As an engineer, I would like to point out that a design is not about my beliefs but to fulfill the needs is a collective.

When it comes to a project tailored for a given individual, there must be a compromise. In biomedical engineering, we cannot do what is pleasant to the patient all the time. We need to interact with nurses, physicians, physiotherapists, etc. Sometimes, it is difficult for the patient to empathize with the staff!!!

Best wishes.

Sorry, Gloria is that online or in a book?

Just to begin the discussion, and not from a psychological angle, The Golden Rule, long considered an early instance of empathy is reciprochal and the 'do unto others' is really 'you scratch my back' but in prettier language. Empathy entails advantages for the person feeling and projecting the empathy.

Empathy is not altruism and does not require action or demanding action merely feeling, although it can lead to action. Nevertheless, every psychological feeling or complexity entails advantages for the individual experiecing them.

Following

Following ....

Hi,

I can express an opinion only as a physician working on empathy (the perceived or real lack thereof) in the medical profession.

Stemming from my research, empathy is an useful mental state (sometimes projecting into behavior) for life and care in a civilized society, rather than alone, in the bush.

It assists the state in managing its population - their health (as citizens are also tax-payers and a work force) and inter-personal relationships (especially with reference to the lowering of malpractice and other types of crime).

It also assists the individual in understanding and relating to other people - their physical and mental problems, struggles, and agonies. An empath is more likely to have broader mental horizons, be more self aware (especially as to impact of one's actions onto others) and consider multiple factors in his/her decision-making.

The idea is that a somewhat more intimate insight of others and their issues would lead to more humane, effectively assisting and non-criminal behavior towards others, i.e. a practicing empath would sacrifice a part of their more forward "I-want-the-best" , "be-on-top", "get-the-most", "I-am-always-the-screwed-one" aspects of his/her ego and learn to let go and be more considerate to others.

After all, a society is strong only if its members learn to live in relative harmony by sacrificing a part of their aggressive "I-do-not-care-about-anyone-but-me" attitude for the greater good of everybody.

As to predatory or unconscious hijacking of someone else's feelings - I cannot say. I am not a psychiatrist.

I hope that helps :)

There are different perspectives (and appearances) of empathy. I view emphathy in terms of my relationship to Mathematics. Perhaps it will clear the air and make room for empathy with respect to Mathematics [Geometry, Topology], if we consider what empathy and empathize mean:

OED:

empathy /"Emp@Ti/

· n. the ability to empathize.

– DERIVATIVES empathetic adj. empathetically adv. empathic /Em"paTIk/ adj. empathically adv.

– ORIGIN C20: from Gk empatheia (from em- ‘in’ + pathos ‘feeling’) translating Ger. Einfühlung.

empathize (also empathise)

· v. understand and share the feelings of another.

In my case, understanding and sharing feelings [and knowledge] about Geometry and Topology are part of my everyday experience.

More to the point, empathy is an important component in the life of a Mathematician. It is what makes teaching Mathematics come alive.

Michael, I had forgotten the relation of goodness to beauty in an aesthetic sense, but in that we are looking at perceptual involvements with chosen realities and here perhaps goodness and pleasure are mingled. An empathy with and for pleasure-giving objects encourages the reiteration of pleasure giving objects.

Valeria, I am deeply interested in your subject but my grasp is somewhat different based on historical examples. Although there was and is evidence of medical empathy throughout medical history or the history of physicians it tended to be weighed alongside status and was rarely evidenced by itself. I remember the 17th century understanding of plagues and how to prevent them based on the assumption that poor people living in squalid slums without money or decent food were to blame therefore the remedy was to quarantine the poor, build fences around their settlements and stop them getting out. It worked to some extent but obviously the problem probably lay with the travelling middle and upper classes. In this example, the rich were more important to society (they paid the physicians) and needed to be preserved. The poor were dispensable. A perspective that continued into the following two centuries.

At times the medical profession has expressed group empathy but not as often as generally assumed. Many consider themselves scientists and patients merely objects.

James my response to mathematics unfortunately does not equate with any known processes of empathy, but something of the reverse.

