I’m been thinking about small and informal ways to build empathy[1]. I don’t have big or complex thoughts on this (and thus I’m sharing rough ideas as a quick take rather than as a full post). This is a tentative and haphazard musing/exploration, rather than a rigorous argument.
Read about people who have various hardships or suffering. I think that this is one of the benefits of reading fiction: it helps you more realistically understand (on an emotional level) the lives of other people. Not all fiction is created equal, and you probably won’t won’t develop the same level of empathy reading about vampire romance as you will reading a book about a family struggling to survive a civil war[2]. But good literature can make you cry and leave you shaken for how much you feel. The other approach here is to read things that are not fiction; read real stories. Autobiographies can be one option, but if you don’t want to commit to something so large, try exploring online forums where people tell their own stories of the hard and difficult things they have gone through. Browsing the top posts on the Cancer subreddit might bring tears to your eyes. I suggest that you do not do this during the workday: If you can read about these experiences (a person watching their spouse suffer and die while being helpless to do anything about it, or a parent knowing he won’t live to see his child’s tenth birthday) without crying and losing composure, then you are made of sterner stuff than I am[3]. I remember crying when I read Zhenga Cuomao’s writing about her husband’s “trial” and imprisonment: “How is it this hard to be a good person?” I wanted so desperately for the world to be a just place, and the world so obviously was not. So if you want to build empathy this way, the action might be something like occasionally seek out places where you can hear of actual hardship that real people undergo.
Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that experiencing hardship can build empathy for hardship. It is one of the common tropes of storytelling. But (taking physical disability as an example) it is very different to think “it must be hard to live life with such mobility limitations” and to actually live for a few days being physically unable to drink from a glass of water or raise your arms above your head. The trouble with walking in someone’s shows is that it is normally not feasible. You can understand what it is like to be an immigrant in a foreign country, but only if you are willing to commit multiple years of your life to actually doing that. There are roleplaying exercises people can do, but it is hard to get a full picture. There isn’t any easy way for a man to have the experience that a woman has in American society[4], nor it is easy for a person without any mental illnesses to understand what it is like to live with bipolar or schizophrenia. Nonetheless, some people seriously commit to these efforts. Seneca recommends regularly spending time destitute and depriving yourself of comfortable clothing a good quality food[5]. In 1959 John Howard Griffin (a white man) chemically darkened his skin to appear black. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book about her experience spending months trying to make it as a low-wage, unskilled worker (a project that has been duplicated by others). And even she was aware that she could always stop ‘pretending’ if she had a real emergency. The National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta has an experience/exhibit in which you sit on a bar stool and put on headphones to immerse yourself in a simulated experience of being black in a diner in the deep south.
Why bother? Well, I have a vague and not well-reasoned intuition that being more empathetic makes you a better person. Will it actually increase your impact? I have no idea. Maybe you would have higher impact and you would make the world a better place if you just kept your head down and worked on your project.
A polished article would have some sort of conclusion or a nice takeaway, but for this short form I’ll just end it here.
I’m using “empathy” in a pretty sloppy sense. Something like “caring for other people who are not related/connected to you” or “developing something of an emotional understanding of the suffering people go through, rather than merely an intellectual one.” I’m thinking about this in a very suffering-focused sense.
Half of a Yellow Sun is once of the books that I think made me a little bit more empathetic. It is a book about the Nigerian Civil war, something that I assume most of fellow North Americans know almost nothing about. I certainly knew nothing about it.
And to echo writings from many other people in and around the EA community: if you think that is bad, remember that there is a similar level of suffering happening every day for millions of people.
Although you can read accounts from transgender people. The rough summary would be something like “I am stunned at how different people treat me when they see me as a man/woman.”
Note that the Stoic interpretation here isn’t to build empathy, but rather to make yourself unafraid of hardship. And the trouble with using these for building empathy is that you aren’t really in the situation; you can stop pretending whenever you like. For anyone who is curious, here is the relevant excerpt from The Daily Stoic that turned me on to this idea:
What if you spent one day a month experiencing the effects of poverty, hunger, complete isolation, or any other thing you might fear? After the initial culture shock, it would start to feel normal and no longer quite so scary.
