The Use and Misuse of Empathy, From Gaza to Ireland Hugh J. Curran
The Scottish moral philosopher, Adam Smith, author of the “Wealth of Nations”, wrote extensively on the history of morality in his book: The Theory of Moral Sentiments” and considered “sympathy” the highest sentiment. He defined Sympathy in terms of its root “pathos” which means “feeling or suffering together”, (similar to Empathy, a word which came into vogue in the early 1900s). Smith considered “sympathy as the very first building block of human society, activated through the imagination by placing oneself in another’s situation; as such it is our ‘fellow-feeling’ in which we all share similar passions”.
Recently Elon Musk, on a radio podcast, stated that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy”. Musk asserted that the “empathy response acts as an “exploit” or a “bug” in Western society that can be weaponized or manipulated against its best interests”. Although he also believed that people should care about others, he argued that empathy can be exploited so that it becomes weaponized which threatens civilization’s stability.” Weaponized empathy” or “empathy exploit” are phrases current among right wing conservatives who are critical of emotional appeals by the left, although, they themselves do not hesitate to exploit such phrases for political purposes.
David Hume, an historian and Scottish friend of Adam Smith, wrote “A Treatise of Human Nature” and viewed sympathy as a “mirror where you are aware of another person’s emotions…”; He considered that “the minds of all men are similar in their feelings and operations… Sympathy acts like a string instrument—when one string is struck, the others vibrate in motion. Because we can recognize the feelings of others, we value that which brings happiness to society and dislike those things that cause harm. This forms the basis of our moral judgments”.
Both Hume and Smith believed that human beings, at their best, have a natural capacity for sympathy that allows them to be concerned for the well-being of all those in their social and moral sphere.
One major problem with the current use of the term “empathy” is that it can lack focus, especially when it is weaponized for malign purposes. For instance, we can be swayed to lose empathy for our adversaries and often devalue, dehumanize and demonize them as enemies, by projecting the worst traits unto them.
From a religious perspective, empathy is an essential aspect of the “Sermon on the Mount”. The “Beatitudes” include blessings of the poor in spirit, as well as those who mourn, the meek, and the merciful, so that each person aspires to a higher spiritual understanding. Empathy is to respond to those who persecute you with kindness, mercy and generosity. The Golden Rule: “So in everything, do unto others what you would have them do unto you.”
Empathy is suffering with others without being overwhelmed by their suffering? In Gaza the Western World has been militarily complicit in the destruction of the habitations of 2.2 million people, bombing them continually over the past three years. The Distinguished Political Science Professor at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer considers this a genocide causing a serious erosion of support for Western values throughout the world. Those who once believed that Western values were worth emulating have become disillusioned as they witness the complicity of leaders of the EU, the U.S, Canada & other nations, continue to provide tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons and bombs to Israel, resulting in the on-going slaughter of indigenous Palestinians.
What kind of empathy is being expressed when only one side of a conflict is being supported in the obliteration of twenty thousand children and fifty-five thousand adults? Perhaps it is what Musk inadvertently referred to as the “weaponization of empathy” where a political elite makes destructive decisions, in support of an ethno-nationalist nation. Perhaps they are not fully aware of the significance of 21st century communications where photographic and video evidence becomes readily available to the people of the world, whether in Europe, Africa, Asia or the Americas.
Despite the destructiveness that has been taking place, there are peace organizations which have large platforms in peace-making circles. Such include Jewish Voice for Peace with its 750,000 supporters and ALLMEP in Palestine/Israel which includes 200 peace-building organizations and hundreds of thousands of supporters.
Though these peace-making organizations share much empathy for the suffering of the victims of the assaults against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, they, nevertheless, have had little direct impact on the decision-making in the U.S. Congress or the Israel Knesset. But they do have a growing membership and ever-evolving support,
Besides the destruction of Gaza and so many of its people, there is another criticism leveled at the Western World by Professor Mearsheimer. This was the decision by Israel and the U.S. to deliberately assassinate Iran’s leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenie, with five of his family, and subsequent to that, the bombing of a school and the killing of 120 young girls and their teachers. As Professor Mearsheimer noted, these acts against the Ayatollah took place while Iranians were negotiating in good faith, provoking another serious blow to western liberal values. Those values now appear more and more hollow to those in Asia and Africa who had once wished to emulate Western nations.
The poet Auden noted that “those to whom evil is done do evil in return”. The founders of Israel began their colonizing enterprise well before the holocaust that took place in Europe. So why were Palestinians treated so abysmally in 1948 as 700,000 were compelled to leave their homes and have five million acres of their property expropriated. Many of these refugees ended up in Gaza where in recent years 75,000 lost their lives to Israeli bombing, while the destruction of universities, schools, hospitals and residences were taking place simultaneously.
