¿Are Empathy and Sympathy the same?

PART ONE

Not many years after 11 September 2001, Errol Morris interviewed Robert McNamara for about twenty hours from which you may watch an amazing one hundred and seven minutes released as the documentary The Fog of War.

There are any number of great reasons why this documentary should be seen afresh by new audiences. I will mention only two.

The first reason is that The Fog of War, by accident of history, is nearly immune from left-right, democrat-republican, liberal-conservative distortions. At least for one hundred and seven minutes. And I hope that will allow people on both sides of this year’s Electoral Divide to discover something fascinating and eye-opening.

The second reason is that, yes, it is tremendously topical just weeks before (and now after) our forty-fifth constitutional transition of power. But allow me to belabor this point >>> topical especially in one specific, particular way: it features someone who knows the meaning of the word empathy.

This 2003 Oscar-winning documentary features someone who knows the meaning of the word empathy!

You should simply watch it. No matter how you voted or did not vote in the November 8 election. It is profound and arresting. (Morris provides a transcript in his website, too. Here is the link.) But below are three crucial moments I want to draw your attention to.

Moment number ONE

Right at the beginning, the subtitle of The Fog of War is: “Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.” And the first one is…

“Lesson #1: Empathize with your enemy.”

Intriguing. McNamara, a numbers guy (lesson #6 is: “Get the data.”) who helped General Curtis LeMay properly calculate his way through World War II and into the Cold War. McNamara who implemented Kennedy’s and Johnson’s policies in Vietnam. McNamara the hawk, not a dove feather on him, saying the words “empathize with your enemy.” Why?

Not for sentimental reasons. Not because you love your enemy. Simply because it’s a requisite for conducting yourself efficiently while in conflict. It’s a necessity for obtaining and smartly using the information you need. And if ‘empathize with our enemy’ is vital, how much more critical is it to empathize with those who are not our enemies? (Or should not be.)

Moment number TWO

At about 12 minutes and 5 seconds into the conversation we hear McNamara explain:

“Thompson, knowing Khrushchev as he did, thought Khrushchev will accept that. [A face-saving way out of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.] And Thompson was right. That’s what I call empathy. We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes, just to understand the thoughts that lie behind their decisions and their actions.” [NOTE: My boldface and my italics in this quote.] McNamara explains, do notice: «...to understand the thoughts that lie behind their decisions and their actions.» Empathy is explained as a thinking tool here, as part of a process of discovery and analysis. There is no sentiment important enough to mention.

Empathy is explained as a thinking tool here, as part of a process of discovery and analysis.

Moment number THREE

Then at about 77 minutes and 35 seconds we hear:

“Let me go back one moment. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, at the end, I think we did put ourselves in the skin of the Soviets. In the case of Vietnam, we didn’t know them well enough to empathize. And there was total misunderstanding as a result. They believed that we had simply replaced the French as a colonial power, and we were seeking to subject South and North Vietnam to our colonial interests, which was absolutely absurd. And we, we saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War. Not what they saw it as: a civil war.” [NOTE: My boldface in this quote.]

“We didn’t know them well enough to empathize.”

Empathize. Not sympathize. Not feel sorry for. We are not talking about shedding a single tear. Simply, and terrifyingly, we are facing our own profound lack of understanding. But also the fact that there are ways of becoming better informed.

•••

Lack of empathy is lack of imagination. But not wild imagination. Coherent imagination. Based on talent-to-dream but also on first-hand experience, observation and measurement (data) ... not mere hope or fancy. Imagination is more than wishful thinking.

The design imagination involves much more than wishful thinking.

How this applies to design is straightforward. Empathy is a component of our theory of mind. Our own mind and the minds of others. Empathy is not a magic potion, nor infallible, quite the contrary. But without it we are talking to ourselves in a crowded room. Or to others in an empty one. Missing the point of our inner dialogue. Missing the chance of external signals and intelligence. Empathy is a corrective to pernicious, facile, parochial, egocentric circular thinking. One way out of the box. A hunter without empathy is destined to become prey. Or die of hunger.

A hunter without empathy is destined to become prey.

Imagination is not just something we do by ourselves. Imagination is fed by our ability, and willingness, to open ourselves to the internal and external world, and to the internal and external worlds of others. Thinking out of the box is often an out of body experience, a stepping outside the delimitation of our person. A trial impersonation of other minds.