I found two sources according to Gloria Lee Mcmillan's recommendations on empathy from the phenomenological, evolutionary and neuroscientific approaches/philosophy of empathy, history of empathy, empathy and understanding, empathy and morals, empathy and aesthetics, empathy and individual differences/.

https://www.academia.edu/36090072/Review_-The_Routledge_Handbook_of_Philosophy_of_Empathy_ed._Heidi_Maibom_?fbclid=IwAR1MAF6JR8dggumE2oMEKpiO6umQHr6l7xbP5zgjmX87z0CM0l4gOaFS_Is

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/df7d/a2e3d17f91513d1b3eca1bf920e7696b0c48.pdf?fbclid=IwAR35932Xn-1e9AVyRNETrKnv5mPKfw3tck1YJBl8XyPWsmUbhwW-WCs3g2g

Stanley,

You can view the detailed introduction via this...

https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=G_QABAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PT16

The positive stereotype of empathy is repreented here in a remarkable and highly popular episode of the Science Fiction series STAR TREK. The episode is called "The Empath." How does this episode affect you...? Is the rhetorical case made clearly? Rhetoric moves via empathy, as well. What are your thoughts/ feelings about the episode?

EMPATHY is also treated clinically as something people fall into and cannot escape. Ther eis a You Tube on that.

LINK: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6g9sxh

Empathy as the ability to empathize with the situation and argumentation of an interlocutor is part of the normal rules of good communication, be it in everyday social interaction, in business life or in political negotiations. It is also a matter of sounding out the limits of interest in a particular solution on the part of the interlocutor. Empathy requires neither to reveal one's own interests nor to have to adopt the world view or ideologies of others.

Empathy results from the experience that the same facts can be perceived with different interests.

If both sides are practiced in empathy, conflicts can be better resolved to the satisfaction of all.

Of course, there are also situations in which empathy either fails - for example before a threat of violence - and one has to decide whether to break off communication - "leave the field" - or exercise power oneself, which serves one's own protection.

To consciously behave empathetically is a self-protection, to be biased (e.g. because third parties had expressed some bad opinion about my interlocutor): One can check oneself whether one has a prejudice against the interlocutor.

I do not see empathy as something special that we should now acquire in courses with a certificate, but as a principle of fairness towards others.

Stanley,

Funny you should mention it. It is part of my monograph. I have combed through history to try and find key developments that have led to medicine as we know and experience it today.

Historically, empathy was not part of the medical profession or social reasoning at all. As you correctly note, medicine and science were privilege of the rich and the ruling class as a whole (nobles and clergy). Everyone else would have had to wait upon God's grace for empathy and mercy. And God's will was not always empathetic towards the poor sinner. Monasteries on the other hand...

With the arrival of the European Enlightenment and its emphasis on the individual, medicine got a new spur. But the greatest watershed, I think, was the 19th century and the Age of Reason followed by the industrialization in western Europe.

The plagues were a factor, but only as far as a fast loss of tax paying labor force was concerned.

The rich nobles were not empathetic towards anybody. They dispensed small favors to the poor following a principle called "noblesse oblige."

As nobility was tied to the Church, by doing so, the rich also bought the good opinion of clergymen and their immediate, but inferior society (many of whom, as it just happens, were paying them taxes).

Let us bear in mind also that these were times without TV, internet and general entertainment, and I know it sounds silly, but I think that they might have found other people's plight somewhat entertaining, and certainly breaking the monotony of their days.

The wars of 19th century Europe and North America were another great impetus for change. The First and Second World War - yet another. The quest for human rights - a fourth.

Most physicians nowadays consider our profession empathetic enough, as we treat the human body and, thus, assist the sick. Further expression of empathy is believed as hindering objective professional judgement, but I consider such an ideology to be wrong.

My research shows that patients seek empathy from physicians. Empathy shows that physicians care and would do their utmost to save patients' lives.

I agree with @Hein Retter "empathy results from the experience that the same facts can be perceived with different interests".

Is the ability to comprehend, understand, and respond to people's experiences. Through empathy for their ideas which encourages communication between them.

Here is the "archaeology" of the term Empathy. This word only came into exitence fairly recently, as you may know. Sympathy used to include what is now called EMPATHY. Cf. Einfuehlung.

The English word empathy is derived from the Ancient Greek word εμπάθεια (empatheia, meaning "physical affection or passion"). This, in turn, comes from εν (en, "in, at") and πάθος (pathos, "passion" or "suffering").[3] The term was adapted by Hermann Lotze and Robert Vischer to create the German word Einfühlung ("feeling into"), which was translated by Edward B. Titchener into the English word "empathy".[4][5][6] However, in modern Greek: εμπάθεια means, depending on context,: prejudice, malevolence, malice, and hatred.[7]

Alexithymia is a word used to describe a deficiency in understanding, processing or describing emotions in oneself, as opposed to others.[8] This term comes from the combination of two Ancient Greek words: ἀλέξω (alekso, meaning "push away, repel, or protect") and θυμός (thymos, meaning "the soul, as the seat of emotion, feeling and thought"). Thus, alexithymia means "pushing away your emotions".

