Empathy is often expected to flow from an individual or group that suffers less, or not at all, toward an individual or group that suffers more[1]. This seems intuitive when reading definitions of empathy by many writers and philosophers, who explicitly note that empathy originates from those who do not suffer toward those who do, or at least that the suffering of the empathizer is considered insignificant. Belonging to a group that has suffered greatly, or having personally endured significant suffering, places one in a moral dilemma when confronted with the suffering of others from a different nation or group[2] that has not suffered to the same extent. One day, a friend said to me: “I feel like I can’t complain about anything to you because everything in our lives is a joke compared to what you’ve been through.” The friend said this assuming I had suffered greatly because I am from Iraq[3]. Living among a new group or nation has made the perspective on suffering seem different, making me re-think how empathy or compassion work (compassion add the will to alleviate the pain of others, empathy involves some intellectual effort to imagine yourself in the situation of the sufferer, while sympathy is more of an instinctive reaction to suffering).
To begin with, most of what we experience in the world comes from our brains. Suffering—whether it’s the heat and hardship endured by porters in Baghdad’s Shorja market or the tragedies of a British girl driven to suicide by a romantic crisis—is relative and originates from a virtual world where, as car rearview mirrors warn, “objects are smaller than they appear.”[4] This relativity of pain is subject to a fixed ceiling of sensations[5], dependent on the number of cells we have, the brain’s chemical composition, and the neural structure shaped by life, which can lead to a certain degree of pain. The currency of pain is universal[6], except for those who endure constant, excruciating physical pain, which traps their minds in a state that leaves them unable to think.
Speaking of neural structure—the software behind pain—personal histories of suffering and the conditioning that triggers responses to the world determine the extent of suffering that may lead to an end like suicide. Strangely, someone who appears “comfortable” may be more likely to take their own life than a prisoner in the Third World. Doesn’t this suggest that the film projected by the brain can sometimes be more terrifying, even when external conditions seem “comfortable”? Humans can push each other’s threat systems to the extreme without even using physical pain[7]. They can overwhelm one another with shame to the point of feeling as small as ants in the virtual world where we see ourselves and others[8]. Similarly, the loneliness and isolation an individual in the free world experiences can surpass that of a Third World prisoner. I use the example of a Third World prisoner because it represents the worst fate a person can endure in terms of physical and psychological conditions in our era. Acknowledging this virtual world that embodies suffering, and the ceiling of suffering any person can reach regardless of its cause, allows us to recognize the true place of suffering and take a step toward understanding the pain of those in a better world than the one we lived or live in.
The second truth is that there are no limits to suffering of all the humans across history or geography. Why, then, should empathy be directed toward specific recipients of suffering in certain places? What is the primary purpose of empathy? In reality, it is neither required nor possible to comprehend the suffering of all humans throughout history or in distant regions. If we dedicated all our neural cells to the suffering of every person across time and space, we would wither and burn out in pain without any benefit from that empathy. The primary purpose of empathy is fundamentally social and tied to the group we live within and can offer something to. That’s why compassion comes into the picture, proposing the case when we can alleviate the suffering of others. The real question is whether we feel a sense of belonging to a group that leads us to direct our empathy toward it. Since compassion stems from social reality, it should primarily encompass those we interact with. Failing to belong to the group we live among and preferring another group we instinctively identify with (such as an ethnic group) poses a far greater moral dilemma than the question of who suffers more. Empathy should be directed specifically toward where we can make a difference.
As noble as directing empathy toward those facing greater pain may seem, it distracts us from what we can do in our world, or within the boundaries of our community, while we burn ourselves out for a group suffering far more but for whom we can do nothing. The media suddenly directs our attention to somewhere, where we can do nothing despite acknowledging that its people’s suffering surpasses any other in the world. In such cases, the media tells us this is the scope of pain worthy of empathy. We may reduce our own problems, which we can or should act upon. I am not suggesting that the media shouldn’t let us know about suffering of others, but rather how should we consume it?
