The Adult Empathy Problem

An important question of the modern canon.

The older I’ve gotten, the less and less I think American relationships are that well-structured. Most of it seems to come down to particular life stage, I.e. kids vs. no kids or age of kids, and many feel overwhelmed by work and bosses and other commitments and tasks to really prioritize others in a valuable way. Plus, a lot of people — especially dudes — have a very limited emotional bar they can reach, so being empathetic and vulnerable around others just usually isn’t in the cards.

But what I wanted to know was: is empathy teachable? Could we take the biggest MAGA in the world and make them understand at least where another side was coming from? Could we take the biggest lib out there and do the same? Can you take a person with a plastic brain or someone fully formed as an “adult” and suddenly make them more empathetic?

Seems like an interesting question. This is the type of stuff I write about, if you want to come along.

Can we teach empathy? And if so, how do we do it?

I was having this conversation with my wife last night — before I launched into “Sweat B” of P90x, naitch — about something I feel like I write about a lot (too much?) on this blog, i.e. the notion that traditional ideas about management (deliverables, paying dues, no friendship between managers and employees, poor communication is fine so long as we’re making money) are somewhat fading away in favor of these new ideas (soft skills, communication, empathy, real leadership training, transformational instead of transactional).