Is it just me, or have people been running detrimentally low on empathy as of late? Not to say that this problem is confined to our current political moment in the U.S., but it seems like now more than ever, we’re deficient in connecting with others and breaking out of our limited scopes. “I understand how you’re feeling” has turned into, “It doesn’t affect me, I don’t care.” 

Earlier this year, conservative circles targeted empathy as the downfall of Western societies. On  “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, the U.S.’s favorite wealthy punching bag, Elon Musk, once claimed that “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” suggesting that it could even lead to “civilizational suicide.” The Christian right has gone as far as to call it the “sin of empathy” that is weaponized by the left. 

Let’s unpack this. Empathy being weaponized … I don’t entirely disagree that people have wielded empathy to pardon evil people or to rationalize atrocities. However, I think both sides of the political spectrum have done this, and more specifically, have adhered to selective empathy. 

A recent example is the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I think the fact that he staunchly advocated for guns, was assassinated on a college campus of all places, and became a victim of political violence was as tragic as it was ironic. But the outpouring of “empathy” for him became performative. It wasn’t just offering condolences and denouncing political violence; it was creating a Charlie Kirk Remembrance Day, announcing a Charlie Kirk Commemorative Coin Act, and, most importantly, ostracizing anyone who so much as quotes the questionable things the man had said. 

Yet, where was an ounce of this empathy for Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, who was assassinated earlier this year along with his husband? Where were the flocks of people protesting political violence then? Where was the empathy for her and her husband, also victims of political crime? 

Empathy becomes weaponized when it is done for spectacle, and especially when people cherry-pick who or what to empathize with. No longer can we consider it empathy, because at that point, it’s a reactive performance. 

In a global perspective, this becomes much more apparent. Genuine empathy has no room when you are censored from calling out man-made genocides. It’s “just the way the world works,” and we have to move on. It’s controversial to be vocal about what the Palestinian and Sudanese populations are enduring, and God forbid that you say that innocent civilians don’t deserve to be slaughtered. We’ve become so desensitized that when empathy is expressed like this, it causes extreme reactions. 

Kenneth B. Clark, a famed black psychologist in the 1960s, noted that empathy can come in two forms: chauvinistic empathy and empathic reason. Chauvinistic empathy is empathy limited to a person’s “in-group,” as in family, friends, or any social group they are part of. Clark found that society benefits much more from empathic reason, or intelligence mixed with sensitivity and social trust in others. Having testified in the “Brown v. Board of Education” case, his research on empathy has much to do with racism and discrimination of the Jim Crow era. 

Not everyone is owed empathy, of course. Depending on who you are, you may have limits on where your compassion for others starts and ends. After all, it’s not an innate or fixed trait but one we can develop, according to psychologist Dr. Jamil Zaki. In his book, “The War for Kindness,” he urges us to train empathy like a muscle and be more intentional with kindness: “We don’t owe others empathy, especially if they meet us with cruelty or indifference. But if we succumb to our lazier emotional instincts, we will all suffer more.” 

Empathy not only requires emotional intelligence but also a great deal of effort. Not everyone has the energy to hone that effort, but genuine empathy can flourish if we challenge ourselves to feel for others, even those we don’t like. I’m not trying to “solve” this invasive lack of empathy, but I am saying that mitigating the problem is well within our control as individuals.