Empathy Vs. Sympathy

    Empathy 

      Empathy and sympathy are often confused by many people, myself included. Empathy, based on what we learned in class, is the intellectual identification or vicarious experience of the feelings, thoughts, and attitudes of another.In other words, empathy is being able to understand what someone is going through because you have been in a similar situation, and can relate with them. While sympathy is feelings of pity and sorrow of someone else's misfortune.Empathy is being able to relate with someone, and sympathy is feeling pity for someone. Usually people empathize with other people when they have experienced something very similar, and they know how the other person is feeling, but there are also some situations where you have to empathize with an unknown event. Let's say that a friend of mine's dog dies, I have never had a pet so I have yet to experience that feeling. My immediate reaction would be "It's just a pet, why are you so upset?". However I know that that person had some kind of deep connection with that pet, so I would put myself in their shoes and try to empathize with them. Another difficult situation to empathize with, is when you completely disagree with something. For instance, if you were a young German man, and a Nazi solider came up to you and says that you have to kill one Jewish man, or he'll kill your family. Yes, it's morbid but it's just an example. So we all know that murdering the Jewish population during the Holocaust was terrible, and any sane person would disagree that the Holocaust was a great event. Yet, you are given this grim ultimatum, you are most definitely going to do whatever it takes to save your family, and you will most likely end up taking the life of that Jewish man. Now think of all those Nazis during the time of the Holocaust who were given a similar ultimatum. It's now easier to empathize with the Nazis, even though what they did is incredibly barbaric and cruel. When dealing with an unknown situation, you almost have to crawl into that other person's brain and view the situation from their perspective. It's vital that we learn to empathize with any kind of situation, no matter how appalling the situation is, because with this skill we can enhance our understanding of any historical event.