Last year my faculty-mentor for Cherry Hill Seminary’s Community Ministry Certificate program emailed me an NPR segment she found interesting enough to pass on, “How empathy came to be seen as a weakness in conservative circles.” I didn’t get around to reading it until last month while doing a digital spring-cleaning. (Go me – I reduced a backlog of about 1600 emails in my inbox to 100!)
The quotes at the beginning of this segment are harsh, like “empathy will align you with hell.” Full disclosure: I didn’t listen to the audio version of the segment, but read the transcript. This allowed me to focus on the concepts presented while minimizing emotional contagion from intense tones of voice, which is part of my trauma-informed way of navigating the internet (or protecting my energy field, if you prefer).
Snow leopard [Pashiel, Pixabay]
What I learned was edifying. Anti-empathy sound-bites from Elon Musk have trickled into my reality in the past few years, but this segment spelled out the argument, largely coming from Christian nationalists and other conservative corners: Empathy is a weakness because it gets people to go against church teachings. As one person was quoted, “Most people have a hard time imagining how empathy could ever be harmful. And therefore, if I’m the devil, where am I going to hide some of my most destructive tactics?”
Putting aside my almost-certain disagreement with many of these individuals on the content of public policies or theology, I understand the principle they are getting at: empathy, when misapplied or not balanced with other values, can lead us to behave out of integrity with our ethics. In fact, these conservatives have agreement from a source they might be surprised by. Ivan Richmond writes in his book The Religion of Good: A Wiccan’s Guide to Ethical Insight for Individuals of Any Religion or None, “If used in a shortsighted way, I believe [empathy] can lead us astray,” and later, “empathy has the potential problem of allowing people to tear-jerk us.” He gives a rather silly but demonstrative hypothetical case of three people who want to enter into a group marriage along with two other individuals who only want to marry each other. According to Richmond, simplistic empathy would lead to a group marriage of all five people, because that would result in more people’s happiness.
While the above example also murkily incorporates utilitarianism, this is indeed how empathy seems to be deployed rhetorically and in regard to social issues. An example that came to my mind while reading the NPR segment had to do with my strong feelings about the poaching of endangered animals, to which some people may respond, “You have to understand the people doing that are desperate to feed their families….” This kind of response can land as an excuse for behavior I find ethically unacceptable regardless of circumstances. I recently told my partner: “Sorry, if it ever comes down to killing an endangered animal, I’m going to let you starve.” (To which they sighed and replied this is something they love about me.) Additionally, while some people involved in animal poaching may be pretty desperate, to say they all are doing it of necessity is surely an oversimplification as well. Ultimately, I don’t want anyone to be in a situation of not seeing another way to provide for themselves beyond hurting endangered animals, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to condone that action in the meantime.
To share a more personal example, a couple years ago my mother ended up on the streets after going through eviction proceedings at the property she had been renting for many years – which I had helped her find. During the eviction process and after, she made last minute requests of me to take her to see a housing listing or help her relocate from one homeless encampment to another. This whole process was so heartbreaking for me, as well as a pivotal moment in setting boundaries. I recognized that I have been stepping in to take care of my mother for far too long, and far before it was age appropriate. Our life-long role reversal of caregiver and care recipient has had specific negative impacts. As painful as it was, I declined her requests so I could focus on my own needs.
So both the conservatives discussed on NPR and Wiccan priest Ivan Richmond perceive empathy as synonymous with acceptance of someone’s behavior, or justification for accommodating others at our own expense (including the compromise of values, which for some people includes their interpretation of their scriptures). It was indeed hard for me to parse out the nuances of care, familial obligation, and healthy boundaries in the situation with my mom. As much as I had empathy for her – repeating to myself that she must be doing the best she can, on some level – it didn’t mean it is my job to use all my energy caring for her forever, at great cost to myself.
This is exactly what those quoted in the NPR segment are getting at: empathy and accommodation are almost inextricably linked. And it seems to me that even those of us who often advocate for empathy as a value and social good safeguard our empathy away from those who disagree with us. Ivan agrees with me when he writes, “…many of the people I hear talking about empathy these days seem to care about the feelings of some much more than others. They can be, hypocritically, incredibly unempathetic to those they are blind to. So empathy can easily miss its mark.”
