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===Empathy is impulsive. Compassion is deliberate.=== | ===Empathy is impulsive. Compassion is deliberate.=== | ||
Empathy is the impulse that makes you cry at ''Love Actually'', even while you see how cynically your emotions are being manipulated and how empty the film is.<ref>Purely hypothetical example. Totally.</ref> It doesn’t come from a rational place: it is not the output of a deliberative function. | Empathy is the impulse that makes you cry at ''Love Actually'', even while you see how cynically your emotions are being manipulated and how empty the film is.<ref>Purely hypothetical example. Totally. The JC does not cry at crappy movies. Ever.</ref> It doesn’t come from a rational place: it is not the output of a deliberative function. | ||
Now, we can all have have doubts about homo | Now, we can all have have doubts about ''homo sapiens''’ capacity for logic at the best of times, but when a human acts out of ''empathy'' she is not even ''trying'' to be rational. | ||
We like to think our leaders should be | We like to think our leaders ''should'' be rational: | ||
at least give it a go — and generally be slow, rather than fast to react, considerate of all positions and constituencies rather than impulsive. Unless there is a fight breaking out, best not to act on blind instinct. | |||
Being ''instinctively'' empathetic is not necessarily fair, equitable or just. | Being ''instinctively'' empathetic is not necessarily “kind”, nor fair, equitable or just. Empathy comes from the monkey brain. It doesn’t take time to reflect on whom one should empathise: it just does it, favouring kin, familiarity, tribe and self-identity. | ||
Empathetic responses reinforce our own values and existing worldview. It shoots without asking questions. | |||
===Empathy is divisive. Compassion is unifying.=== | ===Empathy is divisive. Compassion is unifying.=== | ||
To be empathetic is to walk a mile in someone else’s moccasins | To be empathetic is to walk a mile in someone else’s moccasins; to live her [[lived experience]]; to see the world from her [[standpoint]]. It seeks no emotional distance: It ''takes sides''. This is something to value in your own mum. and the family dog — not in a community leader. | ||
Leaders must be independent, strive to avoid having personal interests influencing their decisions, and should recuse themselves when they do. | |||
They must sometimes to make decisions their subordinates might not like. They must arbitrate, decide and settle disputes between subordinates that at least one of them definitely will not like. They can’t always be “kind”. | |||
In our postmodern, morally relativistic times, the opportunities for leaders to take sides and get away with it — where there is a consensus good guy against an old school Bond villain | In our postmodern, morally relativistic times, the opportunities for leaders to take sides and get away with it — where there is a consensus good guy against an old-school Bond villain — are rare indeed. Jacinda Arden, who branded herself an empathetic leader, had a couple of rare opportunities: it is safe to side against white supremacists and volcanoes. But these are outliers. Most governance decisions are harder than that. | ||
===Empathy is inert. Compassion is active.=== | ===Empathy is inert. Compassion is active.=== | ||
Empathy is to join in, to wallow in someone else’s problem, to colonise it, without necessarily doing anything to alleviate it. Alleviating the problem — if there is a problem — brings the need for empathy to an end, so the truly committed empathist ''does not want the problem to end'', for that way lies the end of empathy. | Empathy is to join in, to wallow in someone else’s problem, to colonise it, without necessarily doing anything to alleviate it. Alleviating the problem — if there is a problem — brings the need for empathy to an end, so the truly committed empathist ''does not want the problem to end'', for that way lies the end of empathy. |