“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
— Maya Angelou
There is something deeply troubling about the growing tendency to portray empathy as a weakness. In parts of today’s political and cultural debate, compassion is dismissed as sentimentality, and caring for the vulnerable is framed as a liability rather than a strength. This growing contempt for empathy strikes at the heart of the very values on which free and humane societies are built: human dignity, mutual respect, solidarity, and the recognition that our strength as a society lies not only in individual achievement, but also in how we care for one another.
This is particularly evident in the rhetoric of Elon Musk and other wealthy and influential figures who argue that excessive empathy threatens Western civilization. The same argument has gained traction in popular intellectual discourse. Canadian marketing professor Gad Saad, in his book Suicidal Empathy, portrays what he considers misguided empathy as a threat to Western societies, while psychologist Paul Bloom’s Against Empathy challenges the assumption that empathy is always a reliable guide to moral judgment. Both works have found a growing audience among readers questioning the role of emotion in public life, although their arguments and conclusions differ. Saad, in particular, criticises what he sees as the elevation of empathy above reason.
There is a legitimate debate to be had about the limits of empathy. Emotions can cloud judgment. Compassion can be manipulated. The desire to please everyone can prevent us from making difficult decisions.
But none of this establishes that empathy itself is a weakness. It establishes that, like any human capacity, empathy needs to be balanced with reason, discernment, and boundaries.
The real question is not whether we should abandon empathy, but what kind of society we create when we begin to treat it with contempt.
Empathy is an evolutionary advantage
The popular image of evolution as a ruthless struggle in which only the strongest survive owes much to an oversimplified understanding of Darwinian theory. Survival has never depended on physical strength or individual competition alone. Cooperation, social bonds, mutual support and the ability to respond to the needs of others have been key aspects of our evolution as a species.
Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, in Mothers and Others (2009), explores how cooperative child-rearing and shared caregiving helped shape human sociality. Human children are exceptionally dependent, and our ancestors’ capacity to cooperate in raising and protecting them was a significant evolutionary advantage.
Our species did not flourish simply because some individuals defeated others. We also survived because people cared for children, supported injured members of their communities, shared knowledge and worked together in the face of danger.
Empathy is not the only explanation for these behaviours, and cooperation should not be confused with unconditional self-sacrifice. But the evidence challenges the simplistic notion that ruthlessness is the natural foundation of human success.
Our ability to care for one another is part of what has made us human.
The difference between empathy and weakness
One of the problems with the current backlash against empathy is that it often conflates several different things: emotional identification, compassion, people-pleasing, moral judgment and the willingness to tolerate harmful behaviour.
They are not the same.
Empathy allows us to understand something of another person’s experience. Compassion motivates us to respond to suffering. Neither requires us to agree with everyone, excuse wrongdoing or abandon our own interests.
We can empathize with someone without endorsing their actions. We can understand the circumstances that lead a person to behave destructively without excusing the harm they cause. And we can establish firm boundaries while treating another human being with dignity.
This is not weakness. It is emotional maturity.
The strongest form of empathy is not indiscriminate agreement. It is the ability to remain open to another person’s humanity while retaining the capacity to think critically.
Why empathetic leadership works
Research on leadership and organisational behaviour has repeatedly associated empathy with better interpersonal relationships, stronger trust and more effective collaboration.
The Center for Creative Leadership has reported associations between empathetic leadership and job performance. Research into ethical leadership likewise suggests that the ability to understand other people’s perspectives can help leaders recognise the human consequences of their decisions.
Empathy does not guarantee good judgment, and it cannot replace competence. But leaders who understand how their decisions affect others are better placed to build trust, address conflict and create environments in which people feel able to contribute.
The Businessolver State of Workplace Empathy reports have also documented a persistent gap between the importance employees attach to empathy and how much empathy they believe their workplaces demonstrate.
These findings challenge the assumption that compassion is incompatible with effectiveness. In many settings, understanding people is not an alternative to achieving results. It is part of how sustainable results are achieved.
What kind of society do we want?
The implications extend far beyond the workplace.
A society organised around the idea that the strongest, wealthiest and most powerful deserve the greatest respect risks confusing success with moral worth. It can begin to treat poverty as personal failure, vulnerability as inadequacy and social support as an undeserved concession.
This is the danger of Social Darwinism: not evolutionary biology itself, but the attempt to turn a selective interpretation of nature into a justification for social inequality and indifference.
A humane society does not have to deny personal responsibility, reward effort or discourage ambition. It can value all these things while recognising that people do not begin life with equal opportunities, equal resources or equal capacities. Illness, disability, bereavement and economic hardship can affect anyone.
How we respond to these realities reveals something fundamental about our collective values.
Many of the moral traditions that have shaped Western civilisation, including Christianity, place care for the sick, the poor, the stranger and the vulnerable near the centre of ethical life. The Good Samaritan is remembered not because he demonstrated superior power, but because he stopped to help someone whom others had passed by.
That principle is not exclusively Christian, of course. It appears in different forms across religious, philosophical and humanist traditions.
The point is that a society’s moral strength is measured not only by what its most successful members achieve, but also by how it treats those who are struggling.
Empathy, trust and human flourishing
Consider Finland and the other Nordic countries, which have consistently ranked highly in international assessments of life satisfaction. Their experience suggests that social trust, reliable public institutions, economic security and a strong sense of collective responsibility can contribute to human well-being.
Empathy alone does not explain these outcomes. Nor should the Nordic model be romanticised or treated as a perfect society. But these examples challenge the notion that a healthy society must be built primarily on ruthless competition and individual self-interest.
When people believe that others can be trusted, that institutions will generally treat them fairly and that hardship will not necessarily leave them abandoned, social cooperation becomes easier. Trust encourages participation; participation can strengthen community; and a sense of belonging can help protect people against isolation.
At the level of everyday life, the same principle applies. Feeling understood can ease loneliness, strengthen relationships and make difficult experiences more bearable. Empathy cannot solve every problem, but it can change how people experience the problems they face.
The real strength is to care without losing yourself
There is a danger in turning empathy into an unquestionable virtue. We can become overwhelmed by the suffering of others. We can favour people who resemble us, overlook the needs of strangers or allow emotion to override evidence. Empathy needs the guidance of reason, fairness and ethical principles.
But the answer to these limitations is not to wage a crusade against empathy. It is to develop a more mature understanding of it.
We need the courage to confront wrongdoing, the clarity to distinguish facts from feelings, the discipline to set boundaries and the compassion to recognise suffering even when it is inconvenient.
These qualities are not mutually exclusive.
In a world increasingly shaped by political polarisation, economic insecurity and the temptation to regard opponents as less than fully human, empathy may be more important than ever. It allows us to disagree without dehumanising, to hold people accountable without denying their dignity, and to recognise that another person’s suffering matters even when it does not directly affect us.
The question raised by the current backlash against empathy is ultimately a question about the kind of civilisation we wish to build.
Do we want a world in which power determines whose suffering matters? Or one in which strength includes the willingness to protect those who have less of it?
Empathy is not the abandonment of reason. It is the recognition that reason without humanity can become an instrument of indifference.
A society that celebrates power while ridiculing compassion may become more competitive, but it will not necessarily become wiser, healthier or happier.
The measure of your humanity is not how successful you distance yourself from weakness. It is whether you can recognize vulnerability in others and in yourself.
Because in the end, the question is not whether we can afford empathy. It is what we stand to lose when we no longer value it.
Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast
P.S: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in reading one of my four books, available where all good books are sold.
