Often when using the words of empathy and compassion, many people envision them as having similar meaning. While they may share similar circumstances, they are actually quite different. Empathy is more of an emotional response with an understanding of a person’s particular situation; whereas compassion is an emotion that arouses an active response to alleviate a distressful situation. Nevertheless, these dissimilar expressions are paramount in the way people respond to the individual needs of others and how they reach out to others in their local communities. Barbara Lazear Ascher’s essay “On Compassion” not only creatively offers a very detailed description of the day in the life in New York City, but effectively draws a picture of a community’s response to the homeless while at the same time questioning the very motives that propel certain acts of charity.
Before deciphering what motivates people to help one another, it is vital for one to understand the significant differences between empathy and compassion so that one may draw inferences about their relationship. Firstly, empathy is more of an emotional response to a person’s situation. It is usually evoked by distressing circumstances. One may imagine himself in a similar situation developing in his mind the same emotions as the person he is feeling empathy for. Although he may feel the same emotion, he does not feel compelled to take action to alleviate the pain or suffering for the person he is feeling empathy for. Compassion, on the other hand, is an emotion that takes action. In other words, a person full of compassion is willing to provide another individual with comfort and relief to secure a positive outcome. It is apparent that while empathy and compass...
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... Yorkers who shared similar emotions like fear, pain and loss. While empathy is an emotion that many New Yorkers are capable of feeling, compassion is an emotion difficult to come by, and it is usually acquired through personal distressful experiences.
Empathy and compassion can share similar circumstances, but it is the former rather than the latter that is more inherent to our nature. Compassion is an emotion that evokes action and it is one that requires selflessness in the purest sense. Through Ascher’s essay “On Compassion” one can observe a firsthand account on how people in communities interact with those of less fortunate circumstances while examining ones conscience. While New Yorkers have different views of homelessness, they do all share an honorable amount of compassion that shines through most brilliantly in the face of adversity.
On 1/13/16, I watched the TED Talk of Gregory Boyle, “Compassion and Kinship,” a founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries. He explained how we should form a relationship with others so that we can come together as one rather than being enemies towards each other. Specifically he claimed that having kinship and compassion breaks down barriers it allows people who don’t fit society’s standards know that their life has value, meaning, and worth. As he said, “How can we achieve a certain kind of compassion that stands in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgement at how they carry it, for the measure of our compassion lies not in our service of those on the margins but in our willingness to see ourselves and kinship with them and mutuality.” Although some people believe that once they choose to make bad decisions, they have
“Compassion is always, at its most authentic, about a shift from the cramped world of self-preoccupation into a more expansive place of fellowship, of true kinship.” These words come from the book Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, written by Gregory Boyle, an American Jesuit priest and founder of Homeboy Industries, an organization that provides employment training and support to former gang members. I was first introduced to Father Boyle’s work during my final semester at College of the Holy Cross in “Contemporary Christian Morality”, a favorite course of mine that examined the fundamental ethics of moral agency, human freedom, conscience, sin, suffering and virtue. It was a book that has continued to stay with me for
Today's world is filled with both great tragedy and abundant joy. In a densely populated metropolis like New York City, on a quick walk down a street you encounter homeless people walking among the most prosperous. Unfortunately, nine times out of ten the prosperous person will trudge straight past the one in need without a second thought. A serious problem arises when this happens continually. The problem worsens when you enter a different neighborhood and the well-to-do are far from sight. Many neighborhoods are inhabited only by the most hopeless of poverty - ridden people while others downtown or across the park do not care, or are glad to be separated from them. Such is the problem in New York City today and in Mott Haven in Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace. I have lived in New York City all my life and I had no idea that these problems were going on so close to home. If I live about three miles away from Mott Haven and I am not aware of the situation there, then who is?
Compassion has became something rare in our society, and something that a lot of people lack. The author, Barbara Lazear Ascher, explains to us that compassion is not a character trait, but rather something that we learn along the way with the help of real life situations we encounter, such as the ones she encountered herself. Ascher persuades her audience that compassion is not just something you are born with by using anecdotes, rhetorical questions, and allusions.
