The Melissa Hortman/Charlie Kirk Dilemma: Empathy vs. Compassion

I recent­ly went out for piz­za with my friend Alli. Around us, there were three tables with infants of var­i­ous ages. When one of the babies start­ed cry­ing, the oth­er infants start­ed wail­ing too, not from con­fu­sion, but from recog­ni­tion. I noticed one young moth­er sur­rep­ti­tious­ly slid­ing a nap­kin into her bra, her milk let­ting down in response to the cry­ing. Alli and I, moth­ers our­selves, smiled wry­ly at the babies and their par­ents, releas­ing oxy­tocin into our own bloodstreams. 

This whole scene was a per­fect exam­ple of empa­thy in action, a neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal fir­ing of mir­ror neu­rons, those tiny cir­cuits that con­nect near­by ner­vous sys­tems. Empathy is imme­di­ate, vis­cer­al, and deeply human. It’s one ner­vous sys­tem say­ing to anoth­er, I see your pain.

Empathy is under fire these days in con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles, the idea being that empa­thy isn’t ratio­nal think­ing, but lead­ing from over­ly emo­tion­al thoughts instead. On the Joe Rogan pod­cast, Elon Musk famous­ly said, “The fun­da­men­tal weak­ness of Western civ­i­liza­tion is empa­thy.” Even if we put aside for the moment that Elon is diag­nosed on the autism spec­trum (ASD), where empa­thy man­i­fests quite dif­fer­ent­ly than in neu­rotyp­i­cal indi­vid­u­als, Musk still mis­spoke.  Empathy is not weak­ness, but wiring, a bio­log­i­cal fact of being human. Musk is real­ly decry­ing act­ing with com­pas­sion, not empathy.

Let me ask you a hard ques­tion. Did you grieve the shoot­ings of Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk in the same way? Empathy is bio­log­i­cal­ly hard­wired, but it is selec­tive and often ter­ri­bly biased. We some­times feel the pain of one suf­fer­ing human, but are numb to the pain of oth­ers. Most brains will secret­ly slot these events into least or most trag­ic, based on our opin­ions and beliefs. This is how our brains orga­nize infor­ma­tion. Mirror neu­rons are locat­ed main­ly in the brain’s cor­tex. Our cor­tex neur­al fir­ing seems to be more sen­si­tive to events that affect some­one whose views echo our own, and less involved when the event affects some­one who stands across the aisle. 

Empathy is a finite resource. In our age of relent­less news cycles and vis­i­ble pain, empa­thy alone can be par­a­lyz­ing. To feel every tragedy as our own can leave us numb (is any­one else wor­ried about our chil­dren becom­ing desen­si­tized to see­ing actu­al assas­si­na­tion videos so reg­u­lar­ly?). So we feel less empa­thy for some events if we are already over­whelmed by oth­er worries. 

Are we a “bad human” if we shrug when some­one we deem vile suf­fers? The answer to that ques­tion is between you and the God of your understanding. 

However you feel about these shoot­ings, the hard work of com­pas­sion comes in handy as a tool for tak­ing the best next step. Where empa­thy mir­rors, com­pas­sion moves. It takes the raw res­o­nance of empa­thy and chan­nels it into action. Empathy says, I see your pain. Compassion says, and I will walk with you through it. While empa­thy can leave us over­whelmed or exhaust­ed, com­pas­sion stead­ies us. It trans­forms feel­ing into pur­pose, sor­row into ser­vice. And luck­i­ly, com­pas­sion is an infi­nite resource. It’s good for us per­son­al­ly, and it’s good for us collectively.

I want to be very clear here. Compassion does not mean agree­ment. It does not require us to endorse every pol­i­cy, speech, or world­view. What it does ask of us is to look past the sound­bites and see the human beings behind them: peo­ple shaped by fam­i­lies, his­to­ries, fears, and hopes. Hortman’s con­vic­tions about jus­tice and inclu­sion were born of her sto­ry, just as Kirk’s zeal for free mar­kets and patri­ar­chal tra­di­tion was born of his. Both chose pub­lic life, a path that demands sac­ri­fice and invites scruti­ny. Both endured the weight of crit­i­cism, often harsh and per­son­al. Both believed, how­ev­er dif­fer­ent­ly, that their work served the com­mon good.

To grant com­pas­sion equal­ly to Hortman and Kirk is not to flat­ten their dif­fer­ences but to lift our human­i­ty above them. It is to resist the easy cyn­i­cism of dehu­man­iza­tion and to choose instead the hard­er work of recog­ni­tion. It says, I may abhor your ideas, but I will not deny your dignity. 

Compassion is not, like empa­thy, who we believe deserves it more. It is about the kind of soci­ety we want to build. We can build a future where empa­thy is weaponized, or one where com­pas­sion is shared freely. One where we can calm­ly dis­cuss the gun sit­u­a­tion. If we wish to heal our frac­tured nation, we must begin by remem­ber­ing that even across the sharpest divides, our hearts beat with the same ancient rhythms.