There’s nothing ‘soft’ about empathy

What if the culture around you is quietly teaching that caring costs you strength?

Every time I hear that empathy is ‘soft’ and ‘weak’, I just scratch my head.  If it were soft and weak, then everyone would be doing it.  But they’re not.  

I was reading an article in The Guardian talking about how some leaders (particularly Elon Musk) frame empathy specifically as a liability.  He even commented on ‘suicidal empathy’ and how it was going to end civilization as we know it.

Huh?

Mr. Musk has a lot of money.  Like a lot a lot.  He’s incredibly smart, and a savvy businessman. He’s even on track to become the first trillionaire in history.  But how does that qualify him to talk about empathy and how it’s going to bring about the apocalypse? At the very least, I’d like to know what his definition of empathy is, because after reading the whole article, I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing at all.

Yes, there can be a bad side to empathy – like when people use empathy without boundaries.  But that’s not empathy, it’s passivity, and they’re not the same.  And by making comments like that, the people who listen to him (and others like him) begin to see empathy as a defect mechanism, and stop practicing it. 

As we look around the world, can anyone really say we’re practicing too much empathy?  If so, I’d love to have that conversation, but I don’t want opinions (even if those opinions come from someone wealthy and powerful). I want data and facts and a real definition.

We’re already living in a loneliness epidemic. People would rather shoot than have a discussion, whether it’s a healthcare CEO or a teacher.  When our government shuts down, people are left without pay and ways to feed their families, and we’re all just told to ‘get back to work’. We are, according to research, in a loneliness epidemic like society has never seen. This doesn’t seem like too much empathy to me.

So what’s the solution?  To openly practice empathy, not as a ‘soft-skill’ (or whatever people want to call it), but as a relational muscle.  Be a member of the counter-culture.  Practice quiet rebellion in how we model connection every…single…day.

Refusing to act like a machine with no empathy in the face of the prevailing winds doesn’t seem soft to me.  It seems like an act of quiet rebellion.  But let’s be real – sometimes the world needs a little rebellion from time to time to reset itself.  Even if that rebellion is just being ok being seen as ‘soft’.