• Titchener E.B. (1909/2014) Introspection and empathy Archived July 26, 2014, at the Wayback Machine Archived July 26, 2014, at the Wayback Machine Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences 2014; 7: 25–30
• Gallese, Vittorio (2003). "The Roots of Empathy: The Shared Manifold Hypothesis and the Neural Basis of Intersubjectivity". Psychopathology. 36 (4): 171–180. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.143.2396. doi:10.1159/000072786. PMID 14504450.

Koss, Juliet (March 2006). "On the Limits of Empathy". The Art Bulletin. 88 (1): 139–157. doi:10.1080/00043079.2006.10786282. JSTOR 25067229.

• "εμπάθεια". Glosbe. Glosbe dictionary. Retrieved April 26, 2019.

Bar-On, Reuven; Parker, James DA (2000). The Handbook of Emotional Intelligence: Theory, Development, Assessment, and Application at Home, School, and in the Workplace. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 0-7879-4984-1.

Dear Colleagues, is there not more to empathy than just planning to do the right thing by others? That all-consciously planned 'empathy' can be extremely one-sided and estranged from the other person's inner feelings. A pseudo-empathy that is calculated to have a distance from the other's feelings.

One example of what may be a failed empathic attempt: I am not What You See, a story I placed on RG, is dealing in empathy and fear of others. In this case, a narrator is trying to be empathically open to someone she has known since childhood who has more and more closed off the world. Fear and empathy form the different hubs of feeling in this story.

LINK: Preprint STORY: I'm not What You See

Those who know the highly influential British novelist D. H. Lawrence will learn the dangers of empathic attempts to reach somebody who is set against emotional contact with others. This short story is titled

"The Blind Man":

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8914/8914-h/8914-h.htm

Interesting question.

Agree with Michael Uebel .

As an engineer, I would like to point out that a design is not about my beliefs but to fulfill the needs is a collective.

When it comes to a project tailored for a given individual, there must be a compromise. In biomedical engineering, we cannot do what is pleasant to the patient all the time. We need to interact with nurses, physicians, physiotherapists, etc. Sometimes, it is difficult for the patient to empathize with the staff!!!

Best wishes.

Vania,

Yes, this is another aspect of empathy - as it often happens, a mismatch of expectations vs. reality, and reciprocity vs. ego centrism.

Many patients expect to be empathized with, just because they have emotional needs due to physical suffering and uncertainty for the future.

We have had cases whereby some patients fake stronger pain in order to jump the waiting line to see a specialist or (perhaps) in hopes of getting better service. This, I think, crosses the line of empathy seeking and goes into emotional blackmail to achieve one's goals.

At the same time, patients often do not see that medical staff is over-worked and heavily burdened with bureaucratic responsibilities. Hence, the term - professional burn-out.

Heavy schedules though are no excuse for withdrawing professional empathy provision. Just because, medical staff witnesses and deals with suffering people every day, it does not mean that one should harden inwardly and start looking at life "philosophically" (i.e. - yes, pain and death are a natural part of life).

We should not expect patients to endure whatever we throw at them in order to survive. Physicians and other medical staff have responsibility towards patients' mental, as well as physical well-being.

My warmest and most grateful greetings to all the psychology and medical colleagues who have joined this TRULY interdisciplinary discussion. It is wonderful that the arts issues surrounding empathy and what its pros and cons are will not be not entirely the same as medical issues, though I guess they will cross at times.

To our medical colleagues, I began this discussion with the POV of those who teach literature. We often state that one of the finest values of THE ARTS in general (aside from abstract or formal aesthetic values),is that art and perhaps art alone can cause people to feel as the other does for a brief moment and thus broaden or lose some biases. Many in our fields of the arts and humanities believe this.

When else would we care about some now almost-forgotten legendary king of ancient Celtic Britain (King Lear), for example? Yet 21st Century people cry as Lear's daughters betray him with sweet flattery and he exiles his one true friend, the youngest daughter, truthful Cordelia? The audience is definitely "feeling into"

(einfühlung) Lear's state of mind. A foolish, fond, vain old man with far too

much power.

