One cannot be compassionate with someone when that person doesn't even has in his/her radar the word empathy! Empathy is something we're born with, is something we easily relate to others when we are children and we feel pain, shame or pride for someone else if we were cultivated with that amazing quality! However if we were born in a family or environment where all that matters is you and all that is important is your welfare then it will be very difficult to relate to what other people may feel if you humiliate them, if your are envious or if you're careless of how they are!
Usually when were children we inherently felt many of the emotions that are our parents were feeling without knowing that they meant or why they were feeling like that. We didn't like our friends, our loved ones and even sometimes a stranger to be in pain, to be suffering, we immediately ask to our parents why this person was feeling bad, crying, or manifesting pain!
Depending of the innate sensibility that the child inherently had there were and there are children who are more prone to feel the emotion and that would depend deeply on what kind of intrauterine environment and what kind of parents and genetic load he or she has!
Additionally gender differences has a lot to do with the emotional response that a child has, and this is related to the level of some important hormones linked with empathy, for instance we can mention oxytocin that is deeply with the female gender and actually more expressed in them than in men.
Whilst empathy is clearly shaped by early experience, parenting, and other social factors, different lines of evidence suggest that empathy is partly biological. Empathy is modestly heritable (approximately a third of the variance is heritable) and a few candidate gene association studies have investigated the role of various genes in empathy (1).
In addition, several studies have identified a role for the oxytocinergic and the foetal testosterone systems in modulating empathy. Neuroimaging studies have identified distinct brain regions implicated in different aspects of empathy including the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (1).
Empathy also shows a marked sex difference: females, on average, score higher on different measures of empathy. A longitudinal study suggests that this female advantage grows larger with age. Sex differences in the mind arise from a combination of innate biological differences, cultural, and environmental differences. Studies in infant humans have identified sex differences in the developmental precursors to empathy, such as neonatal preferences to faces over objects when environmental and cultural influences are minimal, lending support to the idea that sex differences in empathy are at least partly biological (1).
In terms of the physiological and biological components of empathy, we can clearly see that gender matters in developing that empathy or having a tendency to inherently carry it.
Nevertheless, we should not take that as a justification of anything, because two thirds of empathy are developed and are influenced by social, cultural and ethnic nature which suggest that everyone of us is able to develop that amazing emotion and open up a social connection with others if people is just willing to do so, and is willing to accept that any of the preconditioned beliefs or patterns from his/her parents has to become a permanent and caged way to think and evolve.
Lacking empathy means in most of the social interactions, that you're going to care for one thing only, which is your recognition and ability to be correct, something that no one yet can glorify him or herself in that, not even the wisest and more evolved personages that we've had throughout the history of the world.
The most beautiful thing of life is that we all possess a truth within ourself, which is individual and is not meant to be shared in terms of being correct or incorrect, bad or good, when ironically were just labels created by society to start dividing the opinion and generating separation between individuals.
All the separation, problems, beliefs and many times injustices that we witness around the world were and are created due to some installed label, boundary and "privilege" of certain individuals that think they possess the right answer for everyone, so defending that position or mentally limited belief is what inhibits the ability of those human beings to even being able to develop a sense of empathy towards anyone in front of them, much less they will be able to develop such an evolved feeling towards someone or something that is not "worthy" of their attention.
The more you detach from empathy, the more you will step away from being able to function socially in a society that was created to cooperate.
If we were just able to appreciate how our internal world is working, we would completely understand that a sense of cooperation and of course empathy is a "must" for any kind of society that wants to achieve a more tolerable environment, that wants to create a stronger sense of belonging and cooperation towards one unified purpose which in my humble opinion would be to leave a better world than the one that we found.
Maybe it all resides in the fact that we have been given a lot of things, without any apparent effort! We were born in a world that at least for everyone that has an age under 80 years old, is a world pretty easy to navigate with, that in terms of commodities, science, health and technological advancements and some social progress has been partially evolving towards having a much broader capacity to access information, to impact the life of other people to help them and to encourage the creation of technology that also cares for the planet (which in some more conscious nations is already happening).
However imagine what would think or what would feel any of your ancestors that sees and witnesses the fact that you're destroying many of the healing or enhancing things that he or she contributed for? I don't imagine he/she would be happy and proud of what you are doing with what was passed on to you!
So, we should stop thinking that everything we have, that everything we are enjoying was just giving to us to wreck it, destroy it and along the way of course we as humanity are caving our own destination!
There is one huge concept of empathy that we should all apply, we share a home, we share resources, we share a beautiful planet that if we don't start to raise more consciousness to heal it, to make it beautiful again, we are and we will experience more drastic climate consequences very quickly!
The same happens in terms of the social, if we keep believing that we own the ultimate truth, that we have access to something that anyone has knowledge from, if we keep engaging in groups, tribes or gatherings of people whose only purpose is to manipulate and create more separation, we definitely are becoming more ignorant and dangerous than any kind of animal alive in this earth! This including the fact that we're tempting the universal, science and spiritual laws that all of them proclaim the welfare and the benefit of the society and not of the individual!
