In both Bloom’s essay and DFW’s speech, I learned that empathy is a double-edged sword. On the inner blade, Bloom writes about how some people take empathy too far,
“We should empathize with the elderly who don’t get enough food, the victims of religious persecution, the poor without adequate health care, the rich who suffer from existential angst, the victims of sexual assault, those falsely accused of sexual assault . . . But we can’t.”
He discusses how many people try to empathize with anyone going through a hardship. This is damaging because there are too many people to look out for, and too many people who aren’t receiving help. If you try to help everyone, some people will receive just mediocre support because there simply is not enough time or resources to do so. A solution to this problem is to primarily look out for those closest to you, but do not try to make other people’s lives worse. In his commencement speech, DFW said,
“I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket’s checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do”.
As for the outer edge of the sword, being able to recognize the struggles of others and understand that you don’t have to change their life is the best approach to empathy. If all people were able to realize the strength in understanding others over acting impulsively upon emotions, empathy would be beneficial in most aspects of life.