I would take issue with the idea that empathy is the problem in any of these cases. The challenge I see in a lot of these scenarios is that empathy is applied unevenly, to only one party in a conflict. I am biased here because I have a two-decade background in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), as developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, who conceived of empathy in very specific ways, including presence to another’s needs – or our own. The NVC approach to conflict is to empathize with all involved, and then look for win-win solutions. This could look something like Snow Leopard Trust’s strategy for conservation, in which they provide livestock protection to Indigenous communities to escape the cycle of reprisal killings for snow leopard predation, and bonus incentives for communities where no snow leopard deaths take place in a given year. This approach shows empathy for both the snow leopard, those who deeply care about them, and the human communities co-existing with these endangered cats.
Snow Leopard Trust demonstrates my understanding about healthy empathy: It is not about compromising one’s own needs for another person (or animal), but finding a third way that attends to the needs of all involved. And sadly, that isn’t always possible. There are many other strategies to explore for those situations. But I, like many other NVC practitioners, am of the opinion that we humans can too easily assume that many more situations fall into that category than actually do. Additionally, there is room for harm reduction: Even if I cannot find a solution to a problem that truly meets everyone’s needs, I can still consider strategies that will be more acceptable to others and have less of a negative impact on them, while caring for myself and those in my inner circle of care (family, close friends, endangered animals – the exact beings will differ from person to person).
Ivan Richmond frames this in terms of balancing empathy with other virtues or values like love and self-discipline. Those are also helpful ways to look at a situation, but I would invite us to consider that empathy itself can provide healthy balance as long as I remember to empathize with my own needs as well as those of others, and those of others as well as my own. This is what NVC founder Marshall Rosenberg called “emotional liberation.”
In terms of Pagan practice, this could look like turning to our deities, allies, and guides for input on how we can find a win-win in a given situation. Maybe we place symbols representing both our own needs and those who we see as “enemies” on the altar, and ask that our relationship become healthier. Just asking the question, “How can all needs be attended to here?” opens up new possibilities (credit to NVC trainer Miki Kashtan for articulating this point). I want to be clear here that this doesn’t always mean spending more time with someone. Sometimes a healthier relationship means more boundaries.
I raise these ideas because I have been disturbed of late to see those I share some religious affiliation with – at times Pagans, at times UUs – using a language of spiritual battles to cast those we have conflict with in terms of what is morally/spiritually righteous versus unrighteous. I won’t give specific examples because this is not about picking on any one person. Such expressions of religious language are an understandable and perhaps at times unavoidable human tendency. I have certainly engaged in this kind of framing myself plenty in my life’s journey
I don’t think we will ever truly “get over” that moralizing religious tendency, but we can be a part of a legacy of peace-making that also emerges from and within many spiritual traditions. This is peace-making that is not about being a pushover, not about giving up nutrients to another tree in the mycelial web when we need those nutrients ourselves, but perhaps being willing to pass the message along, “These nutrients are needed! Does anyone have extra?”
In 2024, I participated in a Unify Challenge. The man I was paired with shared that when he was a kid and he fought with his siblings or cousins, his grandmother would tell them, “You’re both God’s children.” This concept has stuck with me. It is as true if not truer for me as a Pagan than it might have felt when I was growing up Christian, and I have adapted it, reminding myself, “We’re all Gaia’s children.” Even those who I am most afraid of or angered by also are composed of bodies made of Earth, breath of air, blood of water, and the fire of the stars. These “enemies” are fruiting bodies of this planet like the fungi, lichen, rabbits, squirrels, skunks, and salamanders I hold sacred. What do I do with that? I don’t have easy answers, but I find it worth contemplating and spending time with in prayer, ritual, and meditation, perhaps more than feeding into the collective consciousness around spiritual condemnation. It’s not easy work, and I hope we in the Pagan community can support each other to walk this path.
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