If you start a conversation by saying, “I am committed to expanding empathy in the individual and community,” then some people think you are a pushover. Weak. Vulnerable to bullying. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hard empathy (sometimes also called "radical empathy") is different than “empathy is hard.” A lack of attention to hard empathy is another reason that being empathic is harder than it needs to be. And this post explains why by distinguishing hard empathy from soft empathy.

The innovation proposed here is to think of empathy, like so many things these days, as existing on a spectrum between empathy as “empathic listening” and empathy as “tough love.” A rigorous and critical empathy includes both options, which maps to the difference between “soft empathy” and “hard empathy,” and a sliding scale of possibilities in-between.

The challenge is that soft empathy does not work in dealing with bullies, aggressors, psychopaths, antisocial personality disorder, corrupt politicians, gangsters selling fire insurance, and bad actors of diverse kinds too numerous to list here (and so this list is not complete). This has led anti-empathy proponents to assert that empathy is a kind of suicide. Find out what is wrong with the position of the anti-empathy folks and how to answer their skepticism powerfully and eloquently. Not to be missed!

One can always make a splash by throwing a rotten tomato, and those who throw one at empathy get a chance to gather Internet clicks by saying something shocking, even if it is of questionable accuracy. However, what about seriously engaging this thought literally as a debating point – is empathy a defect of western civilization dooming us to suicide and/or suicidal species extinction? As an exercise in thinking, consider the pros and cons. Find out the defects in the point of view that empathy is suicidal or that wester civilization is suffering from too much empathy.