A politics of empathy is hard - but very powerful

We talk about empathy in politics as if it is the easy choice and the real work is the ‘difficult decisions’ which entire lack empathy. It is entirely the other way round - and we desperately need a politics of empathy.

Well that was something unexpected – I was the chosen question in The Guardian's computer games newsletter this week. Unexpected because I almost never write to publications (as a media professional, it feels like cheating for me to get in letters pages) and I'm really not that much of a gamer.

What set me off was praise for a game I hated. The long and short of it is that it involves killing monsters for fun, most of whom are minding their own business. I barely got past the training stage which involved hammering a little captive monster. It is supposed to be a family-friendly game but it upset me too much.

This is only one of dozens and dozens of reasons I'm thinking about empathy right now. From Trump and Starmer to social media and the creation of junk food in laboratories, it seems to me our age is really defined by people who are driven by the belief that their actions are justified despite their impact on others, because of 'freedom' or something.

I find this petrifying. We are the sociopath generation and we need to get out of this or we're in trouble. This is the problem; the politics of sociopathy are easy, the politics of empathy are hard. It's that simple. Telling people they can have anything they want as long as they tolerate bad things being done to groups with no power is really, really easy. That is what they're all doing just now.

You might reasonably argue that what we've been doing with Common Weal over the last decade is to try to develop an alternative to this, a politics of empathy – it's there in our catchphrase... What I want to argue here is that people think the politics of empathy is soft and vague. It isn't, its specific and hard.

First of all, let's get out of the way a short list of what empathy isn't. Empathy isn't 'kindness'. You can send a birthday card to someone you hate and it in no way reflects you having tried to feel what they feel. It's not about 'allyship'. Allies are functional, instrumental, there to get you what you want.

Empathy isn't an external act, its an internal one. You can't performatively share someone else's feelings by saying you do, you need to understand what they feel in a meaningful way yourself. Empathy certainly isn't agreeing with someone's feelings. Finding out why a loved one is angry doesn't necessarily justify their anger.

And it's not sympathy. Sympathy is really just feeling bad about someone else's bad luck or shit situation. It's not about understanding what that person is feeling, it's you looking at the position they are in and saying 'oh, that's not nice, is it?'.

At its easiest, empathy is seeing what someone else feels and recognising the feeling in yourself. I cry at the end of It's A Wonderful Life (every time...) because I recognise so much of the meaning and value of sacrifice and I can see and understand how it makes our hero feel – but equally, I understand the feelings that made him make the sacrifice in the first place.

But crying at sad movies is also easy. What is tricky is to find empathy with things you don't like, people you don't like. And yet that's where it's real value is. Understanding people's feelings despite disagreeing rather than because you agree is the key to building a bridge across the ravines of division that have emerged all across our society.

Elon Musk is the victim of horrible parents and relentless bullying at school. Musk was bullied so badly it resulted in hospitalisation at one point. So much that is objectionable about Musk can be traced back to him trying to take revenge on his bullies and to persuade himself that he didn't deserve it, because it is hard to really believe you don't deserve your bullying, no matter what you tell yourself.

It is true of Trump as well. His father was clearly a sociopath and psychologically tormented his children. Trump is just a lifelong failure to persuade himself that now, finally he is worthy of his late father's respect. That respect will never come.

The lessons a politics of empathy draws from that pair is that you should provide serious parenting support in early years, take safeguarding at school very seriously, have a zero-tolerance approach to bullying and provide real and sustained psychological support for the victims of bullying.

We need to apply this politics of empathy everywhere just now. I despise the Andrew Tates of this world, but I feel a deep sense of anger towards the way that his gullible young followers are spoken about by the 'progressives'. They call them 'incels' and it is a brutal, dehumanising term. These are largely kids with few economic advantages. They are suffering from acute loneliness.

Research has shown again and again that the issue is not really 'involuntarily celibacy' or that they just selfishly want sex. They've been taught to believe that sexual attractiveness is key to their self worth. They often explain that what they really want is human connection, a meaningful relationship, and end to loneliness.

“Mastering the politics of empathy is like seeing the source code of the world”

But they are mocked by people like us and welcomed and celebrated by people like Tate. It is universally agreed that it is sordid, misogynistic grifters like Tate who have made them what they are. That lets us progressives off the hook far too easily. It began with us. It began with the message that 'young men have had their time and its over'. Gains for women didn't need to be framed as losses for men, but they were. Step back, step forward, lean in, lean out, the hierarchy of privilege – these are just ways of defining who matters and who doesn't.

