Why a lack of empathy is the root of all evil
From casual violence to genocide, acts of cruelty can be traced back to how the perpetrator identifies with other people, argues psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen. Is he right?

By Clint Witchalls
Tuesday, 5 April 2011

Lucy Adeniji – an evangelical Christian and author of two books on childcare – trafficked two girls and a 21-year-old woman from Nigeria to work as slaves in her east London home. She made them toil for 21 hours a day and tortured them if they displeased her. The youngest girl was 11 years old.

Sentencing her to 11-and-a-half years in prison last month, Judge Simon Oliver said: "You are an evil woman. I have no doubt you have ruined these two girls' lives. They will suffer from the consequences of the behaviour you meted out to them for the rest of their lives."

Most people would probably agree with Judge Oliver's description of Adeniji as evil, but Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, would not be one of them. In his latest book, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty, Baron-Cohen, argues that the term evil is unscientific and unhelpful. "Sometimes the term evil is used as a way to stop an inquiry," Baron-Cohen tells me. "'This person did it because they're evil' – as if that were an explanation."

Human cruelty has fascinated and puzzled Baron-Cohen since childhood. When he was seven years old, his father told him the Nazis had turned Jews into lampshades and soap. He also recounted the story of a woman he met who had her hands severed by Nazi doctors and sewn on opposite arms so the thumbs faced outwards. These images stuck in Simon's mind. He couldn't understand how one human could treat another with such cruelty. The explanation that the Nazis were simply evil didn't satisfy him. For Baron-Cohen, science provides a more satisfactory explanation for evil and that explanation is empathy – or rather, lack of empathy.

"Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion," writes Baron-Cohen. People who lack empathy see others as mere objects.

Empathy, like height, is a continuous variable, but for convenience, Baron-Cohen splits the continuum into six degrees – seven if you count zero empathy. Answering the empathy quotient (EQ) questionnaire, developed by Baron-Cohen and colleagues, will put you somewhere on the empathy bell curve. People with zero degrees of empathy will be at one end of the bell curve and those with six degrees of empathy at the other end.

Baron-Cohen provides vignettes of what a typical person with x-degrees of empathy would be like. We're told, for example, that a person with level two empathy (quite low) "blunders through life, saying all the wrong things (eg, 'You've put on weight!') or doing the wrong things (eg, invading another person's 'personal space')."

Being at the far ends of the bell curve (extremely high or extremely low empathy scores) is not necessarily pathological. It is possible to have zero degrees of empathy and not be a murderer, torturer or rapist, although you're unlikely to be any of these things if you are at the other end of the empathy spectrum – level six empathy.

"You could imagine someone who has low empathy yet somehow carves out a lifestyle for themselves where it doesn't impact on other people and it doesn't interfere with their everyday life," says Baron-Cohen.

"Let's take someone who's very gifted at physics and they're focused on doing physics. They might not be interacting very much with other people but they are interacting with the world of objects. They might have low empathy but it's not interfering. In that respect it's not pathological and they don't need a diagnosis. They have found a perfect fit between their mind and the lifestyle that they have."

Baron-Cohen doesn't see very high empathy as potentially debilitating. He sees someone with level six empathy as possessing a "natural intuition in tuning into how other are feeling".

I was intrigued to read a different account of empathy overdrive. In a recent newspaper article, Fiona Torrance described the hell of hyper- empathy. She has a rare condition known as mirror-touch synaesthesia. She first became aware of it aged six when she saw butcher birds hanging mice on a wire fence. "I felt the tug on my neck and spine; it was as if I was being hanged," Torrance recalled.

Empathy excess, however, is much rarer than empathy deficit. And while people with empathy excess suffer alone, those with empathy deficits cause others to suffer. Or at least some of them do.

At zero degrees of empathy are two distinct groups. Baron-Cohen calls them zero-negative and zero-positive. Zero-positives include people with autism or Asperger's syndrome. They have zero empathy but their "systemising" nature means they are drawn to patterns, regularity and consistency. As a result, they are likely to follow rules and regulations – the patterns of civic life.

Zero-negatives are the pathological group. These are people with borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. They are capable of inflicting physical and psychological harm on others and are unmoved by the plight of those they hurt. Baron-Cohen says people with these conditions all have one thing in common: zero empathy.

The question is: did people with these personality disorders lose their empathy or were they born that way?

