Empathy has an interesting position in modern political discourse. It has been discussed by those on the right and particularly the Christian right as the root problem with the left. You’ll see it referred to as an “exploit” or that empathy can be “toxic”. What they’re referring to isn’t empathy, though: its compassion. What the right is arguing against is those trying to end the oppression of marginalized groups, and conflating the drive to do so with empathy.
The distinction here - compassion vs empathy - matters. It would be far too easy for the left to respond with rebuttals about empathy being a good thing, even virtuous (to the chagrin of the religious right). But language is powerful, and using the wrong word here can continue the marginalization of those with compassion but not empathy.
I’ve talked a lot in this garden about solidarity and building strong local communities. This page is to make it clear that empathy is not a requirement for those. Hell, even compassion isn’t - one can selfishly co-operate because it is simply optimal to do so. But empathy continues to be upheld as something everyone does, or at least ought to, experience. This perpetuates neuronormativity and must be corrected along the path to a society where neurodiversity is embraced, where people aren’t forced to fit themselves into a box labelled “normal” before being accepted, or face ostracization.
And to be clear, it is intentional I’m grouping having different empathy profiles with neurodiversity. Besides the fact there’s research showing autistic people tend to have non-neurotypical empathy profiles, it shares similarities to other neurotypes in how they differ across populations and how affected individuals face oppression from today’s social expectations. That said, empathy profiles vary across the entire spectrum of the population and not just those with autism.
Types of Empathy
Empathy is no single thing. There are multiple different forms, and can be as situational as they are dispositional. Today there are generally accepted to be around 3 discrete forms of empathy:
- Cognitive empathy refers to the ability to understand another’s perspective and thoughts.
- Affective empathy refers to the ability to feel emotions similar to another’s emotions.
- Compassionate empathy refers to the compulsion to help or alleviate another’s suffering.
I’ve also seen people discuss other forms that may belong on the list, such as somatic empathy (the ability to feel physical sensations similar to another’s).
Any individual may have different levels of each form of empathy.
These different forms help explain why otherwise contradictory stereotypes can form, such as autism being associated with not being able to recognize emotions (affective empathy) yet caring more for the lives of animals or insects (compassionate empathy).
Psychopathy
Neuronormativity surrounding empathy often presents itself in portraying a class of people who were born without empathy and due to that condition feel no sense of morals and in fact feel compelled to perform anti-social behavior, like murder. This class of people get labelled psychopaths and become the villains of our society’s stories.
Firstly, this is a conflation with those who don’t experience empathy the neurotypical way with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD), and highly exaggerated still. Different empathy profiles do not predispose one to being violent and ethical behavior does not rely on any form of empathy. But in any case, it also is a very dehumanizing way of essentially discarding a person from society (ironically counter to how the neurotypical might presume themselves to act).
Under the social model of disability, those with ASPD would not be judged moralistically. Instead, the “disability” would be considered an emergent property from the way we’ve constructed our society, and aim to change society in such a way that the disability ceases to exist. This is in contrast to a medical model of disability, which sees the individual as having an impairment in need of fixing.
This also helps answer the question “what would an anarchist society do with psychopaths?” No one deserves to be forcibly incarcerated or institutionalized, and safety can be ensured without a carceral state, and so the answer would “simply” be to build a society where one is free of the social expectations of what form(s) of empathy any individual ought to experience.
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