The World Needs Less Empathy - Kol Nidre 5778
The world needs less empathy. Not what you were expecting me to say? I’m a bit surprised myself; I have stood in this spot before teaching about the importance of empathy — how our experience as strangers in Egypt is supposed to lead us to empathize with other people suffering today and that our empathy should motivate us to work for causes that support the poor, refugees, LGBTQ rights, racial justice, equality, health care and more. But it turns out that inspiring empathy is not the best way to increase moral behavior and that empathy is not enough. Empathy is often understood to be the root of compassion and moral behavior: if I feel how you feel, if I’m hurt when you hurt, then I will do whatever I can to alleviate your suffering. Empathy can lead to good outcomes — we might be more likely to help someone if we empathize with them — but empathy is not a good enough motivator for moral action, and can not fix the world by itself. To truly fix the world, we n...