LACK OF EMPATHY AND SELFISHNESS

                                               

LACK OF EMPATHY AND SELFISHNESS 

A human relationship is not sustained by logic alone. It is sustained by recognition: the daily, quiet act of seeing another person as fully real. That is empathy. Without it, cohabitation becomes negotiation, and love becomes administration. You cannot live with a person who lacks empathy, because you end up living alone inside a shared life.  

And this applies to individuals and groups equally. A marriage, a friendship, a workplace ; and wherever humans gather, the same law holds.

Philosophically, this has been argued for centuries. Adam Smith, in "The Theory of Moral Sentiments",  called sympathy “the foundation of justice.” He meant our capacity to place ourselves in another’s situation. When that capacity is absent, moral reciprocity collapses. One party demands to be understood but refuses to understand. One party expects care but withholds it. That asymmetry is not difference. It is exploitation.

Contemporary psychology confirms the link. Low empathy correlates strongly with narcissistic traits, instrumental relationships, and moral disengagement. Empathy is what inhibits us from using people as tools. Without it, the other is reduced to function: provider, audience, problem-solver. Martin Buber called this the “I–It” relation. You do not meet the person. You use the role. To live like that long-term is a form of social death. At scale, this is how groups justify cruelty — by refusing to imagine the life on the other side.

This is why lack of empathy is the second name of selfishness. Selfishness is not only taking more than your share. It is the prior decision that only your interiority counts. The empathic person asks, “What is this like for you?” The unempathic person asks only, “What is this like for me?” Pain, fatigue, grief ;  all are filtered and dismissed if they do not touch the self. The cost is then externalized. You carry the emotional labour, the repair, the translation.

Scholars debate whether empathy can be biased or exhausting, and whether “compassion” is a better guide. But even that debate concedes the point: a life without any orientation to the other is not sustainable, whether that life is one person or one million.

Regret is what follows. The regret of speaking into a void. The regret of realising you were not in a relationship, but in a transaction where only one side kept accounts.  

( Avtar Mota )

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