On this episode of Living Myth the deep-seated feeling of empathy is viewed in several contexts: as it appears in a traditional story, as it occurs in personal experience, how it is currently being attacked as “toxic and sinful” and how as "suicidal empathy” it is being called “the existential threat to Western civilization.” The idea that truly caring about other people could end civilization is a new extreme in this era of extreme beliefs and what appears to be an endless onslaught of unprecedented ideas and events.

As people become increasingly uncertain about the future of the world, they also become more easily divided against each other. Uncertainty can not only cause financial markets to plunge, it can also cause people to become more extreme and absolutist about religious beliefs, secular ideologies, and personal opinions. As collective feelings of fear and uncertainty grow they can be used by self-negating ideologies, not just to claim that we are truly separate from each other, but also to insist that some of us are essentially better than others, and therefore count for more even in God's eyes.

In times of cultural upheaval, even empathy and compassion can be weaponized in order to turn those who simply seem “other” than us into those who are enemies to us. Meanwhile, the hidden message of suffering and tragedy in this world involves the sense that we can empathically feel and thereby know the pain that others suffer, precisely because it reflects our own suffering and losses. Just as charity and understanding begin at home, empathy involves being compassionate towards ourselves.

It is our mutual fate to be alive at a time in which we are in a struggle between suffering ever greater and more tragic divisions in life, or else awakening to the ways in which we are all interconnected. Rather than something toxic or suicidal, genuine empathy can be an indication of authenticity and psychological understanding. It can also be a source of hope and a deep resource which can help reveal the inner aim of our lives as well as more mutually inclusive and more wisely sustainable ways to live together.

 

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