The Standard of Empathy

One thing I sort of forgot to go in depth about in my presentation today was my idea of the importance of empathy. As human beings we share experiences because we have the same set of emotions and react to certain situations in the same way. Although there are a variety of ways different people might react to the same situation, we can all put ourselves in the shoes of another person and understand on some level why they might react the way they do. At the very least we understand when we see a specific emotion in another person. For example if we see someone who is sad we have an emotional reaction in empathy for their sadness.

This is the reason we feel guilt when we fail to help another person. We know or can at least imagine the situation they're in, and we, at least subconsciously want to help them, just as we would want to help ourselves in the same situation. It's also the reason we have strong emotional reactions to plays and books and other forms of story-telling.

In this way, harming others really harms ourselves. This is an idea I borrowed from Marcus Aurelius, but he would say that the reason harming others harms ourselves is because we are going against the force of cosmic order, not because we feel guilt at inflicting harm on other people that we can feel through empathy on ourselves.