Empathy makes us people. Empathy is the glue that holds family, friends, towns, and even nations together. It is how we navigate, how we judge right from wrong. Empathy is the core of goodness and its absence is the root cause of evil. Without empathy the link to the common human consciousness is severed – others cannot be understood or appreciated – and love is relegated to the status of a tool.
Sensitive Learning Periods
Learning empathy is analogous to learning a language. If not exposed early enough or consistently enough, empathy can become diminished, warped, or simply never learnt. Eventually, frighteningly early, in fact, by about age 3, it is too late to do so and all that remains is the ability to pretend empathy by aping others.
Once empathy is out of reach what remains is a shell of a human being, incapable of goodness for its own sake. The barriers of decency that restrain people are shattered and selfish greed in all its countless forms is unleashed. Meet the Cluster B Family of Horrors.
The Nuclear Fallout and Medical Characterizations
Without empathy, arbitrary anger and often rage dominate. In time, coupled with reasonable intelligence, it will be outwardly moderated through mimicry of good (one contemporary term for this more general vice is virtue signaling).
There are medical and colloquial ways to describe different states of missing or warped empathy. Two terms we use to describe one extreme point on a spectrum of people devoid of all earnest empathy are sociopath and psychopath. All aforementioned people have a Cluster B Personality Disorder (PD) Narcissism (Narcissistic Personality Disorder, NPD), Borderline(PD), etc., are medical diagnoses, while psychopath and sociopath are not.
There are other Cluster B Personality Disorders, but not all of the cluster is characterized by an obvious, complete, and incurable lack of empathy. Rather, it appears as if the “cluster” is constructed because of the similarities in behavior exhibited. Two other Cluster B diagnoses are Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD) and Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD), the latter containing the psychopaths and sociopaths.
Splitting the Hair
In empathic contrast, BPD appears to be a condition which involves heavily warped, erratic, and sporadic empathy. The “sufferer” will often exude empathy to excess, sometimes in perplexing ways, and will at other times act just as a narcissist or even a psychopath should be expected to.
While narcissists and their ilk might do what they do because they suffer, they do what they do without empathy – without any regard for how their behavior affects others. They can fake it, but they only do so once they observe empirically that it can be a successful tactic to get what they want. This is why they are so notoriously difficult to discover and unmask.
Finding that Ugly Hair
You have known people like this your whole life because they were forged at a young age and there are a lot of them. The lowest estimated number of people who make others suffer because of their pathological narcissism is 5% of the population, 1 in 20. The upper range is 15%, 3 in 20. And that is only counting the NPDs! There are entire movements, religions even, based on successful people who were clearly devoid of earnest empathy. Cult leaders, brutal dictators, gang leaders, are just a few easy examples.
A Short Consideration on one Important Aspect of Empathy
Empathy is not egalitarian. It is both natural and OK to feel more empathy for your neighbors tragic loss than the loss of 100 people on the other side of the planet. Egalitarian empathy would be self-destructive, absurd even, which easy thought experiments show. It fills a purpose when it is biased to those with whom we have relationships and those geographically closer. It does not serve a purpose to be equally affected by the death of a random child as one would be from the loss of one’s own child. Creating confusion by demanding egalitarian empathy is on of many ways the Cluster B’s hijack good and make it into something twisted and destructive.