What Is Empathy

Can you build it like a muscle?

What a year this week has been! The past ten days have yielded a year’s worth of news, much of it bad. 2025 feels like it’s off to a rocky start – fires in California, Bird Flu spreading, an onslaught of political activity that’s making people unsure of future stability. It’s a daunting time to be alive. But we are alive in this broken world, and that is a miracle in itself. Every sunrise is guaranteed, but every sunrise we get to see is a gift.

Photo by Theo Lonic on Unsplash

I’m not going to attempt to tell you anything about what’s happening in the political world. I know enough to know that I don’t know much, but I know more than I used to. If you want recommendations of who to follow for clear information of the currently confusing political environment, I recommend two great historians and political professors who publish here on Substack. They help me put things in perspective and understand the why as well as the what. I hope you will check them out.

Heather Cox Richardson - Letters from an American

Timothy Snyder - Thinking About

What I do feel qualified to talk about, sort of, is what’s happening to us on the inside while all this chaos is occurring on the outside. People are suffering. People are in pain. Seeing other people – and animals – hurt, makes me hurt. That’s a response known as “empathy.”

What is empathy? According to Merrian-Webster, Empathy is defined as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.”

According to an article in Psychology Today:

“Empathy is the ability to recognize and understand what another person, animal, or even a fictional character is thinking or feeling. It is an attempt to identify with someone else's situation, perspectives, or experiences. Empathy is said to be about looking at things from someone else's point of view, rather than our own, and imagining ourselves in their place.”

What Is Empathy? | Psychology Today

I think that people have varying degrees of empathy. Myself, I believe I may have too much empathy, if that’s possible. I feel the suffering of others – human or animal. I can’t bear to watch those humane society commercials with images of sad-eyed puppies set to even sadder music. That’s probably why I volunteered with an animal rescue for several years.

Someone, who probably felt that I wasn’t doing enough although they were doing nothing, once asked me why I rescued dogs and not people. I have a habit of using humor to deflect conflict, so I replied, “Because I can grab a hungry stray off the street, give it a bath and feed it, then keep it in a cage in my living room and that’s considered good. If I did the same thing to a homeless person, I’d probably go to jail.”

And then there’s the famous Mark Twain quote, “If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.”

So, empathy. We know what it is. I’ve got it, you’ve probably got it, but how does someone acquire it or increase it?

The Psychology Today article I listed above has a few basic ideas, but for a deeper understanding of how empathy is formed and how to increase your own, I found TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series immensely helpful.

According to Stanford psychology professor Jamil Zaki PhD, director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory, human empathy is actually a skill that can be developed rather than a fixed trait. “Empathy is a simple word for a complex idea,” he explains. “Research psychologists understand empathy as an umbrella term for multiple ways that we respond to other people’s emotions.”

In this article and the accompanying TED talk, professor Zaki gives five actionable steps we can take to increase our own empathy.

After all of this talk of empathy and understanding, there are times when one cannot and should not empathize with another person. When that person is harmful or hateful towards another person, including yourself, it would be self-destructive to empathize with them. It doesn’t hurt to see where they are coming from, get an idea of their motivation, but not to agree with them. Personally, I avoid pointless internet arguments (PITA). When I realize that nothing I have to say will change their mind, I just ghost. I can make better use of my limited time.

There is a concept known as the “tolerance paradox.” According to Wikipedia, “The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance. This paradox was articulated by philosopher Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945),[1] where he argued that a truly tolerant society must retain the right to deny tolerance to those who promote intolerance. Popper posited that if intolerant ideologies are allowed unchecked expression, they could exploit open society values to erode or destroy tolerance itself through authoritarian or oppressive practices.”

I’m not a philosopher, so I won’t go into the paradox concept any further. If you’re interested, you can learn more at this link: Tolerance Paradox

If this month is any indication, the next few years are going to be a bumpy ride, so buckle up. We’re all going to need an abundance of empathy and tolerance to get through this, and we will also need to be discerning and know when not to tolerate the intolerant.

We’re not going to get through this alone. Find your people. Band together with like-minded individuals and organize. Use whatever talents or skills you have in conjunction with your community.

Be kind but fight back against gaslighting and intolerance. We will get through this if we work together.

If you have actionable suggestions, please share in the comments.

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