One of Baron-Cohen's longitudinal studies – which began 10 years a – found that the more testosterone a foetus generates in the womb, the less empathy the child will have post- natally. In other words, there is a negative correlation between testosterone and empathy. It would appear the sex hormone is somehow involved in shaping the "empathy circuits" of the developing brain.

Given that testosterone is found in higher quantities in men than women, it may come as no surprise that men score lower on empathy than women. So there is a clear hormonal link to empathy. Another biological factor is genetics. Recent research by Baron-Cohen and colleagues found four genes associated with empathy – one sex steroid gene, one gene related to social-emotional behaviour and two associated with neural growth.

Does that mean, in the future, we will have gene-therapy to correct for low empathy?

"I'd be very concerned about those sorts of directions," Baron-Cohen says. "I mean, they are at least plausible from a science point of view, but whether they're desirable from a societal point of view is another matter. I would probably put more emphasis on early interventions – environmental interventions. I think empathy could be taught in schools for example."

The other side of the empathy coin is environment. John Bowlby, the British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who developed "attachment theory", was the first to point out the lifelong impact of early neglect and abuse. "We think children are very robust, they'll somehow adapt," says Baron-Cohen, "but Bowlby showed that children who had what he called insecure attachment – a lack of opportunity to form a strong bond with a caregiver – are more at risk of delinquency and they're more at risk from a range of personality disorders, which I translate into a lack of empathy because many of the personality disorders, like the psychopath, or people with borderline personality disorder are just operating on a totally self- centred mode. Early attachment is one big risk factor for low empathy."

With functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners, it is possible to look at the effect hormones, genes and the environment have on the brain. In his book, Baron-Cohen identifies ten interconnected brain regions that are part of what he calls the "empathy circuit". People who score low on the empathy questionnaire show less neural activity in these brain regions.

Science is beginning to unravel the mystery of why some people have less empathy than others and the implications are potentially far reaching, not least for the criminal justice system. "The hallmark of a compassionate and civilised society is that we try to understand other people's actions, we don't try to simply condemn them," says Baron-Cohen.

"There is even a question about whether a person that commits an awful crime should be in a prison as opposed to a hospital."

But if someone endures a neglectful upbringing and they subsequently grow up to be a violent criminal, should they be absolved of any wrong doing because an fMRI scanner reveals low neural activity in their inferior frontal gyrus? "When people do commit crimes there may be determinants to their behaviour which are outside their control," says Baron-Cohen. "No one is responsible for their own genes."

Indeed, but we are all capable of making moral choices. Making the right choice may be more difficult for people with compromised empathy circuits, but the choice still exists.

Baron-Cohen wants to move the debate on the causes of evil "out of the realm of religion and into the realm of science", but I wonder if he is going beyond science and into other domains such as moral philosophy and jurisprudence.

"I don't see that we have to keep them apart," he says. "What I'm hoping is that the book will be seen as: how can science inform moral debates. It might even have relevance for politics and politicians, that when we try and resolve conflict, whether it's domestic conflict or international conflict, issues about empathy might actually be useful. The alternative is that science just does science and doesn't engage with moral issues or the real world. I think that would be a backward step."

If you consider the big atrocities in history – the ones we think of as evil – the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, the slave trade, communist purges, Rwandan genocide, apartheid, etc, it took the support of the masses to make them happen. Can we blame evil on this scale on psychopaths (who comprise less than one per cent of the population) and narcissists (also less than one per cent of the population)?

Surely beliefs are a much bigger cause of evil than biology or upbringing? Negative memes are spread by the church or state about the outgroup until they become thoroughly dehumanised. And the thing to restore humanity to the outgroup is not drugs and therapy but re-humanising narratives.

"Whatever your causes of loss of empathy, it's the very same empathy circuit that would be involved when you show empathy or fail to show empathy," says Baron-Cohen.

He argues that our beliefs can have an impact on the empathy circuit. Our level of empathy isn't necessarily fixed for all situations and right across our lives. It can fluctuate, depending on the situation. When people are tired or stressed they may show less empathy than when they're calm and rested. Baron-Cohen wants to differentiate transient changes to empathy, where empathy can be restored, versus more permanent changes.

"If for genetic reasons, for example, you have low empathy, it might be much harder to restore it but I remain optimistic even in those situations that there are therapeutic or educational methods that could be tried to improve anybody's empathy," he says.

