Emphatic Distress - Why Your Empathy Might Be Destructive

A common argument made against organized religion is that it's followers aren't genuinely good people or that their good deeds aren't done out of the kindness of their heart, but to receive some sort of reward in the afterlife. My go-to counter-argument against this used to be that nobody does good out of the kindness of their heart; people do good things because it makes them feel good. For example, a person might give money to a homeless person to avoid feelings of distress at seeing them suffer.

However, after listening to the audiobook The Science of Compassion by Kelly Mcgonigal, I realized my argument might have been less than true and that my entire understanding of compassion was flawed. The book outlined the difference between Emphatic Distress (described above) and Compassion.

Using the definitions, here, Empathic Distress is "the strong aversive and self-oriented response to the suffering of others, accompanied by the desire to withdraw from a situation in order to protect one’s self from excessive negative feelings." Compassion however,  "is characterized by feelings of warmth, concern, and care for the other, as well as a strong motivation to improve the other’s wellbeing. Compassion goes beyond feeling with the other to feeling for the other"

In many ways compassion is the exact opposite of Emphatic Distress. While Emphatic Distress motivates a person to relieve their own suffering, Compassion aims to relieve the other person's suffering. The difference is that compassion aims to improve the situation while emphatic distress - or empathy - motivates a person to try to relieve one's own distress. Empathy can actually be destructive, so destructive  in fact, that there's an entire book written on how it can lead to cruelty

The difference between compassion and emphatic distress can be hard to parse out since a person can feel both emphatic distress and compassion at the same time but it's quite crucial. Studies have shown that empathy and compassion light up different parts of the brain.

An example that highlights this distinction would be the overprotective or over-controlling parent Overprotective parents shelter their children from danger to a degree that it's detrimental to them since the children don't develop the skills or confidence to handle life's challenges.   A common notion people have about overprotective parents it that their overprotective nature is motivated by love and that they are simply misguided at what is best for their children. This might be true in some cases, however I suspect that in many cases overprotective parents take part in their destructive behavior not out of ignorance, but because they want to protect themselves from the difficult feelings that come up when their children are in danger or take risks. Compassion in this case would look like allowing their children to do things beneficial to their well-being despite the distress a parent feels.

This is much easier said than done, especially given that it's easy to confuse the two. In addition, compassion is harder and actually takes courage since you are moving towards the suffering instead of away from it. I think a crucial first step would be to recognizing the difference between the two and acknowledging that just because an action is motivated by empathy, doesn't make it the right action in that scenario. It can also be useful to ask the question on whether or not an action is improving the situation.

The Case Against Free Speech Is Based On A False Premise

Recently, the controversial subreddit r/theDonald, a forum supporting Donald Trump's politics was banned off of Reddit due to violating it's hate speech guidelines. While there are several arguments for censoring of opinions, one of the most common and strongest arguments in favor of censorship is that silencing radical opinions stops them from spreading.

This makes sense. Ideas are similar to viruses in that one person can infect another person with an idea if they are persuasive enough. If we remove people with problematic ideas from a platform or our life, it will protect us and other individuals from getting infected.

However, this argument ignores several problems:
- Silencing someone doesn't make them go away, it most likely radicalizes them even more. This is partially due to the fact that they will go to other platforms that are more radical and will increase their confirmation bias. We live in the information age. In more medieval eras, silencing an opinon would make it disappear but now, no amount of censorship can make an opinion disappear. It can only radicalize it more.
- It weakens your own argument because not being exposed to different ideas weakens your own arguments. This makes you less in a position to "convert" others. Similar to how Trees that are exposed to harder conditions are less fragile if an idea is not exposed to counter-arguments, that idea will be weaker since it won't be as well though out.
- It's an admission of defeat of sorts. Silencing an opinion instead of engaging it is essentially saying that "we can't make an argument against you and/or are too lazy to do so." which makes your side look weak and radicalizes people who are prone to being radicalized.
- We live in the age of the Internet. All opinions have a platform of some sort now, like it or not.

The alternative to silencing an idea would be to engage with them. The common argument against this is that this does no good since radicals don't care and that it is just a waste of energy. I vehemently disagree. I've found that even with the most batshit insane people I've met, when I tried to genuinely understand their point of view, they were more open to listening to what I had to say. Of course, this is not the same as changing someone's mind but that's not the point. The point here is that this is simply more constructive than trying to silence them. Being able to have dialogue with radicals is quite miraculous by itself because it means that we aren't enemies. We are simply humans trying to figure shit out.

This sort of approach had remarkable results with the case of Daryl Davis who convinced 200 KKK members to give up their robes. Another remarkable example of this was the case of Megan Phemps-Roger, a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church who left the church due to exchanges she had on Twitter. I highly recommend her TED talk.

I think the reason that we have the temptation to silence others instead of genuinely engaging with them is that it is hard. It's hard to admit that an opinion we disagree with might have some legitimacy and it's hard to humanize people with completely different world views. One study found that when challenged by different political opinions, participants' amygdala,  the part of the brain that responds to threats would show greater activity. Put another way, your brain perceives different opinions as threats to you regardless of the content of those opinions. 

"What do you call people you can't talk to? Enemies."

This quote by Professor Jordan Peterson always stuck with me over the years. If we as a society cannot communicate with each other about the problems facing us, we can't progress forward.  Free speech is valuable and any type of censorship is not a decision to be made lightly.