A politics of empathy would put serious resources into tackling loneliness among young men and helping them to develop healthy social networks. We as a society are doing the opposite. We seem to like them in their rooms on their games consoles out of the way. We certainly don't seem to want them doing other things enough to support proper recreation facilities with our taxes, or to actually invest in the clubs and societies and hang-outs that make the real difference.

When I do training on politics and how to influence politics the first thing I urge is to develop empathy. Politicians and decision-makers have all the same shit going on in their lives we do – kids taking a flakey in the morning, parking outside school murder, crap from their constituents to deal with, angry people on social media calling them names, too much to do, not enough time...

As in any field of work there are flat-out grifters, lazy so-and-sos and plenty Dunning Kruger victims among the political set, but most of them believe they are doing good for good reasons and many of them really are trying. Understand what it is that makes them so bad at their jobs and you'll do much better – a lot of it isn't them, it's external factors (although they are also responsible for some of those...).

But perhaps nowhere does the politics of empathy crash into our prejudices more than in crime and punishment. Kaitlin is covering this in her article this week but prison reform and prison rights has always been a particular interest for me precisely because this is the far end of society, the bit where it is easiest for us to be uncaring and callous.

Quite literally, we feel morally superior to people (who aren't us) who brake the rules and find it easy to dehumanise them (thugs, crooks, bad uns) and then take out our own frustrations at our society on them. The truth is that we want collective revenge, and the more we get of it, the more we want. Criminal sentence inflation is out of control.

We even know this doesn't work and yet still we want more of it. I am starting to wonder when we're going to start seriously debating the death penalty again. I mean, what's off limits for politics these days? Farage now seems to have clearer red lines than Starmer does.

I know a few people who have been to jail (that Craig Murray is among them continues to shame our nation). Most of them were middle class. Most either made mistakes when they were young or were led into dark places by their temper. None were evil. None were monsters who deserved the full weight of our collective desire for revenge on someone.

If you're telling yourself by this time 'great, I'm one of the good ones then', I worry you've not got the message. I go out of my way to try and understand people on an empathetic level and I push myself to do it even more where I find it difficult. And I'll tell you what, I'm not that good at it. I do it because I push myself to do it.

The truth is that there is a list of people who, instinctively, emotionally, I wish ill to. It takes me time and effort to understand my own feelings, to try and understand their feelings, to see how they are victims of forces they probably don't want to be swept up by. One of the hardest things to realise is that, very often, people's worst behaviour is the opposite of what it looks like.

It's not confidence, arrogance, hatred of the other. It's self-hatred, low self worth, an existential nothingness, fear of a meaningless universe, fear of what is coming for them, fear of what happens next. No, I'm not good at it. When that awful healthcare boss was murdered by that unbalanced loner, I felt a thrill, a thrill of justice. I knew it wasn't right, but I wished it was right.

Because my empathy was selective. I found it easy to have empathy for his many, many victims (they truly were a corporation without morality). I didn't even try to have empathy for his family. So it is hard and I don't think I'm good at it at all.

But it is two things. It is incredibly powerful. Mastering the politics of empathy is like seeing the source code of the world. You realise the planet runs on half-articulated feelings, suppressed memories, incoherent rage at something other than what made you angry. It very quickly shows you solutions where before you could only see problems.

And it makes us all better people. My empathy for you changes me, but if I get it right, it changes you more. When you are in a dark place I would hope that someone's feelings of caring for you, for how you got there, would help to lift you back up closer to the light.

We have the politics of power – the socialists don't look back with empathy at those who lose out from them much more than the capitalists do. We have cynical politics – world-leading emoter Nicola Sturgeon could disregard vulnerable groups when it was in her interests in the same way Donald Trump can.

We have punitive politics. The Greens are as keen to destroy those they oppose through language and exclusion as much as any far right politician. Don't blame the player, blame the game. And I do. I do blame the game.

Because there is very little feeling for others left in the game we are playing and it is destroying us all. No, goodness no, the politics of empathy are not easy and they're not simple. And that is why they are so, so important. And that is why we need them right now.