…N. brought up the remark common in feminist circles, some variation on, “Well, I know I couldn’t possibly presume to understand where you’re coming from because we have different experiences of the world.” N. called this a cop-out, and I agree with her. Mostly it’s earnestly meant, arising from a desire not to over-impose our own interpretive grid on someone else’s actions or words.
But. The reason I think that attitude is also a cop-out is that the source of empathy is not shared experience, or at least not primarily. The source of empathy is the imagination.
This is why reading and hearing good, engaging stories from a young age is so important (or part of why, anyhow)— allowing ourselves to be involved in the lives of characters with lives very different from our own cultivates the habit of mind wherein we learn identify with the Other. We do this primarily with our imaginations….Interest, like taste and like affection, is not something that we either have or don’t, or something that we passively receive— it is acquired and cultivated. As members of a community, we are to some extent ethically obligated to cultivate an interest in the lives of others. This interest, along with a well-trained imagination, is what leads to empathy.
….entitlement is also what this is about: the idea that we are always entitled to dinner party conversation that we find immediately interesting, or silence on an airplane, or only pleasant muted noise in any given public sphere. Or whatever. When we cling to that sense of outraged entitlement, and refuse to put ourselves for a moment in the place of another, we are seated firmly at the center of our own universe.
[ The Source of Empathy, from Recovering Sociopath ]
I like this. I do often think that saying “I can’t see where you’re coming from” is a cop-out. If I can’t see, I can at least ask the right questions till I get a general picture of what somebody’s thinking.
