2024-01-01 20:40:02
Pounding rhythm, organ tones and voices with reverb support – the song “Sympathy”, released in 1969, was assigned to the progressive rock genre. Maybe it was because the Birmingham band Rare Bird largely did without guitars. Because of the catchy song lines, “Sympathy” was considered a hit with socially critical intentions. One half of the world, Steve Gould and Mark Ashton sang accusingly, is oppressing the starving other.
The lamentation in the voice, combined with statistical generosity in the text, was by no means met with unqualified enthusiasm. In NDR’s “Five O’clock Club” it was quickly translated into a bumpy German and the poignant message was suspected of being kitsch: “Compassion is what we need, my friend/Compassion is what is missing/Compassion is what we need.” need/there is not enough love for everyone.” A little later, the German cover version by the great Daliah Lavi was no longer about the need in the world, but rather about overcoming loneliness: “At some point/love begins with sympathy at”.
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One of the most used words in the past year is empathy. What distinguishes this from sympathy seems to be a matter of intuition. In fact, it’s about the difference between benevolence and understanding. Sympathy is unconditional, empathy requires a decision, and explicitly marked makes it sound less naive.
According to Wikipedia, which refers to a dictionary of psychology and neuroscience, empathy is “the ability and willingness to recognize, understand and empathize with the feelings, emotions, thoughts, motives and personality traits of another person”. Or more simply: empathy. It also includes the ability to respond appropriately to the feelings of others such as pity, sadness, pain and helpfulness out of compassion.
A complex social reaction
Empathy is therefore a complex socio-psychological reaction, the lack of which was criticized towards Israel after the Hamas terror as well as towards the consequences of the Israeli army’s attacks on Gaza. From the different reactions such as horror or dismay, which were ultimately difficult to detect in the behavior of individuals, it was concluded that a social body was possibly misbehaving. Is society’s empathy broken? Or are we talking about two mismatched and conflicting social bodies? The assumption of a lack of empathy was accompanied by the mutual accusation of not wanting to understand.
The psychological and social strain of responding to the escalation of violence seems palpable, but difficult to describe. The possibilities of understanding turn out to be limited. And as obvious as it is to use feelings to evaluate a situation, it would now be overdue to rely on the resources of knowledge, history and negotiation. But this is becoming increasingly difficult under the regimes of omnipresent emotional politics.
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