Dear Gloria,

I was perhaps mistakenly under the impression that empathy is not an abstract concept, but a practiced one. Where else if not in medicine will we speak about empathy?

If though literature is what you would like us to discuss, let us mention an often misunderstood literary work "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli.

People often consider Machiavelli's advice to a ruler to be devious, cruel, devoid of humanity and empathy...when in fact he is talking about patriotism, legacy, self-sacrifice for the good of others...out of the empathy of a ruler towards his subjects in troubled and uncertain times.

How come that contemporary people misunderstand the meaning of the book so much?

Following

Dear Valeria,

What "reading" a person gives is determined by what they bring to a text (reader response theory.) We are not blank slates when we read, make sense? We bring education, political views, religion or not, gender, education, locality, race, clas, etc. to every single text we read.

Now what is a "misreading" is also a weighted term. It depends upon local norms. Some texts gain a favorable reading bc they match the dominant narrative in a given region. Sometimes the slant is invsble and uncoscious to those in a region, who imagine they are reading "objectively."

" Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts "real existence" to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates their own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the reader's role in re-creating literary works is ignored. New Criticism had emphasized that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the authority or intention of the author, nor to the psychology of the reader, was allowed in the discussions of orthodox New Critics. "

LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reader-response_criticism

With all that are you still surprised at the variety of readings given to The Prince?

Cheers,

Gloria

Gloria,

Yes, none of us begins their life journey as a tabula rasa. We, physicians currently believe that a baby starts having meaningful experiences, learning and being aware while still being a fetus, i.e. in utero.

You are absolutely correct, of course.

We also bring to a text our mental attitude based on the historical period we live in and the prevailing beliefs in it. Two people of similar age, gender and social position from the 16th (warring, pre-Italian, city-states) and the 21st (peaceful) century will feel very differently about the same literary work. Their outlook and priorities in life, and, thus, emotional world will be different. Still, such a difference of opinion of contemporaries on one book...

Most literary works although creating a fictional world, are based at least partially on real characters and events. It is impossible that a reader does not create a twist in the story he/she reads, as it is his/her own brain (and senses) that live through the book.

The problem is how do you stimulate readers to communicate their version of the book they have read to others. Some people are better at telling stories, others at writing them, a third group - at drawing, a fourth - at music, a fifth - in math, etc.

How does a single person understand such different forms of expression? I doubt there are people equally good in all of these forms of communication.

This is where empathy may come in handy as emotions are universal, although the degree and context of their experience may not be.

Yet, do we allow so easily other people to see us for what we are and feel us?

DearValeria,

I have been adjusting form my idea that empathy was always good to the dual sided empathy. It only means you feel yourself into some one else's head. But what do you do with that intimate kind of knowledge? Help them or hurt them? An anthropologist I know resists my attempts to make empathy all good. I admit she has a point.

I question whether a spy stepping into one's shoes feels "real" empathy but according to one broad definition, he or she does. Empathy is nothing more, defined thus, than knowledge that can be used for any purpose once obtained.

That thought depresses me. I don't know about the rest of you here on this question. But I have to adapt to what the sciences define empathy as being and not just wish it were all nice. In teaching literature, we have mainly concerned ourselves with humane empathy--compassion.

It is important to remember that empathy is an emotional response, rather than a form of knowledge. Of course you can obtain knowledge that is not otherwise accessible via empathy, but empathy makes it possible to “feel with” another human being. This means that we participate in the experience, rather than voyeuristically observing the content of the experience. The result is that we gain understanding and compassion.

Dear Christa.

Excuse my usage of 'knowledge.' You are correct that this is emotion input/information/evidence rather than scientific or other academic knowledge. The emotions carry this--whatever it is. But the brain, I guess, decides to what purpose the empathic information will be used. We are less schooled in how to talk about our emotional side and I am just beginning to see more of what can be thought of as empathy. Thanks!

Wolfgang's comment reminded me that cognitive psychology has recently started to differentiate between two different types of empathy: "emotional empathy" (which is similar to the popular understanding of what it means to "feel with" another person, or literary character) and "cognitive empathy" (which is similar to Theory of Mind, but takes account of recent arguments that it is not possible to draw a clear line between cognition and emotion).

As I am arguing in an essay that will appear in print in Dec. 2019 (cf. "Affect Labelling..."), literature (or simply storytelling) is perhaps the most important tool to learn about emotion. This is an extension of arguments by Patrick Colm Hogan, Keith Oatley, etc. But I expand the argument when I claim that literature teaches readers to negotiate between an unconscious empathic response and the possibility to gain critical awareness of emotional experiences that have been triggered by narrative.