So far, science has made little progress in treating empathy deficits. Psychopaths, for example, are notoriously untreatable as are children who present with callousness/unemotional (CU) trait. And trying to improve the empathy of sex offenders is one of the least effective interventions, according to Tom Fahy, professor of forensic mental health at the Institute of Psychiatry.

As someone who works with violent criminals, I wanted to know if Fahy thinks zero empathy is a good explanation for cruelty. "It may be one of the ingredients," he says, "but it's not usually an entirely satisfactory explanation for cruelty or acts of serious violence."

Narrowing the focus down to empathy when trying to prevent repeat behaviour is not a very effective approach, in Fahy's view. "It's difficult enough, anyway, to reduce offending behaviour through complex psychological interventions," says Fahy, "but to put all your eggs in one basket is undoubtedly a mistake."

Although zero degrees of empathy is necessary for someone to do evil, it is not sufficient to explain it. As Fahy says, there is usually a "complex tree of experiences" that leads to a violent or cruel act. Also, not everyone who has zero empathy will commit evil acts – Baron-Cohen devotes an entire chapter to extricate himself from this dilemma. Zero degrees of empathy requires too many qualifications to make it a satisfactory explanation for evil. And trying to boost empathy using therapy and other non-drug interventions doesn't appear to have much effect.

I wholly agree with Judge Oliver's description of Lucy Adeniji as evil. That doesn't mean I want to shut the conversation down. I think it's important to know – from a biological, psychological and societal point of view – how someone like Adeniji came to be cruel and uncaring, but I also think it's important to condemn her actions. I don't see the two things as being mutually exclusive.

I agree with Baron-Cohen that we shouldn't use evil as an explanation for why people do bad things, and finding ways to improve empathy, can't be a bad thing. But, for me, replacing the idea of evil with the idea of empathy-starvation is a simplification too far.

Just wanted to share an interesting perspective of looking at evil

One of Britain's leading psychiatrists, Simon Baron-Cohen, suggests that if we want a scientific understanding, we should stop talking about evil and consider how our brains are wired for empathy, or lack of it.

Simon Baron-Cohen has been battling with evil all his life.

As a scientist seeking to understand random acts of violence, from street brawls to psychopathic killings to genocide, he has puzzled for decades over what prompts such acts of human cruelty. And he's decided that evil is not good enough.

"I'm not satisfied with the term 'evil'," says the Cambridge University psychology and psychiatry professor, one of the world's top experts in autism and developmental psychopathology.

"We've inherited this word.. and we use it to express our abhorrence when people do awful things, usually acts of cruelty, but I don't think it's anything more than another word for doing something bad. And as a scientist that doesn't seem to me to be much of an explanation. So I've been looking for an alternative -- we need a new theory of human cruelty."

Baron-Cohen, who is also director of the Autism Research Center at Cambridge, has just written a book in which he calls for a kind of rebranding of evil to offer a more scientific explanation for why people kill and torture, or have such great difficulty understanding the feelings of others.

His proposal is that evil be understood as a lack of empathy -- a condition he argues can be measured and monitored and is susceptible to education and treatment.

NEW THEORY

Baron-Cohen defines empathy in two parts -- as the drive to identify another person's thoughts and feelings, and the drive to respond appropriately to those thoughts and feelings.

It is also, he says, one of the most valuable resources in our world -- one which is currently woefully underused.

"We all have degrees of empathy... but perhaps we are not using it to its full potential," he explained in an interview with Reuters after delivering a lecture in London.

He says erosion of empathy is an important global issue that affects the health of communities, be they small ones like families, or big ones like nations.

If we all used our ability to empathize more, and recognized its value, he says, conflicts such as the decades of tit-for-tat violence between Palestinians and Israelis could be resolved.

"If you think about conflict resolution at the moment, usually we are dependent on diplomatic channels, legal frameworks, or military methods. But all those things operate at a very abstract level and they don't seem to get us very far.

"Empathy is about two people -- two people meeting, getting to know each other and tuning in to what the other person is thinking and feeling."

As an example, Baron-Cohen cites the meeting of minds between Nelson Mandela and the then South African president F. W de Klerk, which helped end apartheid in the early 1990s.

"The progress that came out of just that one relationship -- well, arguably, it broke through where all other methods had failed, and at far less cost in terms of human life," he says.

PSYCHOPATHS HAVE "ZERO DEGREES OF EMPATHY"

A Jewish upbringing peppered with tales about the horrors of the Nazis' treatment of Jews and other minorities was early motivation for Baron-Cohen to seek to deconstruct human cruelty

He cites times when his father told him how the Nazis turned Jews into lampshades, or into bars of soap, and a tale about the mother of a family friend whose hands had been severed by Nazi scientists who switched them around and sewed them back on again so that her thumbs were on the outside.