We can turn into monsters if we think of empathy based on a hierarchy of suffering, without considering the relativity of suffering in the brain or the perspective of nations’ suffering. We can live among people, regardless of belonging to them or not, yet fail to engage with their pain and suffering because we are focused on those (or us) who suffer(ed) more. If we limit our perspective to those who suffer the most, it may lead to denying the pain experienced by people anywhere in the world. This may block the aspect of compassion in which we attempt to alleviate the suffering of others.
In the end, can a homeless person empathize with someone living in a mansion? It may be hard to imagine, and it’s unlikely that the homeless person suffers less, even from the relative perspective of suffering in the brain. But what if the housing crisis weighs less on the homeless person’s mind than the loneliness felt by the mansion’s owner? We can extend empathy and compassion to both, but we must also decide how much compassion to allocate to each based on what we can do, as compassion is an intellectual stance and an action-based position, not just a feeling. Maybe we need a new definition that encompasses more of the intellectual element in empathy despite the richness of English in having three different terms to describe varieties of empathy.
References
[1] Scientifically, empathy occurs when we witness others suffering: Stellar, Jennifer E., Craig L. Anderson, and Arasteh Gatchpazian. “Profiles in empathy: Different empathic responses to emotional and physical suffering.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 149.7 (2020): 1398.
[2] Many studies investigated ethnocultural empathy: one Italian study found religious identity positively correlating with empathy towards those who belong to the same identity from other cultures Iannello, Nicolò Maria, et al. “Spirituality and ethnocultural empathy among Italian adolescents: The mediating role of religious identity formation processes.” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 11.1 (2019): 32.
Another study on Norwegian students found multiple predictors of what can increase empathy towards others and what can reduce it: Solhaug, Trond, and Audrey Osler. “Intercultural empathy among Norwegian students: An inclusive citizenship perspective.” International Journal of Inclusive Education 22.1 (2018): 89-110.
Meanwhile, the views of Muslim Arabs towards the west has been reviewed by Furia et al. The negative views mainly stem from political and cultural perspectives Furia, Peter A., and Russell E. Lucas. “Arab Muslim attitudes toward the West: Cultural, social, and political explanations.” International Interactions 34.2 (2008): 186-207.
[3] A study highlighted how people empathize with other countries based on how popular their leaders are: The British Psychological Society, We feel more empathy towards citizens of countries with good, popular leaders, 26 May 2021
[4] Phantom Pain is one condition when pain purely comes from the brain experience after amputations. Norman Doidge elaborated on that experience and pain in the brain in chapter 7 of his book: Doidge, Norman. The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science. Penguin, 2007.
[5] Studies often investigate the pain threshold and all the factors that impact it. These studies show that pain and distress experiences are even more complex than having one fixed ceiling of pain. For example, a study showed the impact of social exclusion on pain threshold: DeWall, C. Nathan, and Roy F. Baumeister. “Alone but feeling no pain: Effects of social exclusion on physical pain tolerance and pain threshold, affective forecasting, and interpersonal empathy.” Journal of personality and social psychology 91.1 (2006): 1.
[6] Keeping in mind how complex is the experience of pain, hence it maybe very difficult to judge the level of pain but in the same time it can have some universal differences that are not very common such as the genetic factors: Nielsen, Christopher S., et al. “Individual differences in pain sensitivity: genetic and environmental contributions.” PAIN® 136.1-2 (2008): 21-29.
[7] Paul Gilbert mentions many triggers to threat system, one emotion regulation system, that include early life experiences, social threats, uncertainty, and others. Gilbert, Paul. The compassionate mind. Robinson, 2009.
[8] I often refer to the modelling we do to ourselves and others so that we would have an area and a volume in the world. This is inspired by concepts of modelling in the brain by Vernon Mountcastle, Lawrence Barsalou and others, yet, this is just a metaphor as I am not sure if we really model ourselves as “smaller than others”