We live in a society that vilifies emotions and pushes children to suppress their emotional experiences, which is why patients go to the point of "faking" emotional pain in order to be listened to. When we teach literature, however, we can redress some of the damage that has been done, by teaching empathy: by talking about the importance of emotions and empathy, and by sensitising them to the human relationships that are made possible by empathy (compare Matthew D. Lieberman's book Social, 2015, for more detail).

Dear Wolfgang, Christa, and all,

I was just thinking about Brecht's V-Effekt. He obviously distrusted his playgoers' empathy with characters. Was that because the usual viewer identification with characters would undercit the viewer's attention upon the cognitive points Brecht wanted to make? Or was he averse to appearing 'sentimental' as most writers are accused of being who deal with protagonists of lower socio-economic class? I am so glad you brought that in and also Christa's book refs to different kinds of empathy. Did Brecht believe that cross-class empathy was even possible, I wonder.

I would tend to be very cautious about any psychiatric designation of what is "pathological" regards altruism in a capitalist society. Such a diagnosis could merely be an ideological smoke screen for conscienceless exploitation, could it not? No one stands above the structure under which life is lived and the psychiatric profession has often caved in to the biases of the haves (See: psychoanalyst Joel Kovel's _The Age of Desire_ that shows the full ideological entanglements.)

Use greek terms to desrcibe an english revisited novel term unknown from philosphical point of view, is exactly as to try to create a polygon polygone (du grec polus, nombreux, et gônia, angle) without the knowlegde of poly and gonia.

I am reading an essay on Charles Dickens's _Dombey and Son_. Sympathy in Victorian times included what we have discussed above as 'empathy.' See below for mention in the essay.

"This is the nexus of the book, the valuation of everyone and everything on the basis of their worth, not as human beings, but as commodities to be bought or sold. Indeed, the notion of trading in commodities extends to Mr. Dombey’s wife who died giving birth to Paul; Mr. Dombey, at her death, expressed great sorrow for her loss: “. . . he would find a something gone from among his plate and furniture, and other household possessions, which was well worth the having, and could not be lost without sincere regret” (D&S 5); one wonders if he would have given as much thought to the breaking of a plate.

In Mr. Dombey’s eyes, money is all important; it forms the basis of every connection in society and defines a person’s place within society. Love and sympathy have no place in a society governed by money; people are merely extensions of one’s possessions, like plate or furniture. Mr. Dombey’s views about the value of money points to an outward manifestation of its power—honor, fear, respect, admiration—it is never to be used to effect good. "

Peter Ponzio "Society and Social Pretension in Dickens’s Writings"

Dear Colleague Vassilis,

From where comes that polygon--Aristotle? You say using this will help, but honest introspection is uncommon in anyone. If it could be applied honestly, I do like this polygon model.

Isn't it so much easier to rationalize one's own self-interests and think "too bad for my neighbor?" I come first.

@ Gloria, Polygon comes from me... This geometric conception creates a free position in space ...any space; regards Vassilis

knowledge and thinking are free any neighbor is wellcome,

@Vassilis Doucas I think people forget human beings have feelings and have pain in their hearts.

Empathy is about love. Plays, equations, technology, money, etc are a smoke curtain to keep some VIP far from displayed they care about others.

Other forgotten word: compassion.

Regards

Thanks, Colleague Jonathan Nascimento,

At the beginning of the discussion I mentioned the claim of litertaure is that it can broaden people by intimately experiencing people far different from themselves so that they feel emapthy they would not have, had they not read that story or seen that play or film.

Yes, so many things are smoke screens. That short story D. H. Lawrence short story "The Blind Man" brings out the lengths to which some people will go to avoid being emotionally reachable.

A colleague in Patna, India, posted a story about the homeless children on the streets and how people cannot "see" them.

I’d like to return to an earlier phase of the debate and comment on the problems that can be caused by empathy. Empathy is a faculty or an attribute of the human mind, and as such must be developed and managed, much like other faculties.

It is the more primary “emotional empathy” which can cause problems: pathological altruism was mentioned. A more widespread problem that has been observed is anxiety: as when you suffer nightmares after watching a horror film.

“Cognitive empathy” enables us to become aware of unconsciously engendered emotions, which makes it possible for us to make conscious decisions on how we want to respond when we have been unconsciously triggered to empathise with somebody.