Statistically, over 670,000 Americans are homeless with a growing number. 48 million people go to bed hungry every night. Although we do provide shelters and opportunities in America, millions of people are homeless worldwide. Even on a more minor level there are still hundreds homeless within hometowns. Everyday we encounter the homeless whether by seeing them holding their personal signs at stoplights, confronts with beggars, or viewing them from afar under bridges. In her essay titled “On Compassion”, writer Barbara Ascher uses rhetorical techniques detailing some of her personal homeless experiences within the city life, Asher does effectively use logos, pathos,
Empathy is used to create change in the world by reaching out to the emotions of people and attending to them. It is used to help others learn and decide on matters that would not be reasonable without feelings attached to them. Empathy helps bring together communities that would have long ago drifted apart, but instead welcomed all who were different. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. This attribute of human-beings really allows us to not only attend to situations as if they were our own, but it allows us to feel most of what others feel because humans are very much alike in some ways. In many of the articles and novels that we have read this quarter, characters from different pieces of context have portrayed empathy whether it was toward
Compassion and empathy are two different feelings that humans can have for others. Sometimes one does not always recognize the difference between the two. Ascher and Quindlen convey the importance of having a place to call “home,” and to illustrate how homeless people are individual’s who need compassion shown towards them by the human race.
When people think about homeless individuals, they think of people begging on the street, but not of the thousands of children located in public schools. When reading the “Invisible Child” in The New York Times, Andrea Elliott publicizes that not all homeless people are necessarily begging for money out on the street, but some are living without other people realizing their misfortune. Understanding that not all homeless people are begging for money relates to “The Narrative of Imagination” written by Martha Nussbaum which shows presenting people’s stories allows individuals to understand and empathize with other’s perspectives, resulting in people becoming more open- minded. She believes that empathy develops from sharing stores and people
What is compassion? It has two components. One component of compassion means to put yourself in another person’s shoes, and ask yourself, What if I were that person? How would I feel? So, compassion means to develop an awareness of the suffering in another person. Another component of compassion is self-compassion, having compassion doesn’t always have to be putting everyone else before you, sometimes compassion can mean putting yourself first. Throughout generations, compassion has played an important role in many people, it’s a natural instinct within all of us. We show compassion towards our loved ones, when confronted with someone in pain, we
Burton defines empathy as the ability to not only recognize but also to share another person’s or a fictional character’s or a sentient beings’ emotions. It involves seeing a person’s situation from his or her own perspective and then sharing his or her emotions and distress (1). Chismar posits that to empathize is basically to respond to another person’ perceived state of emotion by experiencing similar feelings. Empathy, therefore, implies sharing another person’s feeling without necessary showing any affection or desire to help. For one to empathize, he or she must at least care for, be interested in or concerned about
In the article “The Baby in the Well: The Case Against Empathy,” Paul Bloom puts forward a tendentious thesis. Empathy, according to him, is overrated. The imaginative capacity to put oneself in the place of an oppressed, afflicted, or bereaved person does not lead to rational, thoroughly-considered solutions to important problems. Indeed, it can lead to hysterical displays of ill-directed charity, the misallocation of resources, and total blindness to other significant issues. Bloom appeals to his readers’ sense of logic by using examples of environmental and geopolitical crises that require forward-thinking solutions; he suggests that, because of the need to think about the future and the big picture, a politics of empathy cannot be relied
The two essays “On Compassion” and “This is Water” by Barbara Ascher and David Wallace argue their different viewpoints on both compassion and empathy. While Ascher simply argues that compassion is not a simple character trait but more so a skill acquired overtime; Wallace tries to convince his audience that humans are preprogramed to be motivated by their own selfish desires and must reprogram themselves to think out of sympathy and concern for others. Barbara Ascher’s, essay, “On Compassion,” compels the audience to interpret the compassion and empathy with their underlying definitions. Ascher states “I don’t believe that one is born compassionate. Compassion is not a character trait like a sunny disposition.
Empathy, is a self-conscious characteristic human beings hold that allows them to understand another individual’s situation and feelings (Segal, Cimino, Gerdes &Wagaman, 2013). In regard to ho...
In the story On Compassion, the author, Ascher, explains how no one is born with compassion and must be taught it. A homeless, black man was staring at a women’s baby in the stroller and she offered him a dollar. At first he was hesitant to take it, but eventually did. Later another man walks into an overpriced coffee shop in which the store owner handed him a bag with food. Ascher makes the readers question whether these were acts of fear, pity, or just simply out of the good of heart.
Radey, M., & Figley, C. R. (2007). The social psychology of compassion. Clinical Social Work Journal, 35(3), 207-214.