The Importance of Empathy: or more specifically, Love

I'm struck with something of a premonition, regarding my future, as I spend Valentine's Day night at home alone eating peanuts while writing about empathy and love.  "Forever alone" comments notwithstanding, given the commercial holy-day, I thought this was ironic a time as ever to write to publish this post.

Empathy's a reoccurring theme in this blog and I thought it deserved a post of its own, if for no other reason than to highlight its singular importance.

First, what do I mean by "empathy"?

Well, Wikipedia currently has empathy pegged as "the capacity to recognize emotions that are being experienced by another sentient or fictional being."  I actually like their definition; it's almost identical to my own.  In experiential terms, empathy is the capacity to understand a person's values: where they come from and how they affect the person.

In other words, empathy is the crystallization of experientialism: it's the end result of an education of how we experience things and how these experiences affect us.  Empathy is a product of increased self-awareness; it's a tool to help understand human behaviour,

And it's incredibly important to changing the world, especially putting an end to violence in all its forms and manifestations.  After all, as I've stated before, it's the essence and logic of the Golden Rule: "do unto others as you'd have done to you." Without empathy there's no reason to follow the rule, because if you can't perceive how and why other people feel things, you have no reason to treat them kindly.  The Wikipedia article actually covers this point as it suggests, immediately following the previously cited quotation, that "one may need to have a certain amount of empathy before being able to experience compassion."

And here's some of my gushiest writing yet.  Love depends on empathy.  A healthy relationship is founded on empathy.  Our potential for intimacy as a species lay in our capacity to feel others' feelings: to share them.

Empathy's the reason people can delight in other people's happiness.  Empathy is the reason I write this blog and fight for critical consciousnesses.  Whenever I cite the lives of the future, I'm empathizing with their existences.  Without empathy, I would not be writing this.

I write this post, because as of yet the majority of the people in my life take empathy for granted, or lack the capacities to even exercise it in the first place.  If you want people to care about any and all causes and individuals you have to teach them empathy, because otherwise they have no reason to care.  I was extremely fortunate to stumble upon the skill myself, but so many flounder in self-flagellation and victimization because they don't yet have it.

For teaching empathy is to teach love.  If you want a world of love, teach empathy.