If we hope to ever capture the hearts, minds, pockets and time of the people we are supposedly designing for we must understand them. Not nearly completely, how could we, we barely begin to understand ourselves. But enough to realize why we may be so alike. And so different.

To realize why we may be so alike. And so different.

•••

In part 2 we will see how definitions of empathy, sympathy and sentimentalism come into play. Not only back then in the 1940s, 50s and 60s but today.

[To be continued...]

PART TWO

I’m not suggesting that McNamara’s 11 Lessons are correct or true. (It seems to me that is not the intention of Errol Morris in his documentary, either.) I am not endorsing them, simply quoting them. And, sincerely, taking a few out of their original context to see if and how they may apply to our context today.

Not everybody would agree. Paul Bloom on 2 December 2016 in the Wall Street Journal gives the opposite view: “Empathy distorts our reasoning and makes us biased, tribal and often cruel.” His WSJ article and his book, “Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion,” are interesting. Are we saying the same thing using a different vocabulary? Something completely different? I will leave that for you to decide.

The point of this post is that we should regularly [a] examine the way we think, and how we [b] talk about what we [c] think and [d] believe we believe. How those sharp or blurry conceptions of [e] ourselves and of [f] others affect how we [g] act (or design &c) as [h] agents in the [i] world. Whether in [j] cooperation with, or [k] opposition to, even in [l] temporary compromise with [m] other agents in that world.

Empathy and Sympathy

If we look at the history of these words (empathy, sympathy) and how they have been applied in philosophy, psychology and literature, and conversation, we can see there is no stable definition. Our use of language is messy and contingent.

Our way of talking and thinking is full of what are called false dichotomies. In my personal dictionary, false dichotomies are pairs of concepts we mistake for absolute opposites but may simply be in real, apparent or even temporary conflict; sometimes actually in close causal connection.

(Which of these word pairs are true dichotomies, which false?)

Any two items may be put in opposition and presented as a choice (¿red OR green?) but that does not mean they are opposites. In design, my favorite false dichotomy is “form versus function.” But also “emotion versus thought.” And “rational versus emotional.” As well as “style versus substance.” Each of these pairs contain elements that are different but not necessarily real opposites. (Those pairs are very different from “black or white,” “true or false,” “up or down,” “big or small” and “cold or hot.”) Treating them as dichotomies obscures, instead of clarifying, their relationship.

You believe reason is the opposite of emotion? Consider this: when deciding whether an action is ethical, convenient or to your benefit, you may be correctly or incorrectly swayed by emotional or rational considerations. Or both! (Perhaps why Lesson #2 is: “Rationality will not save us.”…?) Our emotions and our intellect are both biological systems, not opposite information types. [[[ Are they? This is one area where I would love to hear from people who know or feel —b e l i e v e— they know. ]]] Simply different machinery, evolved by chance for different purposes — yet strongly connected in functional and dysfunctional ways.

My goal is not to correct our use of logic. (An endlessly tendentious task!) Instead, I want to focus our attention on some important distinctions.

Sentimentalism

This word has acquired a negative connotation. As in “swayed by sentiment or emotion.” But, again, we may be swayed by compassion, love or hatred. And depending on circumstances, being swayed by any of those may cause us to act correctly or incorrectly. “Sentimentalism” has gone from virtue to vice because it has come to indicate an extreme position, a tendency out of control, a response out of proportion.

I define empathy as an ability to see from other perspectives than our own that may provide us with useful information. Defined in that way, empathy may move us to sympathy or antipathy in an informed manner. But sentimentalism is trigger-happy and resistant to change based on new information.

(cold-blooded) Contingency

Another hard to pin down word is contingency. It’s often associated with doing things regardless of the consequences to others. “Collateral damage” in war, for example, is a contingency. Or “down-sizing” a company. (Euphemism reigns supreme in this lexical space.) But also operating without anesthesia in the battlefield because there is none; to save a life. All these may be the result of ‘cold-blooded’ emotion, calculation or skill but also of carelessness. Or necessity. Or plain ignorance. There is a continuum between “cold-blooded” and “cool-headed.”

Contingency is important to design because what is contingent changes enormously depending on the environment and circumstances and flavors the way we talk about everything. The still that illustrates this post is from the “Pets or Meat” sequence in Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me.” (Another documentary.) The words empathy, sympathy, sentimentalism, contingency and design all harshly but subtly come to bear on that situation. (See what you think by watching it for yourself here.)

