The Snark | Empathy: Handle With Care

The Flaw Musk Wants You to See

Elon Musk once called empathy a “fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” Translation: stop feeling sorry for people and start building rocket ships. He does have a point, though. Empathy can be abused. Whole civilizations can bleed themselves dry by giving away too much, or people can use empathy as a crowbar to pry open your wallet.

On the personal level, empathy makes you a target. Scam artists survive because they know you’ll feel bad about not clicking on that starving-dog link. Too much empathy, and suddenly you’re paying for someone else’s drama. Too little, and you’re auditioning for the role of sociopath. It’s a tightrope walk over the canyon of human suffering.

Constructed Empathy: The IKEA of Feelings

Enter the first category: constructed empathy – the flatpack version of emotions. You don’t just feel it; you assemble it, bolt by bolt, until you’re approximating what the other person might be going through. The risk? If you’re not careful, the instruction manual ends up all about you. Someone tells you they were scammed out of $30,000, and you say, “Yeah, I know what you mean, I once lost my wallet on the subway.” No, Chad, that’s not the same.

There’s a better way: “I’ve never been through something that awful, but I can imagine how devastating it feels. I’m here to listen.” It’s a reminder that empathy isn’t a storytelling contest; it’s not about who’s suffered more.

My therapist once described AA meetings where people practically compete for the lowest low: “Well, I woke up face down in a dumpster.” “Oh yeah? I woke up face down in a dumpster on fire.” Constructed empathy can easily drift into this “race to the bottom,” where listening becomes less about the speaker’s pain and more about the responder’s performance art of understanding.

More Empathy: More Problems

Next category, emotional empathy is the contagion model: you feel what they feel, almost involuntarily. Someone cries, you tear up. That’s fine – until it becomes a one-upmanship of sadness. Think of the funeral where the second cousin is sobbing louder than the widow. Suddenly the actual griever has to comfort the comforter. Emotional empathy gone rogue steals the scene like a bad actor chewing the scenery.

Last category, compassionate empathy is the “do something” model: you don’t just understand, you get it so deeply that you feel compelled to act. It’s the friend who hears your despair and immediately shows up with soup, or who quietly sits with you in the ER at 2 a.m. – because they grasp the texture of your fear and can’t bear to leave you alone in it. That’s the good side. The risk comes when the impulse to help turns into overdrive: they start Googling therapists, buying self-help books, or dictating yoga regimens you never asked for. What began as genuine connection becomes a rescue mission you didn’t sign up for. Compassionate empathy, at its best, says “I understand, and I’ll stand with you.” At its worst, it says “I understand, and therefore I know what you need better than you do.”

Writing the Messy Conversations

For fiction writers, empathy is a goldmine. Picture your protagonist pouring out their soul while their so-called friend responds with the wrong flavor of empathy. A bleeding heart matched with a flatpack friend is funny in the worst way: “You think that’s bad? Wait till you hear about me.” Or tragic: a compassionate empath really gets it… but then barrels ahead to fix things (unasked, of course) and simply makes it worse. These are the moments that make characters feel psychologically real. Real conversations about suffering are messy, awkward, and often ruined by misplaced empathy. Use them. Let your characters fumble through the three types – constructed, emotional, compassionate – and watch the sparks fly.

The Snark