empathy
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I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog talking about the “Wise Imagination”—the muscle we build when we read deeply. But there is a common misconception that the goal of a “baptized imagination” is simply to make us “nicer” or more “empathetic.” In our era of hyper-polarization, empathy is marketed as a universal panacea;…
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To suggest one is “against empathy” sounds, to the modern ear, as inherently absurd as being “against kittens” or “against sunshine.” We have been conditioned to view empathy as an absolute moral good—a panacea for all social ills. However, the weight of neuroscientific and psychological evidence suggests a more radical, counterintuitive premise. As Yale psychologist…