“Learning to stand in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, that’s how peace begins. And it’s up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.”Former President of the United States Barack Obama once said this. That’s right. Empathy is a quality that can change the world. When people can think from other people’s point of view, many things can be solved well. But in this era of rapid development, people’s empathy is gradually decreasing. As for empathy, we saw two articles in our previous study, one is Jamil Zaki’s “Can We Revive Empathy in Our Selfish World?”. The other is Maia Szalavitz’s “Shocker: Empathy Dropped 40% in College Students Since 200”. The two authors present their own views on empathy reduction.
First of all, the two authors agree that people’s empathy is not as much as it used to be, but the difference is that Maia Szalavitz’s article only focuses on the decline of college students’ empathy, while Jamil Zaki is for everyone. According to a survey of more than 14,000 College students, Maia Szalavitz concluded that after 2000, empathy among college students decreased by 40%.However, in Jamil Zaki’s article, he did not have detailed data to show how much empathy has decreased. However, he pointed out that people used to be the most empathetic creatures in the world, and now people’s empathy is declining. For this part, I don’t think there is any way to say which author is more convincing, because one of them only surveyed a part of the population, while the other did not have strong data support.
Second, both authors believe that technology has an impact on human empathy. Maia Szalavitz believes that technology is an important reason for affecting college students’ empathy. The development of science and technology has reduced the socialization of this generation of young people in real life. More people choose to socialize on the Internet and understand the world. This is the bad influence that technology brings to empathy. People have more time to be alone and spend more time on the web. Therefore, the college students’ concern for people in life is reduced. Jamil Zaki also believes that technology has a negative impact on people. The difference is that Jamil Zaki hopes to restore people’s empathy through technology. At this point, the views of the two authors are not in conflict, but the idea of Jamil Zaki makes people feel more hopeful. Maia Szalavitz’s article is a report explaining the results of a survey, while Gmail Zaki’s article is about how to restore people’s empathy.
127 our experts are availableright now
In addition to the two commonalities that both authors have written, the two authors in the two articles have their own ideas. Maia Szalavitz mentioned that there are two important reasons for affecting people’s empathy in addition to technology. One is the self-respect of students. In short, the current students have changed psychologically. They are more narcissistic than older people. It means that they care more about their own feelings, they pay more attention to themselves than others, and they can say that this is selfish. In addition, the second reason that affects students is family and social reasons, which are put together because, in summary, the environment in which they live teaches them to “do your own things”. It’s life that influences these students’ ideas to do their own things well before they take care of others.
