Why Kindness Still Matters in an Age of Outrage

In a culture that feeds on outrage and factionalism, empathy has somehow moved from universal virtue to political fault line. Some even frame it as a liability. But is empathy really dangerous—or is it one of the few things keeping us from tearing each other apart?

Reclaiming What Empathy Actually Means

Empathy isn’t endorsement. It isn’t surrender. It’s understanding—an ability to step into someone else’s internal world long enough to see the emotional logic driving their behavior. The Stoics had their own term for this: oikiosis—the natural pull to recognize ourselves in other people. Marcus Aurelius put it plainly: “Men have come into being for one another.”

That’s not soft sentiment. It’s a working philosophy for dealing with real people in a real world.

Why Empathy Makes Some People Uncomfortable

There’s a growing trend of arguing that empathy corrupts judgment. Joe Rigney, in The Sin of Empathy, claims that empathizing with someone—especially a child who’s suffering—invites manipulation. One of his examples targets parents of LGBTQ kids, suggesting that understanding their child’s emotional reality is a moral hazard.

Think about the message there: caring for your own child’s experience is now considered suspect. That tells us more about our cultural anxiety than about empathy itself.

Michael C. Rhea, in his rebuttal Empathy Isn’t a Sin, captures the counterpoint: “Empathy is an exploit… a back door through which people we’ve become hardened against might actually get through to us.”

And that’s the truth most critics avoid: rejecting empathy is often a way to avoid accountability. If we don’t connect, we don’t have to reconsider anything. We can defend our stance without the inconvenience of self-reflection.

Empathy Isn’t Naïve — It’s Strategic

Empathy doesn’t make you blind. It gives you pattern recognition. When you understand what someone values, fears, or avoids, you can anticipate decisions long before they’re spoken out loud. That’s not vulnerability. That’s clarity.

Empathy doesn't erase boundaries. It prevents dehumanization.

And here’s the irony: the loudest critics demand empathy the moment they’re on the receiving end of harm. Even Elon Musk, after declaring empathy the West’s downfall, publicly lamented the “lack of empathy” when his own interests were affected. Everyone wants empathy when they’re the one bleeding.

A Historical Reminder

When U.S. Army psychologist Capt. G.M. Gilbert evaluated Nazi officials at Nuremberg, he described “the absence of empathy” as the psychological foundation of evil. Hannah Arendt later observed Eichmann’s chilling emotional vacancy—what she called the “banality of evil.” These weren’t monsters foaming at the mouth. They were detached bureaucrats who couldn’t feel for the people they were destroying.

That’s what a world without empathy looks like.

Justice, Humanity, and Stoic Perspective

Justice, in Stoic thought, isn’t about vengeance. It’s about how we treat other human beings. Without empathy, justice devolves into punishment for its own sake.

Empathy doesn’t mean abandoning moral judgment. It means holding two realities at once: what we believe, and what someone else is living. Not to excuse, but to understand.

Seneca put it simply: “We are members of one great body.” Caring for others isn’t softness—it’s responsibility.

Practicing the Hard Kind of Empathy

Empathy asks something from us. It forces us to examine the stories we tell ourselves. It challenges our certainty. But it also strengthens our convictions, because those convictions now rest on understanding rather than fear.

The answer to outrage culture isn’t numbness. It’s a deeper, more discerning empathy—one that’s thoughtful, principled, and rooted in reality.

Not empathy that folds. Empathy that steadies.