"Today, almost half a century after my father's revelations...my mind is still exercised by the same single objective: to understand human cruelty," he writes in his book.

In the book, entitled "Zero Degrees of Empathy" in Britain, and "The Science of Evil" in the United States, where it comes out in July, Baron-Cohen seeks to pick apart and define components of empathy -- including hormones, genes, environment, nurture, and early childhood experiences.

Citing decades of scientific research, he says there are at least 10 regions of the brain which make up what he calls the "empathy circuit." When people hurt others, either systematically or fleetingly, parts of that circuit are malfunctioning.

Baron-Cohen also sets out an "empathy spectrum" ranging from zero to six degrees of empathy, and an "empathy quotient" test, whose score puts people on various points along that spectrum.

Drawing a classic bell curve on a graph, Baron-Cohen says that thankfully, the vast majority of humans are in the middle of the bell curve spectrum, with a few particularly attuned and highly empathetic people at the top end.

Psychopaths, narcissists, and people with borderline personality disorder sit at the bottom end of the scale -- these people have "zero degrees of empathy."

But rather than labeling them as evil, Baron-Cohen says they should be seen as sick, or "disabled," and we should seek to understand why they have such an empathy deficiency and help them replace it.

Baron-Cohen shies away from saying that psychopaths can be "cured" of extreme behavior, but he argues strongly against locking them up and saying there is nothing society can do.

"I try to keep an open mind. I would never want to say a person is beyond help," he explains. "Empathy is a skill like any other human skill -- and if you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it."

Evil is like an absolute term while the lack of empathy in the brain circuitry implies a quality that could be worked on in a clinical way perhaps?

So a Nazi surgeon who performs human experiments may be diagnosed as suffering zero degree of empathy while you as a wannabe vegetarian would certainly have some measurable level of empathy if u felt sorry and sick after your first meat burger...

I'm sorry but this line of philosophy is just too open for rebuttal.
Like define your evil. Define your empathy and the degree with which it is needed to overcome evil.

Say in a war between two parties. One side would say the other side is evil.
Each would say they have God on their side. That they are right and stand for good.
Now, who is good and who is evil??? Guess it depends on which side of the fence you stand??

Okay, with what degree of empathy does one need to overcome this evil???
Does one need to feel that killing is bad enough to stop killing??
Then does that mean the other side will stop killing also or will they just continue to kill until everyone is wiped out?? Hmm, maybe we need so much empathy that both sides of the conflict feels that killing is bad and must stop?? Is it even possible to have this level of empathy across the world??
Now would it really stop evil??

that point is already made by the journalists and i guess this eminent psychiatrist will have to refine his research...



if we do a cut and paste of the pali canons, gita, bible and qu'rans of the word 'evil' and replace it with 'zero emphathy', would it mean less wars and crusades perhaps???



The thing is most of us think of evil as unquantifiable and so it's best to destroy evil than to let it live, but if we say someone has suffered zero degree of empathy, that suggests a possibility of rehab. Don't it? Does that make you go against the death penalty for instance?

I watched this documentary titled "Dhamma Brothers" about the introduction of meditation to some hardcore criminals who are serving life sentences or awaiting deathrow in a maximum security Alabama prison. I think it deserves a closer look by judges and policy makers this idea of empathy instead of evil.

http://www.dhammabrothers.com/

If you believe that liberation is a path that can be democratised and achieved in a scientific way just like Shinzen is proposing, don't u think we can also move the debate on the causes of evil "out of the realm of religion and into the realm of science" where we can observe and quantify the results?

Zero degrees of empathy requires too many qualifications to make it a satisfactory explanation for evil

The psychologist says the lack of empathy is the inability to feel someone else's pain. The priest could also say that Satan is evil because the devil lacks empathy for human pain. Because the psychologist doesn't know how to psycho-analyse the devil, he dismisses evil and looks for an answer in the human brain.

Actually, I don't feel sick or sorry for the burger. I also eat pho. Do you think tigers should also be diagnosed as empathy deficit or should psychologist be diagnosed as mad?

The thing is most of us think of evil as unquantifiable and so it's best to destroy evil than to let it live, but if we say someone has suffered zero degree of empathy, that suggests a possibility of rehab. Don't it? Does that make you go against the death penalty for instance?