The ability to reflect on our emotions helps us to figure out whether somebody’s appeal to empathy is deserved, or whether it is a display of emotions that seeks to manipulate us: instanced by the patient that tries to monopolise a health-care specialist. Advertising also appeals to empathy in order to manipulate us into buying a particular product.

To return to literature: every text contains “emotional empathy’ and “cognitive empathy”. It is an expression of what Mikhail Bakhtin described as the dialogical quality of discourse. Even in ordinary speech, we alternate between both types of empathy without thinking about what we are doing.

Thanks, Colleague Christa Knellwolf King,

I never know who formal to be in salutations here. I start off in this mode. You gave a concise and--to me at least--most helpful account of the types of empathy and how they function. As to the shut off people who can feel no empathy, I am inferring that there may be types among these unhappy human beings, as well.

In the famously publicized death of the man being "sat on" by police in NYC who kept saying "I can't breathe," I will venture that a lack of cognitive empathy may have been involved. This is reality and not literature, however. Is this kind of lack of empathy part of training for such jobs as policing? Or is it a direct result of seeing all manner of people every day? Is this question about empathy in such situations as the above possible to assess?

The character in "The Blind Man" by D. H. Lawrence who shatters at the end when somebody breaks through his wall of reserve may be a fictional equivalent.

Dear Gloria and all - For me, one of the most rewarding effects of working with emotions is that it is possible to adjust our habitual ways of dealing with emotions. When I say "working with emotion", I mean that I have been researching, teaching, and trying to influence attitudes towards emotions for the last 20 years.

I am sure that there are people who were born with a very weak capacity for empathy, and perhaps there are some who have none at all. But as Alice Miller's studies have shown, most of the violent tyrants of history were brutalized as children. For most people, being shut off is a response, rather than a congenital predisposition. If a child gets hurt each time they try to connect with another human being, it is to be expected that they will shut down emotionally. The consequences for society are disastrous.

On the positive side, empathic responses are nurtured during our early years of life. People who are on the autism spectrum, for example, are very grateful, if you make the effort to spell out how you feel. If you, for example, spell out "I am sad now and want to be quiet", they can learn to come to terms with emotions more easily.

By the way, I am a very informal person and I believe that most academics like to be addressed by their first names. Or am I getting old-fashioned in this respect? Thank you, Gloria, for convening this discussion, Christa

Dear Christa,

Thanks for yourthoughtful, as ever, reply.

I have just published an editorial in today's Arizona Daily Star about the insincerity of rhetoric in our commercial society. I made it light and humorous but I am getting to the same thing about empathy. These insincere verbal formulae, such as,

"I look forward to reading your play script..."

(Gloria inside her mind: The heck you do. You would walk over five extra blocks to avoid having to pick up my play script and look it over. This is the gist of my editorial. Better to just say you have no intention of reading the text. That is sincere and gives closure.)

These little felicitous remarks, so "kindly" on the surface, serve as buffers protect people from any activity not in tune with the remunerative and from meeting the 'other' emotionally. Friendship, being affected by literature or any art, not worth the effort.

These remarks keep real human contact at bay. There is no empathy where there is no human contact. People blame this shallowness on technology but people 'look forward to' things they have no intention of doing right to your face and in person.

-Gloria

Tags: Rhetoric, Insincerity, Circumlocutions, Commercial values, Artistic values, Role of the arts, social valuation of artistic work, Options for change, Patience of Artists, Making oneself unpopular in Town where this OpEd is printed, Humor

LINK: https://tucson.com/opinion/local/local-opinion-artist-s-hate-your-looking-forward-to-it/article_8c183c1c-a892-5173-adda-507b8da54d02.html

Dear Gloria,

Can you upload the publication on Research Gate, please? For readers in the EU area (sadly, we have no access).

You are assuming what other people mean, and I do not think this is fair to the discussion, as the rest of us are not acquainted with the people that you refer to.

Not everyone means the opposite of what they say. Perhaps we live in a fast-paced world, whereby there is urgency and impatience to acquire and use things NOW.

Thinking philosophically over larger issues is often pushed at the back, but it does not mean that people do not care. Simply, some people close off or prioritize differently.

I see that you link honesty with empathy and you pit them against social courtesy.

In communication, empathy is linked to honesty only at the sending end (i.e. the person who communicates his/her emotions and seeks understanding/ assistance).