What then is the shared humanity of a people who have a long history together, according to archaeologists and historians. A genetic connection exists from bronze and Iron Age ancestors as well as DNA studies showing that Palestinian Arabs and Jewish populations “cluster closely together on genetic maps”
T.S Eliot remarked in “Four Quartets” that “humankind cannot bear very much reality” and that “Time present and time past/are both present in time future/and time future [is]contained in time past…” Perhaps this is the real issue. Time does not change our deep-seated biases so we find it necessary to limit our empathy to those we have positive emotional bonds with. A related word to “empathy” is “apathy” which has the same root but with “a” in front it means non-feeling. That non-feeling is most evident among those elected officials in the U.S. Congress and U.K. Parliaments, who support the interests and concerns of only one side in these lethal conflicts.
Recently a young visitor mentioned about having friends who admired Elon Musk and considered him someone to emulate. The question I asked was why any young person would want to emulate a man who portrayed himself holding a chainsaw while destroying USAID, the most effective of all American international agencies, founded by John F. Kennedy in 1962. My young friend tried to defend Musk who had insisted USAID was riddled with fraud and waste, although fact-checkers noted that these claims relied on misinformation. Musk directed his malign intent upon an agency that had saved hundreds of thousands of children’s lives and contributed to the global eradication of smallpox and related diseases.
Now the West faces an even more grievous dilemma, as Professor Mearsheimer repeated: The genocide of Gaza, which has taken place eight decades after the expropriation of Palestinian property, has alienated the majority of the world against, not only Israel, but Western nations as a whole. Western values, as he notes, have become hollow and with little substance due to the complicity of Europe and North America in providing billions of dollars of weapons that Israel used to destroy Gaza and is continuing to do so on the West Bank and in Lebanon. Without this massive military support Israel would be unable to carry out its destructive policies.
The original British Mandate of 1917 that created Israel was supported by those in Britain who wished to create, what Sir Ronald Storrs, the first British military governor of Jerusalem: “a little loyal Jewish Ulster”. In other words, a colony similar to the British colony planted in Ulster in the 17th century. Four hundred years later that colony is still not free of conflict between an indigenous Irish population and a colony still loyal to Britain. In Palestine, the “little loyal Jewish Ulster” was not very long “loyal” as it rebelled against Britain by bombing the King David Hotel in 1946 and killing 90, mostly British, employees. Following that effort to force the British to leave, “Jewish Ulster” turned its attention to displacing Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba.
The Edward Said Professor at Columbia University, Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian, expressed astonishment during interviews, at the similarities between the history of British colonies in Ireland and European colonial Zionists settling in Palestine.
Some of these similarities included the British transportation of seven hundred of the most notorious Black & Tan paramilitaries directly from Ireland to Israel in 1922. Feared for their brutality in Ireland during the War of Independence, they had left a trail of enduring anger so deep that generations later their cruelties were still vividly remembered. In Palestine the Black & Tans trained the Israel military in similar brutal techniques to be used against the Palestinians.
To conclude our exploration of the topic of Empathy, there are spiritual leaders, including the Dalai Lama, who view “empathy as the seed of compassion”, requiring cultivation and development through mindfulness practices. He noted that Buddhism includes the cultivation of: loving-kindness, compassion, empathy for the success of others while also trying to maintain the equanimity of interior balance.
Gandhi believed that a truly religious or moral person is one who understands and feels the suffering of others. For Gandhi, non-violence was an active expression of universal empathy and love. Real empathy is to feel the pain of the oppressed and even to comprehend the oppressor’s motivations. He emphasized personal transformation and self-reflection (self-empathy), arguing that inner discipline, humility, and truthfulness must precede any effort to heal or change society. His empathy extended to animals and the environment; A famous statement by Gandhi was that:“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”.
In Native American & First Nation societies, the east coast Wabanaki people (including Mi’kmaq & Penobscot) share similar moral values and spiritual relationships. The phrase N’dilnabamuk (or “all my relations”) serves as a constant prayer and reminder that humans are inherently related to all elements of creation—including the “four-legged, the winged, the plants, the trees, and the living Earth”. Empathy in this context is the understanding that everything shares one life and one breath, so that the well-being of the individual dictates the well-being of the whole. Every action or prayer ripples across this web, requiring emotional and spiritual accountability
Hugh Curran taught in Peace & Reconciliation Studies at the University of Maine for 25 years.