Adulterers may empathize, but don't expect them to act on it...ever�
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The Limits of Empathy
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 29, 2011

We are surrounded by people trying to make the world a better place. Peace activists bring enemies together so they can get to know one another and feel each other�s pain. School leaders try to attract a diverse set of students so each can understand what it�s like to walk in the others� shoes. Religious and community groups try to cultivate empathy.

As Steven Pinker writes in his mind-altering new book, �The Better Angels of Our Nature,� we are living in the middle of an �empathy craze.� There are shelf loads of books about it: �The Age of Empathy,� �The Empathy Gap,� �The Empathic Civilization,� �Teaching Empathy.� There�s even a brain theory that we have mirror neurons in our heads that enable us to feel what�s in other people�s heads and that these neurons lead to sympathetic care and moral action.

There�s a lot of truth to all this. We do have mirror neurons in our heads. People who are empathetic are more sensitive to the perspectives and sufferings of others. They are more likely to make compassionate moral judgments.
The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people�s suffering, but it�s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.

In the early days of the Holocaust, Nazi prison guards sometimes wept as they mowed down Jewish women and children, but they still did it. Subjects in the famous Milgram experiments felt anguish as they appeared to administer electric shocks to other research subjects, but they pressed on because some guy in a lab coat told them to.

Empathy orients you toward moral action, but it doesn�t seem to help much when that action comes at a personal cost. You may feel a pang for the homeless guy on the other side of the street, but the odds are that you are not going to cross the street to give him a dollar.

There have been piles of studies investigating the link between empathy and moral action. Different scholars come to different conclusions, but, in a recent paper, Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at City University of New York, summarized the research this way: �These studies suggest that empathy is not a major player when it comes to moral motivation. Its contribution is negligible in children, modest in adults, and nonexistent when costs are significant.� Other scholars have called empathy a fragile flower, easily crushed by self-concern.

Some influences, which we think of as trivial, are much stronger � such as a temporary burst of positive emotion. In one experiment in the 1970s, researchers planted a dime in a phone booth. Eighty-seven percent of the people who found the dime offered to help a person who dropped some papers nearby, compared with only 4 percent who didn�t find a dime. Empathy doesn�t produce anything like this kind of effect.

Moreover, Prinz argues, empathy often leads people astray. It influences people to care more about cute victims than ugly victims. It leads to nepotism. It subverts justice; juries give lighter sentences to defendants that show sadness. It leads us to react to shocking incidents, like a hurricane, but not longstanding conditions, like global hunger or preventable diseases.

Nobody is against empathy. Nonetheless, it�s insufficient. These days empathy has become a shortcut. It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them. It has become a way to experience the illusion of moral progress without having to do the nasty work of making moral judgments.

In a culture that is inarticulate about moral categories and touchy about giving offense, teaching empathy is a safe way for schools and other institutions to seem virtuous without risking controversy or hurting anybody�s feelings.

People who actually perform pro-social action don�t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.

Think of anybody you admire. They probably have some talent for fellow-feeling, but it is overshadowed by their sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code. They would feel a sense of shame or guilt if they didn�t live up to the code. The code tells them when they deserve public admiration or dishonor. The code helps them evaluate other people�s feelings, not just share them.

The code tells them that an adulterer or a drug dealer may feel ecstatic, but the proper response is still contempt.

The code isn�t just a set of rules. It�s a source of identity. It�s pursued with joy. It arouses the strongest emotions and attachments. Empathy is a sideshow. If you want to make the world a better place, help people debate, understand reform, revere and enact their codes. Accept that codes conflict.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on September 30, 2011, on page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: The Limits Of Empathy.

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you. - Thomas Jefferson

Interesting thoughts and concepts in your excerpt. Yes, we in the 21st century Western world have become a civilization of "hopers", "wishers", and "dreamers", with precious few individuals prepared to do the work that all others fantasize about having done.

Is breast cancer a terrible thing? Well, yes, and I'll prove my opposition(?) to it by wearing this pink ribbon!

Are we damaging our environment by consuming too much carbon-based fuels? Obviously! So let's all individually drive down to the protest march at the oil company in our 12mpg SUVs!

The examples go on forever. The trend is accelerating. Public education is now a "participation" exercise, with no expectation of achievement.

I figure at the outside, I have about twenty years left. I also figure it's now a race between my demise and that of Western civilization!

I more or less empathize with your assessment. But there is the big picture and there are details.

Empathy : Feelings

Posting this on MB because it reminded me of adulterers and their feelings. Adulterers� feelings are everything. Feelings, positive and negative, are always their reasons for committing adultery.

Pretty much all I ever read on here by adulterers, present and former, are justifications for their feelings. Some will even claim to feel bad about (empathize with) the lives they have damaged by their choices and their actions. Their feelings are always everything, even after the fact. But their actions are usually negligible, even after the fact.

The code. They have no code.

I suppose there are exceptions. But I don�t see any. The exceptions would not post their feelings. Ever. They would only describe their actions. Actions for as long as it took to make up the difference.

eta: OT question for the Mods, what decides what emotion goes in the left hand column of a new topic?

Not a mod, but if you look to the right of the "Log Out" tab, there is an emotion face. Click on the arrow and you will get a pull down of emotions that describe your mood. Or maybe you mean the "Posting Icon" below the subject line. If neither of those I have no idea lol.