The Lie of Outsourced Virtue - by Michael Smith

Sympathy Observes, Empathy Feels—Only Compassion Acts - Michael Smith


In thinking about the concept of “suicidal empathy,” I’ve found myself reflecting more broadly on the human condition. 

That reflection keeps circling back to three words we often treat as interchangeable, even though they require distinctly different levels of involvement and produce radically different outcomes:

sympathy, empathy, and compassion.

• Sympathy is feeling for someone. You recognize hardship from a safe distance and feel pity. 
• Empathy goes further—it is feeling with someone. You step into their emotional experience and share their pain. 
• Compassion is the synthesis of both. It combines understanding suffering with a willingness to relieve it. 

Put simply: sympathy observes, empathy experiences, and compassion acts.

This is not merely semantic. It is a progression that any healthy civil society must complete if it hopes to solve real problems, moving from awareness, to emotion, to responsibility...