That's it!! Evil isn't just one thing.
It is collection of broken rules, lack of empathy, bullying, lack of money and, injustice etc ..
So, the cause isn't as simple as money is the root of all evil.
Thanks for lending an ear.

mastaping: I have just done that. Prove me wrong. Don't just generalise. Prove it!

Mastaping, you don't have good proof, but Elle does have good proof. His ignorance proofs to be very evil.

Mastaping, you don't have good proof, but Elle does have good proof. His ignorance proofs to be very evil.

Narcissistic personality disorder is the evilest of all evil in my book. Egocentric, god complex, lack of empathy, abuse of power etc...

^ Well bro, it is said that meditation is like psychotherapy, no?

Err... i think he actually has devised a scale of 0 to 6. So he may test the brain of the priest and deem it as minus-0 for believing there is Satan in the first place where there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for its existence?

I don't know, do you think animals live with compassion for others? Why do they have alarm calls for others in the group, and why do they soldier bees that sacrifice their lives defending the queen bee? And I don't know about tigers but why did this lionness adopt an oryx as a cub? Maybe they do have empathy genes too like us...

BOOK REVIEW
Examining the root of all evil: a lack of empathy
By Jesse Singal
June 9, 2011


"Paul,’’ a 28-year-old man, was sitting in a bar when he noticed a fellow patron looking at him. He went over to the offender and asked him, “Why were you staring at me?’’ The man responded, “I wasn’t staring at you. I was simply looking around the bar.’’

This didn’t mollify Paul. He “picked up a beer bottle, smashed it on the table, and plunged the jagged end deep into the man’s face,’’ killing him. He’s now in jail and hasn’t shown a trace of remorse.

Is Paul evil? Many people would say yes. It’s an easy answer. But it’s also a rather circular, uninformative one. Why is Paul evil? Oh, he just is.

Simon Baron-Cohen, a leading autism researcher and a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge, seeks to push us toward a more nuanced understanding of the worst of human behavior in “The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty.’’ The best way to understand the Pauls of the world, he argues — to say nothing of larger, more systemic instances of cruelty like the Holocaust — is to examine individuals’ capacity for empathy.

Toward this end, Baron-Cohen (yes, he is related to Sacha Baron Cohen of “Borat’’ fame — they’re cousins) and his colleagues have developed a scale for measuring empathy and have identified “the ten major brain regions involved in’’ it. The book is an attempt to lay out this latest research, explain why it matters, and talk about the role of empathy in society. It succeeds on the first two fronts — albeit a bit dryly — but falters on the last.

Unsurprisingly, Baron-Cohen is particularly interested in people with “zero degrees of empathy’’ — that is, those who have “no awareness of how [they] come across to others, how to interact with others, or how to anticipate their feelings or reactions.’’ One main contribution of “The Science of Evil’’ is its aim to take “old categories from psychiatry and reconceptualize them as examples of zero degrees of empathy.’’ He calls these categories “Zero-Negative’’ because they are “unequivocally bad for the sufferer and for those around them,’’ and goes on to present examples of each: borderline personalities, psychopaths, and narcissists. It’s an interesting idea, that a common thread of a lack of empathy ties together these disparate disorders, and Baron-Cohen makes his case convincingly.

He also discusses “Zero-Positives’’ — people who “alongside difficulties with empathy . . . have remarkably precise, exact minds.’’ Members of this population, many of whose members have autism spectrum disorders, have an immensely hard time picking up the normal rhythms of human conversation, but also sometimes have incredible abilities — in memory, math, or art, to name a few areas — that Baron-Cohen argues can be tied to a lack of empathy, in that they are connected to these individuals’ intense need for controlled, orderly environments. One of the subjects of the book, for instance, holds the world record for memorizing the value of pi out to thousands of places — a feat perhaps made manageable for this person because pi is static, unchanging, unlike the inherent unpredictability of human interaction.

It’s all interesting stuff, but the writing can be a little clunky, and even though Baron-Cohen goes out of his way to explain why each of those aforementioned 10 brain areas is important (they come up throughout the book), there are passages that nonetheless suffer from an “alphabet soup’’ effect.

But more importantly, “The Science of Evil’’ feels a bit like it’s stuck between being a journal article and a popular treatment of questions related to empathy. Yes, there are some case studies, and yes, Baron-Cohen talks about the broader societal questions pertaining to empathy, but in a somewhat cursory way. The book would have benefited from either going into more detail about how its neurological ideas can be applied to broader societal questions, or instead mostly ignoring this side of things completely and staying within the brain.

