It seems fitting to take a page out of Dr. Roberts’s book and ask the community to engage in radical empathy as we work through the situation together,” Norris said in a statement:
Radical empathy is the recognition that we can disagree and still empathize with each other. The respect of others’ humanity — this concept will be essential as we wait to learn more. [Emphasis added]
Charlie Kirk defended a version of America where whiteness was the standard of belonging and empathy was dismissed as weakness. We must build a new social contract, K. Ward Cummings writes.
Kirk said as much himself. On a podcast in 2022, he declared: “I can’t stand the word empathy. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage.” By rejecting empathy, Kirk stood in a long American tradition of justifying cruelty — the same mindset that rationalized slavery, Manifest Destiny and Japanese internment camps.
Explore feelings and ways to express them! Understanding themselves is an important piece of the building blocks that help children develop empathy as they grow. Empathy is the ability to imagine and understand the emotions of others, which helps children be kind and care about others.
As foresight practitioners, we are asked to inhabit the hopes, fears, and worldviews of people we may never meet, in places we may never go. This radical exercise in empathy is powerful, but it carries a quiet contradiction: the more we dissolve into others’ perspectives, the more we risk losing clarity in our own. This is the Identity/Empathy Paradox: the simultaneous need to inhabit other futures through empathy while remaining rooted in our own identity. On one hand, empathy calls us to reach beyond ourselves and embrace difference. On the other, identity reminds us who we are, what we believe, and what we stand for. In practice, these two forces can feel in conflict, but they are also deeply complementary.
Rooted in my ongoing work on Entangled Tomorrows, this paradox invites us to examine how identity and empathy are entangled forces in futures thinking.
America is dangerously polarized. We are split into camps with different facts, values and even realities. Kirk often stepped into that arena as a kind of devil’s advocate — lobbing provocative challenges and daring opponents to prove him wrong. If his death teaches us anything, it may be
Sympathy, not empathy.
Kirk made a distinction between “empathy” and “sympathy” in remarks often truncated and quoted out of context by commentators: “I can’t stand the word empathy. I think empathy is a made-up new age term, and it does a lot of damage. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. That’s a separate topic for a different time.”
Emotional attachment to AI can blur boundaries, deepen dependency, and weaken human-to-human connections —especially among young people. Without careful design and clear safeguards, the traits that make AI so useful could also make it harmful.
Why AI Feels Empathetic
As McBain explained, AI models are trained on vast troves of human conversations, allowing them to replicate empathetic communication styles. Through reinforcement learning, they are optimized to deliver responses that feel warm, affirming, and attentive. Pataranutaporn described how these systems mirror users’ emotions and personalize interactions over time, creating a powerful illusion of being seen and understood. Fisher emphasized that AI’s default non-judgmental, patient nature makes it uniquely appealing, unlike humans, who can grow tired, frustrated, or dismissive. Together, these qualities provide what McBain called surface-level empathy, which is a style of interaction that aligns with user preferences but may lack the deeper substance of human connection.
Once considered a universal good, empathy now divides as much as it unites. Empathy has long been viewed as a straightforward strength in leadership, but it has recently become a political flashpoint.
Some conservative voices, including billionaire Elon Musk, have criticized empathy, with Musk calling it a “fundamental weakness of western civilization.”
With each assassination, we saw online mobs celebrate. These heinous killings should make it painfully clear that if we continue to let dehumanization and a lack of empathy thrive in our political discourse, violence follows.
While there is little that those outside of law enforcement can do to stop lone gunmen, the uncontrolled mob that Kennedy mentioned in the same breath as the sniper is something all of us can push back against.
The long-standing ideological battle between left and right, liberalism versus conservatism, is not what’s tearing our society apart.
What’s destabilizing Western politics is a deficit of empathy in individuals of all partisan stripes, who poison civic discourse with heartlessness and steer public attitudes in dangerous directions.
As long as there has been mutual human socialization, there has been empathy: the ability to see and feel things from others’ perspectives. Without empathy, there would be no reason to take care of the youth and ensure their survival by providing, tending and especially now, advocating.
Critical thinking ties into empathetic approaches to processing the world, but both have been under attack by people who hate and fear positive change in society. Opponents of empathy as a general practice for other human beings fearmonger about and attack those who don’t comply with their standards instead of accepting people how they are and working with them.
As the right wing gets more and more polarized, they fall into the errors of bigoted unempathetic mindsets in even more overt ways than they previously did. We can’t let them take away our humanity.
At its core, healthy empathy also involves strong boundaries that separate our emotions from someone else’s. But the balance tips when we step in to solve another person’s problems or take too much responsibility for their feelings, shifting into what’s called “toxic empathy.”
In this Summit, empathy activists talk about how we can build the Empathy Movement to make mutual empathy a primary cultural value.
Join this Summit if you are ready to roll up your sleeves and help build the Movement. The Empathy Movement is a transformative force in addressing the growing
In recent months, I’ve been taken aback by things I’ve seen online that referred to empathy as both a sin and a weakness, an idea that has gained traction in some parts of the church.
This is astonishing and deeply disturbing to me, as I have always believed, in the words of the Charter for Compassion, developed by acclaimed religious scholar Karen Armstrong with the contribution of thousands of people worldwide, that “The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.”
I have always believed that compassion and the associated principle of empathy are an essential part of Christianity.
What if the world isn’t cruel... just undernourished in empathy?
