Wanted: Politicos with Empathy

         Surely you’ve heard of GOP’s Rep. Paul Ryan? He’s the Wisconsite with the 100-yard –wide smile and bleacher-size ears.

          The word is that Mr. Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, is a pleasant and friendly fellow.

 It’s also said he lacks empathy.

The same is said of House Speaker John Boehner, the Ohio Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican, and GOP presidential aspirant Mitt Romney. The entire GOP membership of the U.S. House of Representatives has been hit with that charge too.

The Root Cause

The reason? All support Mr. Ryan’s proposed national budget.  The budget—in essence a call for policy action—would negatively impact Medicaid, Medicare and other so called “entitlements.”

Economics professor Paul Krugman, Princeton’s Nobel Laureate and a New York Times columnist, states that Ryan’s plan is “mainly about cutting taxes for the rich while slashing aid to the poor and unlucky.”

          Many non-Ryan devotees—liberal and independent economists along with lots of Democrats—say the same things of Ryan and his budget. Suppose the critics are right.  Would it make a difference if Ryan and the others were more empathetic? Would they likely craft a budget more friendly to the poor and unlucky?

          The simplistic definition of empathy is the ability to “feel another’s pain” or “to walk a mile in another person’s moccasins,” as Native American wisdom has it. More accurately, empathy refers to the ability to perceive, understand, and be sensitive to another’s feelings and thoughts without actually having those feelings.

PossibleConfusion

          Empathy is often confused with sympathy, which refers to the ability to understand and share another’s feelings. Sympathetic persons feel pity and concern for others’ suffering.

          Empathy is big these days. Psychologists and other behaviorists have been studying it, and there are a number of books on the topic with titles like ”The Empathy Gap,” “Teaching Empathy,” “The Age of Empathy,” and “Wired to Care.”

Business consultants give empathy tests and try to teach salespersons and employers how to sound and act empathic even if their clients seem incapable of accessing other peoples’ emotions.  Then too, news folk increasingly have been including references to empathy in their reports since the presidential race began.

          For instance, David Brooks, the New York Times’ brilliant conservative columnist, wrote last September that empathy is “insufficient.” It doesn’t motivate anyone to do or not do anything, he says. He states that almost anyone you admire has “some talent for fellow feeling,” but what makes that person act is “obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code.”

Experts to Order

In other words, sense of duty makes one act.  He quotes certain thinkers to back up his point.

          But Mr. Brooks has avoided prominent scholars who declare otherwise. Of course that’s what columnists and bloggers tend to do. They hunt up “experts” who support their theme and dodge the others.

          So in contrast to Brooks’ view, let’s hear from psychoanalyst  Heinz Kohut. He introduced “the principle of empathy in psychoanalysis.” He says that “If empathy is not felt…[the motive] what’s in it for me? supersedes pure altruism, but if empathy is felt, an individual will help by actions or by word regardless whether it is in their self-interest and do so even if the costs outweigh potential rewards.”

Doing Good for Its Own Sake

          D. Daniel Batson, who has doctorates in religion and psychology and is a specialist in empathy , writes, “feeling empathy for [a[ person in need evokes motivation to help [that person] in which these benefits to self are not the ultimate goal of helping; they are unintended consequences.”

          Most experts agree empathy is essential if a person is to have the virtue of compassion, a powerful feeling of pity that produces a strong urge to alleviate other’s suffering.

          If our legislators don’t have empathy then, and can’t experience compassion, can we expect them to aid “the poor and unlucky?”

          One psychologist I spoke to about the lack of empathy issue smiled and quipped, “Maybe it’s wrong to say Mr. Ryan and the others lack empathy. They might have lots of empathy for the rich—just not for the poor.”
          If that psychologist is right, I have no sympathy for Mr. Ryan and his acolytes.

                                                                      Gus Gribbin