There are plenty of misfortunes one can practice, plenty of problems one can solve in advance. Pretend your hot water has been turned off. Pretend your wallet has been stolen. Pretend your cushy mattress was far away and that you have to sleep on the floor, or that your car was repossessed and you have to walk everywhere. Pretend you lost your job and need to find a new one. Again, don’t just think about these things, but live them. And do it now, while things are good. As Seneca reminds us: “It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress. . . . If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes.”
I’m been thinking about small and informal ways to build empathy[1]. I don’t have big or complex thoughts on this (and thus I’m sharing rough ideas as a quick take rather than as a full post). This is a tentative and haphazard musing/exploration, rather than a rigorous argument.
Read about people who have various hardships or suffering. I think that this is one of the benefits of reading fiction: it helps you more realistically understand (on an emotional level) the lives of other people. Not all fiction is created equal, and you probably won’t won’t develop the same level of empathy reading about vampire romance as you will reading a book about a family struggling to survive a civil war[2]. But good literature can make you cry and leave you shaken for how much you feel. The other approach here is to read things that are not fiction; read real stories. Autobiographies can be one option, but if you don’t want to commit to something so large, try exploring online forums where people tell their own stories of the hard and difficult things they have gone through. Browsing the top posts on the Cancer subreddit might bring tears to your eyes. I suggest that you do not do this during the workday: If you can read about these experiences (a person watching their spouse suffer and die while being helpless to do anything about it, or a parent knowing he won’t live to see his child’s tenth birthday) without crying and losing composure, then you are made of sterner stuff than I am[3]. I remember crying when I read Zhenga Cuomao’s writing about her husband’s “trial” and imprisonment: “How is it this hard to be a good person?” I wanted so desperately for the world to be a just place, and the world so obviously was not. So if you want to build empathy this way, the action might be something like occasionally seek out places where you can hear of actual hardship that real people undergo.
Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that experiencing hardship can build empathy for hardship. It is one of the common tropes of storytelling. But (taking physical disability as an example) it is very different to think “it must be hard to live life with such mobility limitations” and to actually live for a few days being physically unable to drink from a glass of water or raise your arms above your head. The trouble with walking in someone’s shows is that it is normally not feasible. You can understand what it is like to be an immigrant in a foreign country, but only if you are willing to commit multiple years of your life to actually doing that. There are roleplaying exercises people can do, but it is hard to get a full picture. There isn’t any easy way for a man to have the experience that a woman has in American society[4], nor it is easy for a person without any mental illnesses to understand what it is like to live with bipolar or schizophrenia. Nonetheless, some people seriously commit to these efforts. Seneca recommends regularly spending time destitute and depriving yourself of comfortable clothing a good quality food[5]. In 1959 John Howard Griffin (a white man) chemically darkened his skin to appear black. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book about her experience spending months trying to make it as a low-wage, unskilled worker (a project that has been duplicated by others). And even she was aware that she could always stop ‘pretending’ if she had a real emergency. The National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta has an experience/exhibit in which you sit on a bar stool and put on headphones to immerse yourself in a simulated experience of being black in a diner in the deep south.
Why bother? Well, I have a vague and not well-reasoned intuition that being more empathetic makes you a better person. Will it actually increase your impact? I have no idea. Maybe you would have higher impact and you would make the world a better place if you just kept your head down and worked on your project.
A polished article would have some sort of conclusion or a nice takeaway, but for this short form I’ll just end it here.
I’m using “empathy” in a pretty sloppy sense. Something like “caring for other people who are not related/connected to you” or “developing something of an emotional understanding of the suffering people go through, rather than merely an intellectual one.” I’m thinking about this in a very suffering-focused sense.
Half of a Yellow Sun is once of the books that I think made me a little bit more empathetic. It is a book about the Nigerian Civil war, something that I assume most of fellow North Americans know almost nothing about. I certainly knew nothing about it.
And to echo writings from many other people in and around the EA community: if you think that is bad, remember that there is a similar level of suffering happening every day for millions of people.
Although you can read accounts from transgender people. The rough summary would be something like “I am stunned at how different people treat me when they see me as a man/woman.”
Note that the Stoic interpretation here isn’t to build empathy, but rather to make yourself unafraid of hardship. And the trouble with using these for building empathy is that you aren’t really in the situation; you can stop pretending whenever you like. For anyone who is curious, here is the relevant excerpt from The Daily Stoic that turned me on to this idea: