Our Empathy Projects

I have been recently reading a book called Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It, by Roman Krznaric. Krznaric’s book is quite readable and entertaining, introducing his readers to a historic overview of different empathy movements throughout history, as well as how to cultivate empathy through reading, conversation and imagination. One of the interesting aspects that Krznaric refers to is that different historical movements seem to have pushed forward the cause of empathy, such as the abolition of slavery post 1700s, the Quaker movement (which was instrumental to slavery) in the same time period, and the push for universal rights after World War II.

I understand that there is also a “science” of empathy which Krznaric also explores, looking at parts of the brain that might be hardwired for empathy. It seems that these parts of the book seem to suggest that empathy activates what are called “mirror neurons” (p.21-24), parts of the nervous system that make us “feel” what others feel based on a sympathetic resonance. While I find some of these studies fascinating, I wonder if the building blocks of empathy are really found in these mirror neurons, or whether mirroring is only one aspect of empathy. I recall a situation years ago when a friend had remarked to me that me joining a hiking group was very “courageous” because I was surrounded by strangers. Back in the time, even though I am an introvert by nature, it never occurred to me that joining a hiking group necessarily inspires “courage”. However, my friend reflected that in my shoes, such an activity would require courage. In a case like this, is the person really empathizing with me, or are they really looking at how they might react to a similar situation? What I think is happening with my friend is that there is an image in the mind which makes the person feel a certain way, and this feeling then causes the person to believe that I might feel the same way. That is, rather than “feeling for me” there is a kind of sympathy which arises when a person imagines themselves in the same position. I don’t see this as an exact mirroring of my experience, but it’s a kind of constructed dialogue based on how a person imagine themselves in a similar situation.

Is it “terrible” that we don’t feel exactly the same way that others do? Think of how uninteresting the world would be  if our feelings were mirrored exactly in the others. What this paradigm of empathy as “mirroring” perhaps overlooks is that people have different and diverging ways of responding to the same situation, and this sharing of information seems to be a kind of creative improvisation, rather than a note-for-note “copy”. I tell someone one thing, and their particular “take” on it might broaden my perspective  bit, even if it is not the same as how I feel about it. Sometimes the “empathic misfire” is more interesting than an exact mirroring of emotion, and it makes for an expanded view of who we are and what our choices are in a given situation. For this reason, I tend to think of empathy more as a process of artistic co-creation than a kind of “mirroring” of a person’s experiences.

Krznaric, R. (2014) Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It. New York: Perigee