Empathy and compassion: Difference between revisions

===Empathy is divisive. Compassion is unifying.===

To be empathetic is to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, to live their [[lived experience]]; to look at the world from their perspective. It is to ''take sides. This is something to value in the family dog, and your own mother. Not a leader. Leaders have to be independent, to have no interest in the matter, and recuse herself when she does. Leaders need sometimes to make decisions their subordinates might not like, and sometimes to arbitrate — to settle disputes between subordinates that at least one of them ''definitely'' will not like.

Since empathy is instinctive, we also tend to empathise with those closest to us, who was can most easily identify with.