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Unwitting Failures of the Empath
How being kind can be bad for you, and why you should be kind anyway.
The Ice Cream that Fell
How do you understand empathy?
Usually, people describe it as the ability to put oneself in the shoes of another.
Empathy is that smudge of grief you felt when a poor boy’s ice cream fell to the ground. As well as that spark of joy in his eyes, and in yours, when you see his brother bought him a new scoop.
It’s not your ice cream. You don’t get to eat it anyway, so why do you feel what he’s feeling? Blame (or thank) the mirror neurons in your brain. They prompt you to reflect the emotional state of others, thus leaving you open to feel pain and pleasure that is not yours.
It’s a weird phenomenon, if you think of it. However, it’s real, and it’s normal. We can even say that it constitutes a huge part in what makes a human, human.
Empathy = Kindness?
In a 2012 TED Talk, Simon Baron-Cohen pointed out that the commonly known concept of good and evil is actually unhelpful and unscientific. He proposed that, instead, we can use the concept of empathy as a framework for better elaboration.