In this wise and illuminating conversation, Kate Bowler speaks with neuroscientist Dr. Abigail Marsh about what makes some people extraordinarily altruistic—even willing to give a kidney to a stranger—and why empathy feels both more necessary and more endangered than ever. Together, they explore what our brains are wired for, how fear plays a surprising role in compassion, and what makes us want to move toward someone else’s pain instead of looking away.
Topics We Cover: - Why some people help strangers at great personal cost - The neurological science of empathy and altruism - What fear teaches us about connection - How to grow your compassion—without burning out - Seeing the suffering that others miss
Regarding the right-wing takeover of the meaning of empathy, which according to the Oxford English Dictionary is defined as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another,” as Kathy Young explained in a piece for The Bulwark earlier this year:
“The recurrence of the phrase ‘suicidal empathy’ is no accident: The term is becoming a right-wing buzzword. Apparently coined by Canadian marketing professor Gad Saad, an Intellectual Dark Web-adjacent figure, this concept was boosted by Musk in his February 28 appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, where Musk declared empathy to be ‘the fundamental weakness of Western civilization’ and said that ‘we’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on.’”
38: Empathy Center News: Oct 4 Empathy Summit: Building the Empathy Movement Together
The current political turmoil—both in the U.S. and worldwide—creates a unique opportunity for the Empathy Movement. Commentators excel at analyzing what’s wrong, but rarely offer meaningful or practical solutions. Everywhere we hear the questions: “What do we do now? What’s the way forward?”
We believe the answer is clear: build a culture of empathy where everyone has a voice and feels seen and heard. By listening deeply to all sides and fostering mutual understanding, we create the foundation for dialogue, collaboration, and real solutions.
That’s why we invite you to join us for the Empathy Summit on Saturday, October 4, where we’ll explore the vital question: How Might We Build the Empathy Movement?
Artificial Intelligence models can generate emotional support messages that people perceive to be highly empathic; however, people also perceive less empathy if they believe that messages were AI-generated. This new focus on how the empathy recipient perceives human- written versus AI-generated empathic responses has recently gained attention. We review and synthesize recent empirical work using meta-analyses, clarify claims and limitations, and highlight future directions. This emerging literature carries significant implications for fundamental research on empathy, for public discourse as the use of AI for emotional support rapidly grows, and for policymakers considering regulation and ethical guidance.
In a contested world, is there still space for empathy? What role can empathy play in improving politics and leadership – and what does it demand of those in politics, and us as citizens? Join Dr Claire Yorke whose new book ‘Empathy in Politics and Leadership: The Key to Transforming our World’ (Yale University Press, 2025) articulates not only the value of empathy, but also some the challenges it presents. Drawing on examples from around the world, she examines how it can present a challenge to the status quo, and offer a path to more effective politics, and better ways to engage in our communities.
“Empathy means feeling with someone. Compassion means wishing freedom from suffering. You might not feel empathy for someone who hurt you, but you can still choose compassion in the sense of ‘I don’t wish suffering on you, but I also don’t feel sad about your pain’.
“Extending endless empathy to someone who is actively harming you or people like you isn’t noble. It’s self-abandonment… For marginalised people and communities, constantly empathising with people who mock and erase you can turn into internalised oppression.”
“Both the science and the empathy is missing from the public discourse,” said Maté. “The more inequality there is in a country, the more addiction there is, the more illness there is, and the more hostility there is.”
The international event focussed on how healthcare professionals can use empathy to rehumanise healthcare in an era of technological advancements and remote interactions.
Professor Jeremy Howick, director of the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare at the University of Leicester, and co-founder, with Catherine Eyres, of the Global Empathy in Healthcare Network, said: “Leading experts from around the world united at this symposium to show the huge benefits that come from treating patients with empathy.
Empathetic people often stay in unhealthy relationships far longer than they should. Not because they don’t see the red flags, but because they feel them differently. When you care deeply, someone else’s pain doesn’t just register in your mind—it echoes in your body. Their chaos feels like a cry for help only you can answer.
And so you convince yourself that love is enough. That if you just show more patience, give more understanding, or hold on long enough, you can love someone into healing. You cling to glimpses of who they could be if they ever worked through their patterns, even as those same patterns drain you again and again.
I never answered my dad’s question about what’s next for us politically. In the days since, I keep rereading what Kirk said about empathy. He derided the concept on a 2022 episode of his eponymous show as “a made-up, new age term that … does a lot of damage.”
Kirk was wrong about many things, but especially that. Empathy means we try to understand each other’s experiences — not agree, not embrace, but understand. Empathy connects us to others in the hope of creating something bigger and better.
In times like these, empathy can be a guiding light. Empathy encourages us to pause, to listen, and to try to understand why someone feels the way they do - and here’s the really important part - even if you don’t agree, like or connect with them. It’s not about excusing harm or agreeing with every perspective. Instead it is about recognising the human experience behind words and actions, understanding the lived experiences that often fuel feelings of hate.
It is a skill that helps us move past polarisation and open up space for true dialogue. By choosing empathy, we create opportunities to connect even when we don’t see eye-to-eye. That choice has the power to strengthen our communities and begin healing the deep fractures we are witnessing in the world today.
In recent months, I’ve been taken aback by things I’ve seen online that referred to empathy as both a sin and a weakness, an idea that has gained traction in some parts of the church. This is astonishing and deeply disturbing to me, as I have always believed, in the words of the Charter for Compassion, developed by acclaimed religious scholar Karen Armstrong with the contribution of thousands of people worldwide, that “The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.” I have always believed that compassion and the associated principle of empathy are an essential part of Christianity.
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