That said, “The Science of Evil’’ contains a huge amount of useful information for a rather short read. And while it won’t end our reliance on the catch-all caricature that is “evil,’’ it’s an important early step in building a more robust understanding of our species at its most horrific.

Hey tangy, how come I am the only one with a warning sign?
Is ellexo the monitor?

??? no, he's a lobster!

Sympathy and empathy are separate terms with some very important distinctions. Sympathy and empathy are both acts of feeling, but with sympathy you feel for the person; you’re sorry for them or pity them, but you don’t specifically understand what they’re feeling. Sometimes we’re left with little choice but to feel sympathetic because we really can’t understand the plight or predicament of someone else. It takes imagination, work, or possibly a similar experience to get to empathy.

Empathy can best be described as feeling with the person. Notice the distinction between for and with. To an extent you are placing yourself in that person’s place, have a good sense of what they feel, and understand their feelings to a degree. It may be impossible to be fully empathetic because each individual's reactions, thoughts and feelings to tragedy are going to be unique. Yet the idea of empathy implies a much more active process. Instead of feeling sorry for, you’re sorry with and have clothed yourself in the mantle of someone else’s emotional reactions.

Difference Between Sympathy and Empathy

Sympathy vs Empathy

Sympathy and Empathy are two of the most common misunderstood terms in the English language. There are hundreds of people that do not understand the difference between these two terms. They are actually two separate terms that have some important distinctions that everyone should know.

It is fair to state that both sympathy and empathy are acts of feelings. With sympathy though, you feel for the person. You pity or feel sorry for them but you do not necessarily understand what they are actually feeling. As a result of this you tend to have no choice but feel sympathetic for the person because you do not understand the problem or predicament that they are presently having. Empathy on the other hand takes a little more imagination, work, or even similar situations to gain empathy for someone. It is most often referred to as higher order in the overall complexity of the human emotions.

You can describe empathy as sharing a feeling with someone. So do you notice the difference between the two so far? With empathy to an extent you are placing yourself in the persons place, you have a good sense of how they feel, and you also understand their feelings to some degree. Sometimes it may seem impossible for someone to feel empathetic to a person’s feelings because of their reactions. These reactions involve their thoughts and feelings towards the issue are going to be unique to each and every individual. The idea of empathy though implies a much more active process than sympathy does.

It is hard for you to empathetic to a person’s feelings but it can be easy for you to feel sympathy. It is easy for you to feel sympathy for someone who has lost a loved one, has undergone some certain kind of trauma, or have faced some very difficult times.

When sympathy is expressed to a person that is experiencing grief suggests to you that that person is alone in their grief. Empathy on the other hand suggests to the person that you are right by their side through the whole issue that they are dealing with, at the moment. You have the ability to imagine how it is to be in their shoes, and you are with them during their time of stress and turmoil.

The difference between sympathy and empathy is often misunderstood but when you understand the differences you will be able to use the terms in a better manner.

When another suffers, you have empathy if you .
But you only have sympathy if you are ?

I think empathy is a little far-fetched because everybody dies alone.

Empathy is feeling what the sufferer feels.
Sympathy is feeling sad for the sufferer.
Not quite the same.

Wait, what has dying alone got to do with anything??
It is tough trying to follow this with these meds.
Got to try another mix.

Empathy is feeling what the sufferer feels.
Sympathy is feeling sad for the sufferer.
Not quite the same.

Wait, what has dying alone got to do with anything??
It is tough trying to follow this with these meds.
Got to try another mix.

Empathy is feeling what the sufferer feels.
Sympathy is feeling sad for the sufferer.
Not quite the same.

Wait, what has dying alone got to do with anything??
It is tough trying to follow this with these meds.
Got to try another mix.

You can only feel what the sufferer feels when you are in his shoes.
For example, at a public hanging, you have empathy for the guy
getting hung only if you are the one in the gallows when the trap-door
springs open beneath your feet and you brace yourself for nirvana.

Empathy is an idea, and sympathy is sentimental liberal nonsense.

Dying alone means onlookers around you never ever
feel what you feel as they watch blood oozing from your
skull you cracked when your motorbike hit a truck at 130 mph.