(The graphics above show an intersection —or crash?— of causes and effects, of effects and causes. The graphic below casually maps tendencies and triggers that may lead us to empathy, sentimentalism and combinations thereof. The word ‘design’ in the center —which you may substitute for your own activity from business to politics to walking down the street— actually refers to us, to our body-mind-whatever-else complex. As unintentionally designed by evolution —or your favorite alternative— and interfered with by ourselves, tinkerers that we are, as well as other agents and elements in the environment. As a designer I believe we can have an intentional effect on what nature and nurture gives us.)

(dumbed-down) Design

We try (or should try) to “design the world” so that bad things do not happen. “Easier said than done” is a cliché but no less true for that. And the fact is that how we say things has a great impact on what we do, and how we do it. To me, empathy is also a way to understand what others are saying, why they are saying it and even how they are saying it. Empathy can help us listen better. Empathy can help us see better. Help us think, see, listen and talk ourselves out of the box and into new solutions. Empathy can contribute to problem-solving in ways that include tradition and innovation, disruption and continuity.

Sentimentalism or “free-floating sympathy or antipathy” contributes to un-designed design of all sorts. Style without substance and substance without style; which are both definitions of inert, ugly and dysfunctional design. Sentimentalism contributes to not taking into account the fullest configuration-space possible, as I believe Stuart Kauffman would explain it.

To me, as a designer, the correct interpretation of “form follows function” includes the fact that ‘the function’ may be anywhere in a continuum between purely utilitarian and purely emotional. (Even occupy that continuum in a discontiguous way.) Designers must be cool-headed but not uncaring or ignorant.

(More about the graphic above at http://tinyurl.com/y9nmbwpl.)

As T.S. Eliot practically told us in The Sacred Wood in 1920: to arrive at the most nearly perfect form of expression we must achieve a superposition of passionate imagination and dispassionate analysis.

— by Hector Moll-Carrillo / copyright © 2017, 2019

• • •

NOTES

[note 1 to PART ONE] These are the first 11 lessons. (I am not endorsing them, simply quoting them. And taking a few out of their original context to see how they apply to our context today.)

[note 1 to PART TWO] One definition of ‘dichotomy’ among many is “1. a. Division into two sharply defined or contrasting parts; (Logic) division into two mutually exclusive categories or genera; binary classification. Also: an instance of such division.” (Oxford English Dictionary)

[note 2 to PART TWO] Among the definitions of ‘sentimental’ is “1. a. Of persons, their dispositions and actions: Characterized by sentiment. Originally in favourable sense: Characterized by or exhibiting refined and elevated feeling. In later use: Addicted to indulgence in superficial emotion; apt to be swayed by sentiment.” (Oxford English Dictionary) Also consider ‘sentimentality’ as “a. The quality of being sentimental; affectation of sensibility, exaggerated insistence upon the claims of sentiment.”

[note 3 to PART TWO] And among the definitions of ‘contingency’ is “b. A conjuncture of events occurring without design; a juncture.” The word ‘design’ there refers to intention, not the graphic or programmatic specification of a design, as in graphic, industrial, architectural or service design, &c. But, of course, intention is almost a synonym for design as we designers understand it. Almost.

[note 4 to PART TWO] I use a still from Michael Moore’s documentary “Roger and Me” as the main illustration for this post about another documentary, “The Fog of War” by Errol Morris. The still is from what I believe is a very relevant episode (Pets or Meat) connecting the two documentaries and contributing to our consideration of the words empathy, sympathy, sentimentalism, contingency and design. (See what you think by watching it for yourself here.)

[note 5 to PART TWO] It was bound to happen. I have been asked the question: “What do you think about the two documentaries you mention?” Well, I most certainly do not think Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me” is immune from left-right, democrat-republican, liberal-conservative distortions. (As I said at the beginning, that Errol Morris’ “The Fog of War” nearly is.) Quite the contrary. But there are accidents of history and authorship to consider on both sides. And, oddly, I had not realized that both documentaries are about the relationships among empathy, sympathy, sentimentalism, contingency and design. Check out what Roger Ebert said on that subject here. I am not in complete agreement with Ebert but he does a great job of reporting the many sides and issues.