I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy

228 Pages·2018·4.12 MB·English

by  Cris Beam

Contents
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Author’s Note
Introduction
Understanding
The Sound of Science
Teach Your Children Well
The Experimental Self
Ars Empathia
Justice
Courting Empathy
Empathy Traffic
Performing Empathy
Forgiveness
Fall from the Tree
State of Empathy
To Interrupt Power
Empathy for the Enemy
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
Sample Chapter from TO THE END OF JUNE
Buy the Book
About the Author
Connect with HMH
Copyright © 2018 by Cris Beam
All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write
to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Beam, Cris, author.
Title: I feel you : the surprising power of extreme empathy / Cris Beam.
Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017045815 (print) |LCCN 2017052085 (ebook) |ISBN
9780544558175 (ebook) |ISBN 9780544558168 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH:
Empathy. | Emotions. | BISAC: PSYCHOLOGY / Emotions. | PSYCHOLOGY /
Interpersonal Relations. | PSYCHOLOGY / General.
Classification: LCC BF575.E55 (ebook) | LCC BF575.E55 B43 2018 (print) | DDC
152.4/1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017045815

Cover design by Martha Kennedy Cover photograph © Shana Novak/Getty
Images Author photograph © m Burgess
eISBN 978-0-54455817-5
v1.0218

Excerpt from “Islands” (1976) by Muriel Rukeyser used by permission of the
estate of Muriel Rukeyser.
F T
OR ERESA
I
SLANDS

O for God’s sake
they are connected
underneath . . .

—M R
URIEL UKEYSER
Author’s Note
This is a work of nonfiction. A very few names have been changed to protect
identities; these are marked in the text or in notes at the back of the book.
Introduction
E
very generation, a phrase enters the American consciousness and interrupts
collective action like a boulder changing the course of a stream. In the 1960s, the
phrase was civil rights; in the 1980s, it was self-esteem; now our word is
empathy. Like the terms that came before it, empathy sounds redemptive—it’s
an orientation that, should we adopt it en masse, could extricate us from our
violence and our greed. But it’s also a term so varied in meaning and slippery in
application, it can have ambiguous, even deleterious, effects. Empathy, when
applied artfully and in the right contexts, can be highly moral and deeply
liberating—but it’s not an empty gesture to be spread atop every interaction in
this new and troubled millennium. We have to understand both its purpose and
practice, and this book is an attempt to do just that.
One example that can stand in for many: In the aftermath of the 2016 election,
empathy has been weaponized. On one side, progressives argue that an empathy
deficit, in part, is to blame for how the election blindsided them; when they
thought Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in, a paucity of imagination kept them from
truly seeing the swath of voters that could choose Donald Trump. Now many on
the left feel they need to deploy empathy, in a gesture of unity and understanding
that was so clearly missing in 2016. On the other side, voices have erupted in a
chorus against empathy for Trump supporters: Trump is a bigot, they cry, and if
he (and they) can’t have empathy for us, why should we have empathy for them?
But I have learned in writing this book that empathy is not one singular thing.
It can, when it’s contextualized the way it is above, serve as a way to be meek
and deferential, or as a tool to withhold from political enemies, but it can also be
instead an immediate gesture of common humanity. It can be innate, elemental,
as difficult to stanch as love. Other times, empathy operates as a kind of karmic
loop: empathy for the one affects the whole and vice versa. So what are we
talking about when we talk about empathy?
One arena that’s directing our current American associations with the word is
the corporate one, so let’s start with the place many of us begin our days: on
Facebook. For years, Facebook users pressured headquarters to create a “dislike”
button, but Mark Zuckerberg wouldn’t bite. He admitted that some posts are sad
or maddening or anything but “likable” but said disliking wasn’t the online
culture he wanted to build. Instead, in 2015, he said he planned to incorporate
some kind of clickable empathy button. Facebook came out with four emoji
faces: happy, sad, surprised, and angry—new emblems to say, “I see your post,
and I feel your pain.”
Mark Zuckerberg may hope his 1.5 billion monthly users feel like they’re
feeling more—but the richer our experience, the richer Facebook becomes.
Online, we are both the consumer and the product, as Facebook earns $5.84
billion a quarter selling our demographics and our likes. In these days of DVR
and streaming, corporations can no longer rely on the mass-market commercial
to reach an audience; instead they count on courting us individually online.
When we buy dog food one day and find a charticle from Purina in our newsfeed
the next, we no longer find it strange—we know our electronic DNA is scattered
on every screen we touch to be gathered and sold to marketers. Some may find
this comforting, and some may call it surveillance, but what’s interesting is what
the corporations call it: empathy.
Empathic marketing, empathic branding—these are the hot corporate
buzzwords wending their way through business schools and ad agencies now.
“Corporate Empathy Is Not an Oxymoron.” So reads a recent Harvard Business
Review headline, with the claim that “enlightened companies are increasingly
aware that delivering empathy for their customers, employees, and the public is a
powerful tool for improving profits.”
This corporate definition of empathy connotes getting to know and understand
a consumer base—our tastes, our spending habits, our personal needs—to sell us
more stuff. “Empathic design” is another burgeoning field, wherein marketers
and designers work with people to identify latent needs and feelings about
certain products and then, from that information, build new things to sell them.
You could argue that the corporate world’s commodification of empathy is
simply the bastardization of a term, but I’d argue that something deeper is afoot.
Capitalism is milking the trend of all things empathy, but it’s also building a
culture that perverts our very understanding of the concept. In other words, as
we expect our watches, our phones, our computers, to provide us with
experiences curated solely for us, we feel empathized with in a particular way,
which has led consumers to need a particular kind of empathy. Through our
everyday interactions with commerce, we attune to a cultural value shift that
marks empathy as acquisitional and profitable.
For example, in education: In a recent Education Week article, the author
defines empathy as a skill and advises teachers to create lesson plans in empathic