1. Empathy is being debated if it is overrated. The issue with empathy is that there is a spotlight with only a focus on certain things that we feel the need to have empathy for. The spotlights are based on our biases and what is most convenient for us as people. Bloom writes, “… it’s far easier to empathize with those who are close to us, those who are similar to us, and those who we see as more attractive or vulnerable and less scary” (2). It is more convenient for us to be emphatic for our loved ones or people that we have come across, rather than someone all the way across the world that is suffering because they don’t have food. Empathy focuses on limited groups of people and even individuals. It goes back to our biases and who are specifically in our groups. Bloom talks about the Sandy Hook case, where there was a school shooting. Where 20 children and six adults died tragically. Although there was another case in Chicago where more people were murdered. We don’t talk specifically about that case and our minds go to the Sandy Hook shootings (Bloom 2). 

The three main points that the author argues is that spotlights only illuminate what they are pointed at, so empathy reflects our biases, empathy is particularly incentives to consequences that apply statistically rather to specific individuals, and what really matters for kindness in our everyday interactions is not empathy but capacities such as self control and intelligence and more diffuse compassion (Bloom 4). These points are what the essay was mainly about. Putting these ideas together and then making the claim that empathy is not actually used within our everyday interactions. Blooms states, “if you absorb the suffering of others, then you’re less able to help them in the long run because achieving long term goals often requires inflicting short term pain (Bloom 4). If you try to help others by being empathetic and try to feel someone else’s pain you realistically aren’t helping them because you are now hurting yourself. Short term pain is better to achieve a person’s long term goals. 

  1. I disagree with what the author has to say about empathy. I agree that trying to help the millions of people in the world by taking away their pain is exhausting. Most of the time to be empathetic you really have to give yourself time to heal by taking on someone else’s pain. I disagree that empathy is based on our biases. Maybe it’s just me and I’m being selfish, but I try to see people and hear people with an open mind. Letting myself be empathetic. There are only a few people in my life that I will not be empathic with. In the example that Bloom gave of all the people around the world, yes you can be empathic to their pain but how exactly are you supposed to help them across the world?
  2. One way that Bloom’s essay challenges my initial understanding of empathy was brought on by the statement, “Making children suffer temporarily for their own good is made possible by love, intelligence and compassion, but yet again, it can be impeded by empathy” (Bloom 4). I guess I never thought about the “tough love” aspect when it came to empathy. To me empathy was always making the pain go away and sympathizing with someone, not necessarily letting them figure it out but also being there for support. 
  3. “…Here your empathy is silent – how can you empathize with a statistical abstraction? To the extent that you can appreciate that it’s better for one specific child to die than an unknown and imprecise larger number of children to die, you are using capacities other than empathy”(Bloom 3). In this specific quote, an experience comes to mind, when in my hometown just a few weeks ago, there was a shooting at a country club. I believe it was the rehearsal dinner or the dinner after the wedding where a man comes in and inflicts harm. The dad of the bride stepped in front of his wife and his daughter and got shot, he died that night. Two other people were injured but not killed. Now for me i want to empathize with all of the people that were there. But in a messed up way, it’s better that only one person died and two injured compared to the whole wedding party. I empathize with the mom and the daughter for losing their dad and husband, and for the people they were injured that night, the fear they must have faced.
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