How the receiving end (i.e. the person who detects and co-experiences these emotions) will use the acquired information (ethically or not) remains unknown.

Therefore, there is often fear of a meaningful intellectual and emotional exchange. Society teaches us that if you do not want to be (ab)used, do not show weakness by sharing emotions with not-so-well-known others.

I would argue that there is empathy without contact with another human being. It is called ego centrism - having empathy for oneself. Egocentrics externalize the pursuit of their own empathy by unscrupulously using others.

You, I think, are of the other type of empaths - the ones that seek communication, understanding and reciprocity (to give, not only take) in an empathy-driven context.

My advice is (should you chose to accept it), if you do not want to get bitter, locate your own empathetical comfort. Find kindred spirits and communicate meaningfully with them. Hopefully, you will have at least one in your own home.

If not, there is always us - your Research Gate colleagues. :)

Dear Valeria,

I am happy to share the draft of this editorial.

One communicative task in the arts is to de-center people from such a 'superficially interested' comfort zone because art does not thrive in such vacuous surroundings. The field of 20th C. art had many such events. Yes, people can be a bit shocked and are made a bit aware of their surroundings in a way that they were not before.

The ideas I put in the editorial have to do with the sociological function of art in our commercial environment. The artists who are not worth much monetarily have a terrible time being heard. I know this is not new, but what was often taken as a sign of mental instability in many artists (van Gogh being but one) was a combined empathy for others and a lack of monetary value that made their output a good investment. Can this be denied? Such investments operate not only in money but in time given to those not famous who create, the ways parents value childrens' efforts in the arts, the amount of funding for art teachers, musical instruments, and field trips to cultural museums pr into nature to sketch.

You made a request to know more about my own local situation here in Arizona. I don't know about where you live but here in Arizona, the public schools are being starved for funds (49th out of 50 states at bottom of school funding) with no money for the arts. No music in the schools. No opportunities but for those who can have everything privately funded. The artist, cap in hand, asks these people to graciously accept what will never and must never offend them. These are those who condescendingly say, they 'look forward to..." I believe in self-disclosure and situating oneself and locale for those elsewhere. Glad you asked. I forget that we are disembodied and locale-less.

In Arizona the arts exist on small hand-outs from those at the top of an extremely unequal system.

https://azednews.com/arts-education-persists-despite-non-existent-funding/

Dear Gloria - you are absolutely right about the stifling effects of polite pretences. Of course, it is important to be tactful when we are dealing with other people. But we are so constantly using white lies that we are generating an all-pervasive sense of emptiness. No wonder that a recent study has shown that more than half of the population report that they are suffering from loneliness.

If formulations like “I am excited to hear our next speaker” are overused, they mean nothing. (Remember the principle from economics that inflation causes devaluation.) What is needed here is more emotional self-awareness. If I believe that I have to say to a student who is struggling with writer’s block “I look forward to reading your essay,” even if my joy about the thought is minimal, I have to put some emotion into the words. Otherwise the student will sense my dishonesty and feel further betrayed, rather than supported. It is important to realise that human beings are extremely good at spotting emotional dishonesty.

A comment on the terminological front: I believe that all emotions have the function of building relationships. However, I doubt that the formulation “I look forward to reading your play” is a case of empathy. It certainly purports to establish (or strengthen) a human relationship. But, if it is honestly meant, the phrase talks about the speaker’s affective experience in relation to the person addressed, and as such is not really a case of “feeling with” with another human being. Empathy only comes into play if you say things like “the dialogue that describes the shouting match between the two main protagonists made me shudder”.

Dear Gloria,

I am glad that I got to meet you, never mind that it was on an internet scientific/academic forum.

I am sure that all followers of this discussion would have similar feelings. We enrich ourselves when getting another perspective.

I read both the article and your editorial draft. I must say, I appreciate Mr. Noseywinkel ;)

I hear the criticism, but where is the hope? Where is the balance? Cautious optimism perhaps?

About education. Yes. The state always prioritizes science and literature over music and arts. The former are considered rational subjects, useful for the economy and our survival as species.

The latter are viewed as indirectly contributing, more conducive to intellectual evolution.

Surely, we all understand that there is nothing bad in this concept. Society is a complex of competing interests. We must balance them out, and for that, we need money.

If we are to endure, but money is tight, survival takes precedence over enlightened evolution. Parents and grand-parents provide for the rest.

