It’s easier to share someone’s joy. It’s like when your boy gets into Yale, I’m sure that you would be jumping up and down with them.
How exactly does the experience have to be? If you’re expecting exact re-experience, then, of course not, unless you want to get into supernatural stuff. However, I think it’s quite common to get fairly close to the same feelings.
Consider a situation where I read a thread here about someone having a sick pet, having to deal with the tough decision about whether or not to euthanize, and eventually going through with it and dealing with the grief. Having had pets growing up and gone through that, of course I understand at an intellectual level. But at the same time, I don’t just intellectually understand, I experience sadness and grief of my own as I draw the comparisons to my own experiences. It’s not as intense as theirs generally, since I’ve worked through the grief, but it’s a very similar emotional state. So, short of ESP, or perhaps inflicting identical circumstances on myself, we’re sharing the same experience at a level beyond simple intellectual understanding.
Moreso, I tend to have a greater awareness of the intensity of the emotions of others, and it will have an affect on how I empathize with them. That is, if someone is suffering grief, but is handling it well, I’ll probably have a less intense reaction than someone else suffering grief that is agonizing in tears. I will even tend to be able to pick up on whether someone is actually not feeling much or just trying not to cry in front of others, but those signals are a bit more subtle. I think that adds another level to empathy, even if its still not necessarily identical.
Really, if I were to hazard a guess, I think the OP is struggling with the difference between empathy and sympathy. I can sympathize with a parent losing a child, as I understand it on an intellectual level, and even though I can relate to some experiences of my own, not having kids, muchless having lost one, I can’t experience anything that reasonably approximates their loss. So, in that sort of situation, I think it’s fair to say I can’t truly empathize, but I’m still feeling something.
Neither of my daughters wanted to be Yalies, and they both wanted to go into more hands-on careers than I have. Younger one will be doing a semester in New Zealand as a film student / intern for Weta Workshop. But that is irrelevant.
I’m happy for her.
Whereas I have empathy for her because in my heart I’ve always wanted to be a young lady on her way to New Zealand to be a film student/intern.
TMI?
If it is easier to share joy with someone than pain. Is it possible that we fear to share pain because it may pull you into depression. For instance, suppose a good friend dies, you console the wife and you try to be extra nice. But at the same time you fear empathy because you’ve lost a good friend and don’t want to dwell on all the good times you had with him.
I’m confused. Are we talking about whether such empathy is impossible, or whether such empathy is desired? That is two very different subjects.
Thank you. (I personally doubt she will be working directly for Weta, but I understand the school helps with the occasional project. I often exaggerate for effect, and she seems to have learned from me.)
Why the hell not? Remembrance of good times is the least I could do for a dear friend who has passed away. Well, that and a Viking funeral. (Is his wife hot?)
I don’t think you’ve spent enough time trying to understand “empathy” in terms of any of it’s accepted definitions. Not even the one you’re attempting to advance in your own OP.
Sure, be a parent. You’ll understand empathy of this sort.
Yes, it’s cliche, but it’s very, very true. Wanna hurt because someone else is hurt? Have your child be sick.
Basically, our subjective experiences are our own, and nobody can really know what it is like to be another. So in that sense, there is no “true” Scotsman – I mean empathy.
But certainly some people have a knack (and in others it can be developed) to metaphorically step into another person’s shoes and imagine what it must be like for them. I’d certainly call that empathy.
I’m trying to stay neutral on whether empathy is desired. I’m asking whether it is possible.
Yes. For most commonly acceptable definitions of empathy it is possible.
Being capable of having concern for the pain of others is one of the main features of civilization. It is more than possible, Mirror neurons are one of the features of humans.
There is a difference in sympathy and empathy. I suspect that many of us felt empathy with the victims of 9-11 – even though we were perhaps thousands of miles away and didn’t know the people personally. We could feel the horror, if not the physical pain.
Emotional pain can be a very physical experience. It is all linked together.
The primary characteristic of sociopaths or psychopaths is that they do not, cannot feel empathy.
I think the first experience that I had with empathy was as a child when the family pet was run over and died slowly. It was also the first time I felt grief in a physical way – in the pit of my stomach and even more. It happened again in college when I saw photographs of victims of the war in Spain in the 1930s. And again, even moreso, in seeing photographs of survivors of the dropping of the atom bombs in Japan. It was eighteen before I knew about the Holocaust. That empathy has never left me.
I wasn’t feeling exactly what the victims had felt, but it was certainly more than sympathy.
Empathy is a good thing. It helps us to comprehend reality.
I’m confused. In the OP it sounded like you were mixing altruism with empathy,pchaos.
Empathy (sensing how others feel) is essential for a civilized society to some extent. Sometimes I wonder how often we practice that when we’re in group mode, though. Just because we can emphasize with others doesn’t always mean we will be altruistic about their situation.
I think it’s important for people to be able to differentiate their own feelings from what they observe, guess, think others are feeling. In fact I suspect it’s a must for good mental health. Could get pretty confusing in “feelings central” otherwise.
It’s an uncomfortable moment for me whenever I hear someone tell another, “You shouldn’t feel that way” because feelings are facts not rules. Maybe it’s those mirror neurons of ours causing us distress when someone else is distressed?
I don’t think we know yet whether we can feel someone else’s feelings and experience them as our own. Perhaps the answer is in quantum physics. The best indicators that it is possible at present are studies being done with conjoined twins, not individuals.
It does get kind of supernatural (eeee-oooo) just to think about it.
When I was rejected by Yale, my mother sobbed uncontrollaby. Her pain was at least as great as mine, if not greater. Whether that was a helpful reaction is for another thread, but I have no doubt she felt the pain of it as much as I did.
Empathy doesn’t just exist, it seems to be hard wired: Mirror neurons
Can we talk some more about Mother Teresa? I don’t think she was empathetic at all.