Tonight we are hosting a boxing match between two words. Both are heavyweights, but one is a youngster and one an old-timer. The arena is packed with blood-thirsty fans. Who will win?
The first is the young upstart from the big city. His name is Empathy.
He’s in the media constantly now since they crowned him their chief virtue. He sets the standard for how every person interacts and how every business and government should make decisions.
But Empathy comes to us English folks only recently, in 1908, in the context of artistic expression. His grandfather was a German from the 1800s, called “Einfühlung“, a word ripped off from the Greek “empatheia“, which is a hybrid word of “en” (in) and “pathos” (feeling), which originally meant “passion.”
He uses it to mean “inner sympathy”, and his slogan is, “The new and improved sympathy.”
He has the heartstrings of the crowd in his every wink and flash of smile.
In the other corner we have the old guy, Sympathy.
While he clearly has a superior lineage and cultural heritage, he is out of touch and far from relevant. He is cold, uncaring, and callous. Looking at him now, someone should really just take him behind the shed and shoot him.
His Greek heritage is “sympatheia“, which is a combination of “syn” (with/together) and “pathos” (feeling), which means “conformity of feelings”. He was introduced into the English language very early on, in the 1590s.
Like Empathy, he has the same root word of “pathos”, but it’s the adjoining word, the prefix, that makes all the difference.
It’s the difference between “in” and “with”—and when you’re talking about feelings, that’s the difference of lightyears.
I mean you tell me, dear audience, would you prefer Empathy, who will be IN your feelings, or Sympathy, who will be WITH your feelings?
Even Merriam Webster agrees: Empathy is, “The action of… vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another…without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.”
Vicariously. The crowd goes wild!
Merriam goes on: “The imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it.”
Unlike Sympathy, who stands apart from you, Empathy will get inside your skin and become infused with you in your darkest night. It’s like magic and spiritual. It’s next level, man—and it works even better inebriated.
On the other hand, listen to Merriam, just trashing on old Sympathy: “An affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other.”
Similarly?
Similarly??
Are you serious??
The crowd is in uproar. Get this imposter out of here, they say! Tomatoes are flying.
But Merriam goes on: Sympathy is, “The act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another…through some medium.”
Sharing…through a medium?
Just look at him! No vicariousness! No subjective solidarity!
This clown requires a medium for heaven’s sake! Like how in the world are we supposed to build a bridge to span the cosmic gap between us and our feelings? Call him on his flip phone and talk?
But then suddenly, with a loud bang, the lights go out, and the arena is flooded in darkness—and eventually, silence.
Empathy speaks up immediately, “It’s okay, don’t worry, we’re all in this together. I feel your pain.”
Everyone swoons.
Sympathy just waits, silently.
Slowly, a rumble begins, an Orwellian rumble hell-bent on getting these lights back on, daggummit, or someone’s head’s gonna roll!
After a few minutes, Sympathy flips open his phone, and says four words, four syllables that communicate everything the arena needs to solve this problem.
He says, “The lights went out”, and hangs up.
Everyone starts laughing, Empathy is jeering.
“What are you doing, old timer? We are the only ones who can find the solution because we’re the only ones stuck down here!”
But after a few minutes, the lights come on.
The chaos dies down and everyone looks at the two heavyweights in the ring.
Sympathy walks over to Empathy and gets so close their bodies are touching, and says, “I tried to feel your emotions of panic with you, but it was too hard to imagine because I had the solution in my pocket.”
While everyone was clamoring for empathy, they forgot that if everyone is in the same boat, then there will be no one in the rescue boat.