Looking on the bright side, creativity and art can both be found in hard science (e.g. there are multiple ways to solve a mathematical problem, human neurons resemble alien creatures, parts of insects and plants seen under a microscope leave you in awe of creation) and literature (books create an alternative reality, paint people and relationships in such vivid colors).

Dear Christa,

I felt more than "looking forward to" reading was needed for my overworked community college students in freshman writing. I copied a number of "overcoming writing anxiety" exercises by Cynthia Arem (Pima College Ed. Psychologist--credit where credit is due).

They were help to revise old scripts running in students' minds about being bad at writing. Where had they first heard this? Who told them they couldn't write? If their writing anxiety were an animal, what animal would it be? Can they draw this animal? Had they not overcome similar challenges? Name a few. Etc. If the students did these exercises, then I gave them some points on their final grade for doing them. Even sincerely expressed feeling did not provide a scaffolding to those who feared assessment.

But I always did say I was interested in their writing, also. The whole teacher and student dynamic is fraught with fear and openings for human contact. Sometimes it happened. I was sad when it did not.

Dear Valeria,

I am glad to meet you, also! This forum is getting to some real problems, I believe.

Dear Gloria and all - Our discussion is indeed touching on issues that are very close to our hearts. It feels good to hear your “cri de coeur” because you refuse to give up, but instead you are searching for simple solutions that can make a difference in your students’ lives. You are an academic who deeply cares for her students in spite of feeling unsupported and frustrated. There is no doubt that your students know and appreciate what you do.

Like many of us, you are working under a situation of institutional and political neglect of the humanities and the arts. So many of us achieve remarkable results under incredibly difficult conditions, by offering our students simple tricks and practical guidelines that help them cope somehow with the pressures and frustrations of the degree program, the home, the family, etc. Like many of us who are teaching in under-funded and under-staffed departments, you’ve had to develop the skills of a counsellor and life coach in addition to teaching academic skills. -- It is great that our discussion of empathy can also serve as a support group. Empathy is about mutual support. Right?

I have found a valuable essay about Jane Addams at the renowned Hull-House Settlement. Jane helped women from privileged backgrounds on the north suburbs of Chicago to develop empathy for the poor and immigrants in Chicago. Addams said not to imagine that she was only working to help poor immigrants. "The wealthy girls who come here to work in Hull-House and live here as residents from our wealthy neighborhoods benefit every bit as much." So this essay deals with the contact zone between Jane Addms's flock of socialites and the poor. Two cultures meeting an wondering about each other, sometimes uneasily.

LINK:

http://www.thetiscromie.com/pdfs/Jane-Addams-and-the-Devil-Baby-Tales.pdf

Published online before print January 29, 2015, doi: 10.1177/0003065114568723J Am Psychoanal AssocFebruary 2015 vol. 63 no. 1 101­136Jane Addams and the “Devil Baby Tales”The Usefulness of Perplexity in “Sympathetic Understanding,” a Tool in Learning Empathy

Thetis R. Cromie122 South Michigan Avenue, Suite 1459 Chicago, IL 60603 E­mail: [email protected]

AbstractJane Addams was a social thinker, a public philosopher, and a leader of the settlement house movement in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She developed a method to understand people from backgrounds radically different from her own. This approach, which she called“sympathetic understanding,” involved a dialogic process that included “perplexity” and inquiry. This process resulted in practical actions that resonated with people in the neighborhood surrounding Hull House, the settlement house she founded in Chicago. It also transformed Addams’s own feeling and thinking.The process is illustrated by the “Devil Baby” tales described in Addams’s work. The relationship of her method to empathy with diverse populations and professional empathy in general is discussed.

I recently came across the work by Gordon Neufeld, a developmental psychologist recently. I am absolutely fascinated by his work on bullying and other problems that are crippling our educational system. He argues that children who turn bullies have never really experienced deep human attachment to their parents. Bullies enjoy hurting weaker children because they have shut down their emotions and hence lose the ability to care for the feelings of others. The result is a kind of disturbed empathy: this is, voyeuristically watching a child that has been hurt has replaced the more natural instinct to protect a hurt child.

On the note of the battle between the humanities and the sciences, I recommend the following article from "The Washington Post" which shows that majors in English are doing much better than people believe: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/19/worlds-top-economists-just-made-case-why-we-still-need-english-majors/?fbclid=IwAR3FTOQ3PoiN-CrIHxBPVMOPzitZGQgZDrQOl5tCsgcZ66ZaLIsyNzCxFKE