false judgments, indifference and cruelty. It leads to irrational and unfair political decisions. I am against excessive empathy. Research in neuropsychology and neurophysiology has confirmed that empathy affects the health of those who experience it. Living someone else's pain activates the same neural networks as when experiencing your own.
In addition, empathy is a kind of spotlight. It highlights people who find themselves in the field of our empathy. Empathy forces us to take care of the “chosen ones”, but it fades into the background or even leaves out the long-term consequences of our actions. “Blinds” us, deprives us of sympathy for the suffering of others in the present and future.
“This can be observed in African countries. Charitable assistance destroys the economy, as goods and products from developed countries compete and ruin local farmers and producers. Helping one, we harm many. Parents are often forced to force their children to do what they don’t want at the moment, but what will benefit them in the future is to do their homework, eat vegetables, wash their hands, go to bed on time, and visit a dentist. If especially sensitive mothers and fathers do not insist on an unpleasant action now, sparing the baby, they thereby deprive him of experience and prevent him from adapting in adulthood. Empathy is short-sighted. It motivates us to do things that may seem right now, but lead to tragic consequences in the future.
“Imagine that an eight-year-old girl got very sick due to a low-quality vaccine. You are a vaccine development project manager, a sensitive person, you see her suffering, you are talking to her and her family. You want this to not happen again. But if you stop the vaccination program, guided by emotions, ten more children will die. You will not see their eyes, you will not hear the crying parents. They are just soulless statistics. This decision is emotionally further from you than the desire to help the one girl who is nearby. You can learn not to cross the line beyond which empathy becomes dangerous. It is necessary to train to analyze the facts, to look at things consciously, not to succumb to the first emotional impulse. And to know that every phenomenon and concept always has at least two sides.