When we allow ourselves to think more in the person next to us, in how can we give a much helpful version of ourselves to others, instead of thinking how can we benefit from others, that's when we are going to start rocketing towards an endless circle of divinity, joy, compassion, love and of course happiness!
The social brain is supported by different functions and underlying neuronal networks and that it is important to differentiate between socio-affective versus socio-cognitive routes to the understanding of others. Sharing affective states with another person (empathy), feeling concern for another (compassion) and reasoning about another person’s mental state, theory of mind (ToM), are separable on a conceptual, behavioral and neural level; strong empathizers are not necessarily proficient mentalizers and each domain may be selectively impaired in psychopathologies such as autism or psychopathy. Furthermore, an original adaptive empathic response to the suffering of others can lead to a maladaptive response, that is, empathic distress which can be reversed by learning how to turn empathy into compassion (2).
Compassion can thus be viewed as an emotion regulation strategy that buffers negative affect through the active generation of positive affect relying on reward related and affiliation related brain circuitries. Despite the separability of socio-affective and socio-cognitive functions, these social capacities are jointly activated and interact in complex social situations. In synthesis, the evidence supports a detailed view of the social mind, not as a monolithic ‘social intelligence’, but as dynamic interplay between different functions and subserving neuronal networks that enable in different ways to engage in prosocial behavior (2).
In a technological era where everything seems to be designed to take away social contact and engage people in a more lonely path to produce, to buy, to eat, to entertain and even to digitally interact, is a huge challenge to be able to design a strategy to help people develop empathy if most of the time they spend it alone, if all they do is engage in social platforms, that by the way are designed to detach you from empathy, because helping and giving your knowledge doesn't sell and doesn't add economical numbers for them.
It is clearly a time to start going back to the basics and promoting more really social activities such as outdoors games, social gatherings without phone (or in silence and away just to listen emergency calls), learning activities where kids go out in nature or in the world with their teachers and witness something which can be explained by the teacher, etc...
The more we promote this social interactions, the easier we will awaken our brain rewards systems, that can be now more focused in the benefit they're obtaining, in the benefit they're producing!
I'm thinking you definitely remember how it was to be a child? Pick any memory that you have when playing, pick one of your best days in the playground, playing with your team, winning something or just even hitting the ball in the right time to score a goal or catching that pass when everyone was betting you were going to throw it...
That sensation of just playing with someone, passing the ball, catching a pass because it would make your team win, helping your friend that couldn't climb the slope or stretching your hand for someone that couldn't jump or pass a hole!
You did all those things almost innately, you did all those "simple" and maybe irrelevant things because you felt good helping "others" in those brief moments you were not even thinking in what you were going to obtain, you just did it, let's say out of your good faith, and your humility that you had inside as a child!
All those innate qualities to have empathy, to help others without expecting anything, to feel compassion for someone you know and that is in hard situation or suffered something are all within you, in fact as mentioned above the reward and affiliation centers of your brain are wired to be related, to ironically support each other, and create one beautiful link and buffer named compassion!
Which even now makes all the sense to the title of the article, your ultimate link towards linking empathy with others is and will be compassion!
Isn't that a perfect circle?, Can you see now how nature, the universe, god worked building within us a divine cycle that is there innately but has been turned off by capitalism and ambition?
Don't let yourself be tricked that you can't feel empathy, don't ever let yourself believe that were born to compete and smash everyone around you, just to be on the top alone, probably hated by many on the way, and being the responsible of so many sad or hurt people, because when you let yourself believe that winning is everything, that competing without mercy and humility is the ultimate goal that's when you start projecting yourself into a not so smart artificial flesh and bone that yes will achieve many things but that probably won't have anyone to share it with and instead of being "admired" you'll be the example of how not to get to the top by pushing people, by abusing your power or by lacking empathy!
In summary, empathy is now a word of mouth, but more than embellishing the word, more than making it now a marketing product, is about showing it! Everyday in every interaction you have, is about connecting with others, is about connecting with nature, is about feeling the sense of responsibility to change the earth even for a tiny bit into a better version because you contribute with something to it, is about leaving an imprint on every person that you encounter along your road not to be remembered, but so that they become a better version and figure out how to step out of the low spot, how to climb with clarity of where they can go, how to embrace the pain and transform it into fuel to grow, to get back up and help the one behind, to extend the hand to many people that need it and lastly to give without expectation!
References.
1. Warrier, V., Toro, R., Chakrabarti, B. et al. Genome-wide analyses of self-reported empathy: correlations with autism, schizophrenia, and anorexia nervosa. Transl Psychiatry 8, 35 (2018).
2. Preckel, K., Kanske, P., & Singer, T. (2018). On the interaction of social affect and cognition: empathy, compassion and theory of mind. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 19, 1–6.