Empathy And Generosity

A friend of mine raised this question - with respect to my belief expressed in another post that empathy and fairness rarely coexist. 

She pointed out examples of some people she knew where the two qualities seemed to be present in the same person.

Well I disagree with her. First we need to be on the same page with respect to the definition. What you see as empathy and what I see should be the same.

So let me give my definition. Both empathy and generosity are great. We feel good when we see them. When someone feels bad, when we feel share their pain, when we feel their pain, when we reach down to their level and lend them our shoulder we are showing empathy. 

Gandhari, after she got married to a blind man, didn't give him her eyes - that would have made her generous. She blindfolded herself for the rest of her life. She came down to the level of her husband. That was empathy. We will not go into such trivial issues such as that the field of medicine hadn't yet discovered corneal transplant at the time of Mahabharat.

Generosity on the other hand, when faced with the same issue of someone in distress, tries to bring the other person out of their low level and closer to ours. There is a tangible act of giving and pulling the person out and it won't be just with words. A person who lends money (when he need not have lent or where the interest rate is very low or the collateral is substandard to non existent) or donates to charity or he gives up what is his by right, is showing generosity. Ekalaivan, Karna, Bheeshma (characters in Mahabharat) were extremely generous people. Each of them gave up thing(s). They were not known for their empathy. Matter of fact, if you read the story of Amba and Shikandi, Bheeshma's colossal lack of empathy for a woman in distress would become obvious. But when his father's fiance asked him to give up his throne, he did it in a second. 

What made Bheeshma give up his title to the kingdom but also made him very insensitive to the plight of Amba? Herein lies the difference between empathy and generosity. When it came to giving up his throne there was no one else who got adversely affected. His title was his to give up. So he gave it to his step mother and walked out. But when it came to Amba, he had to be fair. His job was to capture her and deliver her - much like Jason Statham in Transporter - to Vichithraviryan. He saw Amba only as an object. He couldn't relate to her plight. Marrying her would have been adharma - from his point of view - because of his vow of celibacy. He could not give himself, in the role of husband, to Amba.

In the movie Thalapathy, Mammootty becomes very attached to Rajinikanth and he asks Rajini to leave the slum where he (Rajini) lived and to come stay with him (Mammootty) in a much bigger house. Rajni rejects the request saying his people are poor and that they do not have anyone else. 

Now, what (empathy or generosity) was Mammootty showing? He was being generous. If he had shown empathy then he would have left his house and gone to stay with Rajini.

Going back to Karna in Mahabharat, when his mother asked him to leave the Kauravas and join their enemies, his Pandava brothers, he refuses his mother's request - based on his sense of right and wrong - because Duryodhan (the head of Kauravas) had helped him when no one else did. Karna did not show empathy towards his mother. But when she asked him not to harm his Pandava brothers other than Arjun, he accedes to her request. And also agrees to not use the Brahmastra more than once on Arjuna. That was generosity.

See the difference?

Women usually are better at showing empathy. Men are more generous. And when women want to open up and share their feelings with a man when they (women) are down, they expect him to listen and show empathy. They do not want him to solve the problem or be generous. Generosity and Fairness can coexist. Empathy and Fairness cannot by definition. Generosity and empathy do not coexist in the same person, not at least at the same time.

When we are down on our luck and we approach a person for help and if that person:

• Lends you money or donates money or stuff (with terms as explained before) he is being generous
• says she feels bad for you and will perform a pooja for you also when she visits Tirupati temple next week or she leaves all her work just to be with you - she is showing empathy.

Which one is better? I do not have an answer. Some situations need empathy to be shown. Some need generosity. The worst thing is that each of us is capable usually of showing one or the other. Not both. 

Finally I have a strange thought. Does Generosity need an absence of empathy as a pre-requisite? Incidentally, when I googled I couldn't find relevant links on difference between empathy and generosity.

A great example of empathy:

One of the most beautiful scenes depicting empathy is the one in the movie Godfather at 2h:01m:20s. Tom tells the Godfather that Sonny has been shot and killed, Godfather's shows extreme anguish and then he goes to Tom and hugs Tom in order to console Tom. 
When does a man who has just learnt that his son has been murdered find the time or the courage or the sympathy to console the man who has just the delivered the bad news? Amazing...

Another example of empathy is shown by the author of the article on death of children in a Bihar government hospital because Pushpa stopped supplying Oxygen Cylinders to the hospital because of non receipt of dues from the hospital: http://www.firstpost.com/india/gorakhpur-is-a-legal-tragedy-too-laws-needed-to-regulate-states-casual-attempts-at-dealing-with-private-vendors-3930677.html - the author states that the government should have mechanism in place to ensure that private suppliers do not get to stop supplying essential stuff such as electricity, oxygen cylinders just because payment has not been received. The author makes a case for the suppliers to have empathy and get down to the same level as the customer. Lot of empathy and F (as in MBTI) in the author. As to how the supplier will run a business in the absence of money is something the author has neglected to ponder upon - perhaps the same way that government hospitals do when they don't get much money from the poor patients. Meaning run a long subsidy chain - I subsidize you, you subsidize someone else, and so on. God will take care of financial issues and P&L etc. Empathy doesn't understand fairness.

Additional reading:

• https://sashadichter.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/generosity-and-empathy/
• http://www.nexthumanproject.com/references/Empathy_Towards_Strangers_Claremont.pdf
• http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_avoid_regret_in_your_social_life?utm_source=Greater+Good+Science+Center&utm_campaign=83dc817c32-GG_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_05_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5ae73e326e-83dc817c32-51673647 - people who constantly optimize their choices are less happy apparently - unbelievable. Is that why women are less happy than men on the average?