It is strange how we have our own impressions of what a word means and try to impose such meanings on others. We should all learn to use the Thesaurus. Just type the word you want, with a - then Thesaurus and you get this:



Often we get heated over a word or topic when we do not have a CLEAR idea of what it really means. This is a common trait in South East Asia where people use a mixture of languages interchangeably in common every day speech and words are loosely interpreted. Good English is a precise language.

You swear by the Thesaurus. Yet you attack others who swear by the Koran.
A word or surat, in itself, has no meaning other than that given by the mullah who you hate.
If Prince Siddharta Guatama did not have his own impressions of what the Vedas mean, he would not be the Buddha.
If Lee Jun Fang did not have his own impressions of what Kung Fu means, he would not be Bruce Lee.

The Power of Empathy

May 9th, 2011


It’s well worth reading Simon Baron-Cohen’s recent article on empathy in the Guardian.

In essence, he argues that describing people as evil doesn’t do anything to explain why they behave as they do. It also doesn’t offer us much in the way of a solution. So he suggests instead that we should think of ‘evil’ people as lacking in empathy. Their inability to empathise with others and consider their feelings means they do not comprehend the consequences of their ‘evil’ actions. They treat other people as objects, and are completely unaware of any pain those people may feel.

This is, for many people, unsettling stuff. Life is easier when things are simple – when all the good guys wear white hats and all the bad guys wear black. Where evil is a problem that can be solved by simply rounding up all the black hats and killing or imprisoning them. Accepting that actually there are many shades of grey, and that simple punishments are not working, leaves us facing a serious problem without a familiar solution. Many people would simply prefer to deny it.

This is so, I think, because it takes very little effort to condemn and a great deal of effort to understand. It can be tough enough just to make sense of our own feelings and beliefs, let alone trying to take those of others into consideration. Our own motivations and desires can be a baffling mystery, even before we try and factor in what other people might want or feel. It is so much simpler to define them as simple stereotypes, or even not as people at all.

But the truth is, it doesn’t have to be that hard. Some of us are good at empathy. Some of us have the capacity to tolerate different points of view and different feelings. To accept that life isn’t black and white, but ambiguous. In doing so, we can begin to understand the most problematic individuals in society, and begin to do appropriate things to help them.

It’s not easy, because our immediate, primeval reflex is to hate them. That’s how we think we’ll defend ourselves. We see people doing things that are harmful, and that frighten us. We fear that they’ll do the same to us, and so we prepare to defend ourselves by getting angry. We’re flooded with the primeval urge of fight or flight.

The problem is, if society is ever to advance beyond a constant state of conflict, we have to do better than that. If all we do is take ‘evil’ people and punish or destroy them, we’ll never discover how they get to be that way in the first place. Punishment has done nothing to stem the tide of violent and dangerous individuals in society – but perhaps learning what leads a person to ‘evil’ will. The idea that some people are born that way is both lacking in evidence and a complete dead-end for society. The idea that such individuals lack empathy – and that we can inoculate society against ‘evil’ by ensuring greater levels of empathy – at least has some hope.

On a small scale, this happens all the time in therapy. I deal regularly with clients who have difficult people in their lives. They might not describe their spouses, teenage kids, or bosses as ‘evil’, but sometimes it’s not far off. I would agree entirely with Simon Baron-Cohen’s observation that raising the empathy of everyone involved in that relationship helps to solve the problem. Problems are hard to solve when you know very little about them, and the more you empathise with another, the more you learn.

So I hope Baron-Cohen’s idea gains wide consideration. It’s easy to respond reflexively with hatred and condemnation to those whose harmful behaviour seems ‘evil’, but it serves only to pour fuel on the fire. We can defend ourselves quite effectively without needing to hate, and use the space to start understanding the problem rather than labeling it.

I am just as guilty for eating meats. I hope one day I'll become a vegetarian.

From this it seems like prior experiences have led to zero empathy. So it is very possible employ psychotherapy perhaps with a touch of mindfulness or meditation? Can't escape Buddhism can you? Lol.

The way I see it, or rather feel it, empathy is Oneness while sympathy implies an imaginative extension of Individuality.

You're deferring yet knowing you could do it today, in that, you're already guilty.


You're evil

Does that mean you want me and Tangy to remain ignorant and gullible to your evil??
Seriously, there is more than one cause of evil.
One is in believing you can separate millions of people from their belief in their religion
or stop them from trying to spread the tenets of their religion.

empathy implies your true feeling and emotion associating with other from your side of compassion, whereas sympathy is more in line with your side of the brain and how you think you should feel for the other. But be warned, the brain and the compassion sometime comes in conflict, depending on the issue of morality.

