Empathy and kindness have now become tools for disparagement. Are we overplaying them?
On the one hand, we judge. It’s a cognitive reflex, and we can’t help it.
We judge empathy and kindness through codes and definitions we don’t fully master, because these are subjective notions rooted in moral values and personal principles.
So, no unity and no universality.
On the other hand, we demand empathy and kindness from others.
But always on vague, blurry criteria.
Worse, in digital interactions, we often base this judgment on written words stripped of non-verbal cues, context, or the real intentions of the speaker.
That means we’re missing a lot of information.
And yet we ignore this gap—and display our own lack of kindness—when we police others for not being “empathetic enough,” according to us.
All of this without ever asking ourselves if we are less—or perhaps no more—empathetic than they are.
And inevitably, telling someone they lack empathy assumes we can evaluate it, and implies we have more of it than they do.
And let’s be honest: in so many interactions, doesn’t it feel like pulling the empathy card is often just a way to elevate oneself? Even if, at times, the façade crumbles instantly.
Yes, you know—it’s like the selfish person calling everyone else selfish.
Judging others for their lack of empathy becomes a defensive weapon, a way to avoid looking at what disturbs us in our own behavior—and maybe at the shortcomings we’d rather not face.
Isn’t that a bit hypocritical?
Here’s the reality.
There is no scale for empathy. It’s not measurable.
We just want to believe we’re “more empathetic” than others, because it reassures us about our humanity.
Because what really short-circuits genuine empathy is selfishness, self-protection, the preservation of one’s image, and the emotions that drag us from reflection into defensiveness.
So, before defining someone’s “lack” of empathy in an arbitrary way—what if we identified what’s happening inside us, when that impulse, born of emotion, runs through us?