Love of animals led to language and man's domination of Earth
When our apemen ancestors began to interact with animals they developed empathy and the ability to communicate, claims anthropologist Pat Shipman

Humans became masters of the planet for a startling reason: our love of animals gave us unsurpassed power over nature. This is the claim of a leading American anthropologist who says our prehistoric ancestors' intense relationships with other creatures – including those we hunt, keep as pets and use for food – propelled humanity towards global domination.

Interacting with animals on an intimate basis led humans to develop sophisticated tools and evolve enhanced communication skills, including language itself, Dr Pat Shipman of Pennsylvania State University told the Observer. Animals also taught us that others – even other species – have emotions, needs and thoughts, while they also helped us to evolve the vital skills of empathy, understanding and compromise.

"The longest and enduring trend in human evolution has been a gradual intensification of our involvement with animals," she added. "But now our world is becoming increasingly urbanised and we are having less and less contact with them. The consequences are potentially catastrophic."

Shipman traces humanity's animal connection to the period 2.5 million years ago when our hominid ancestors first made tools. These crafted pieces of stone still litter sites in eastern Africa, including the Olduvai Gorge in Kenya, and bear testimony to the mental transformation in our ancestors' brains.

"These apemen didn't just pick up stones and use them to hammer or pound prey or plants," said Shipman. "They shaped those rocks for specific purposes. They had a mental image of the kind of tools they needed and created them by chipping away at a large piece of stone until they got what they wanted."

And what they wanted were tools for cutting up carcasses. In other words, the sharp stone flakes spread over Olduvai were not used primarily as weapons to kill animals or to hack down plants, but to process dead animals that had already been brought down by other carnivores. Apemen had begun to scavenge for meat from carcasses of prey killed by leopards, cheetahs and other carnivores. Armed with sharp blades, they could cut off chunks of antelope or deer and escape quickly before being eaten themselves by an enraged lion, they discovered.

And that was the crucial point that began our special relationship with the animal kingdom, said Shipman, whose book, The Animal Connection, is published this week. "Until that point, we had been a prey species. Carnivores ate us. Then we began scavenging before going on to hunt on our own behalf. Meat provided our ancestors with a wonderful, rich source of sustenance. However, scavenging for it left us in a very vulnerable position. We were still just as likely to be consumed when confronted by a carnivore as we were to kill in our own right. To survive, we had to learn about the behaviour of a vast number of different species – the ones we wanted to kill and the ones we wanted to avoid.

"For example, we would have learned to spot when lions were preparing to mate – when a male was showing off to a female – so that we could take some its prey while it was otherwise occupied. We would have also built up knowledge about the migration of species such as wildebeest and other animals."

In the end, this expertise would have become crucial to human survival, a point illustrated in the cave paintings in Lascaux and Chauvet in France and the other caves painted by humans 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. They show us that after 2 million years of evolution, humans had become utterly fixated by animals.

"These paintings are stunningly beautiful and superbly crafted," said Shipman. "Sometimes scaffolding was erected in the caves. At the same time, artists went to enormous lengths to get their pigments mixed with the right binding agents and placed in exactly the right spot. And what did they depict when they got things just right? Animals, animals and more animals.

"There are no landscapes and only a handful of poorly executed depictions of humans. By contrast the paintings of lions, stags, horses, bulls and the rest are magnificent. We were besotted with animals because our lives depended on our relationships with them."

Not long after these paintings were created, the first animal – the dog – was domesticated, followed some time later by the horse, sheep, goat and others. The development was crucial. In each case, humans had to learn to put themselves in the minds of these creatures in order to get them to do our bidding. In this way our senses of empathy and understanding, both with animals and with members of own species, were enhanced.

Our special relationship with animals is revealed today through our desire to have pets. "Humans are the only species on Earth to have one-to-one relationships with a member of another species," said Shipman. "No other creature would waste resources on a member of another family, let alone a member of another species. But we do and that is because we have evolved such close ties with specific animals over the millennia and because we are adapted to empathise with other creatures. It is a unique human attribute. We get so much from animals, much more than we appreciate."

Unfortunately, as society becomes increasingly urbanised those ties are being stretched and broken, added Shipman. "Our links to the animal world are precious and shouldn't be taken for granted," she said.

Viva Los Bunny Huggers!!!!