the fragile self and the cost of indifference: Empathy, identity, and the work of becoming truly human

Aug 7

Across the globe, a quiet but profound erosion is taking place - not only of democratic institutions or shared, so-called truth, but of something more fundamental: the human capacity to care. In the face of political polarization, economic precarity, and algorithmic distraction, empathy has become increasingly rare. Across digital culture, labor systems, and public discourse, the ability to imagine the life of another is fading away. Or was it there at all? It seems like solidarity and empathy have never been universally practiced values. They have been hard-won, fragile, and often mistaken for moral response triggered by spectacle, episodic empathy or reactive empathy, not stable foundations of contemporary life.

After the Second World War, thinkers like Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, and Emmanuel Levinas did not suggest that empathy had previously reigned, but rather that its absence had made totalitarianism possible. What followed the war - declarations of human rights, decolonization efforts, and some institutional reforms - created a rhetorical framework for empathy, but not necessarily its lived embodiment. The global economy soon pivoted into technocratic expansion and neoliberal individualism instead of ethical individualism. The structures of care and relations remained secondary to production, control, and performance.

So perhaps it is more accurate to say: empathy was named as an ideal after the war, an expectation, but rarely internalized as embedded empathy. It remained a moral afterthought rather than a cultural foundation. In today’s world, public life is increasingly shaped by appearances, performance, and spectacle - rather than by genuine dialogue. It affects how we relate to others and how we understand ourselves replacing the interpersonal with the performative - we interact through roles, screens, and narratives that are optimized for attention, not for understanding.

But, if we look at our society, is there any way to cultivate empathy, not as a fleeting reaction to crisis, but as a steady, embedded capacity - one rooted in awareness, selfhood, and the quiet recognition of our shared human condition?

Freedom can’t survive without empathy (© Edie Lou)

The Structure of Empathy

What is empathy at all. We all know it right? Or we think we know it? What we often mistake for moral awakening is, in fact, episodic or performative empathy - a response triggered by sudden emotional events and sensational attention rather than an ethical commitment or structural awareness. It responds to moments of visible crisis but does not develop into enduring ethical commitment. Psychologist Paul Bloom, in Against Empathy, warns that such emotional responses can be biased, short-sighted, and easily mistreated. The moral imagination is hijacked by proximity or media-driven affect, not guided by reflection or understanding. It feels urgent, but it passes easily.

Empathy is not a single, uniform feeling, but a complex psychological and ethical capacity that involves both affective resonance and cognitive perspective-taking. Unlike sympathy, which conveys concern or pity from a distance, empathy involves an attempt to feel with another - to imaginatively inhabit their perspective, even if that perspective is unfamiliar or uncomfortable. As social psychologist Daniel Batson has shown, this distinction matters. Sympathy can reinforce hierarchy and emotional detachment, while empathy demands proximity, vulnerability, and a certain moral humility. It asks not just for recognition of suffering but for an inner movement toward the other’s world - without dissolving the boundary between self and other.

Yet in public life today, much of what passes for empathy is shallow, reactive, and short-lived. This is what many researchers describe as episodic or reactive empathy - a type of emotional response that is activated by crisis, spectacle, or media exposure, but rarely sustained over time. Its manifestations are familiar: an outpouring of concern during a natural disaster, a shared hashtag after a violent act, a fleeting moment of moral clarity triggered by a disturbing image. Such empathy may be genuine in feeling but limited in scope. It is mostly shaped more by the visibility of suffering than by its reality, and fades quickly once attention shifts. This type of empathy, while emotionally intense, can distort moral reasoning. It tends to be biased, selective, and easily manipulated - more useful for signaling alignment than for building sustained ethical engagement. This type of empathy is called performative empathy, where expressions of care or solidarity are used to show that someone is on the “right side” of a moral or political issue. It means that people often express empathy not to build a deeper relationship with others or commit to long-term responsibility, but rather to signal that they belong to a certain group or share certain values.

But embedded empathy is something different. It refers to a deeper, more durable mode of relational understanding. It is not episodic but continuous - not driven by rupture or spectacle, but by an ongoing ethical orientation toward others. Empathy - after Martin Hoffman - is a learned and cultivated capacity rather than an automatic response. Automatic response - is the kind of empathy most people think of: a reflexive emotional reaction when we see someone suffering - like flinching when a child cries, or tearing up at a sad movie. It is instinctual, affective, and usually short-lived. It is important but it has its limitations. It does not require critical thinking or sustained ethical responsibility. It is passive, episodic, and often vanishes when the stimulus is removed. What is missing is a learned and cultivated capacity, the kind of empathy that goes beyond emotion. It includes the ability to understand perspectives radically different from your own, staying emotionally present in the face of discomfort, difference, or ambiguity, and make ethical decisions based on long-term relational thinking. It is intellectual and moral, not just emotional. In short, true empathy isn’t just feeling for someone - it is developing the capacity to live ethically with them.

Unlike reactive empathy, which peaks in moments of crisis and quickly recedes, embedded empathy does not vanish once the moment passes. It persists. It deepens. It becomes part of how one understands the world. And crucially, it forms the basis for ethical life in a plural society - where others are not abstract categories, but fellow beings whose lives, though distinct, are no less real. In this sense, empathy is not simply an emotion; it is a condition for justice.

Hannah Arendt (© of the original picture belongs to the rightful owner)

The Banality of Evil

So, what is the problem with performative empathy? Well…performative empathy can be deeply dangerous - not because it expresses care, obviously, but because it stimulates care without structural commitment. It offers the appearance of moral alignment while avoiding the labor of ethical action. Whether in political rhetoric, corporate messaging, or digital campaigns, this type of empathy functions more as image management than moral responsibility. A leader’s tearful statement, a brand’s solidarity post, or a viral hashtag can serve as emotional placeholders - symbolic acts that substitute for real transformation. They soothe outrage while the systems that caused harm remain untouched.

This dynamic doesn’t just fail to resolve injustice - it actively undermines the conditions for real accountability. By offering just enough emotional recognition, performative empathy defuses collective pressure for change. Performative empathy offers a substitute for structural transformation - a kind of emotional “fix” that mimics solidarity while sidestepping actual accountability. It is effective but dangerous. It gives psychological satisfaction: when people feel emotionally acknowledged - by a brand, a leader, or a campaign - it creates the illusion that something meaningful has occurred. This emotional validation satisfies the desire for moral alignment, without requiring systemic disruption. It soothes discomfort without resolving its cause. People feel seen, and that feeling - powerful and shallow - short-circuits deeper engagement. It is a form of moral sedation. It replaces independent thinking with collective feeling, and responsibility with reaction. Performative empathy can be used easily to manipulate public sentiment, distract from accountability, or consolidate power. In the age of algorithmic visibility, gestures of empathy are rapidly circulated, consumed, and forgotten.

This is precisely the kind of moral erosion Hannah Arendt warned against. Hannah Arendt was a German-born political thinker whose work defied disciplinary boundaries and resisted ideological simplification. A student of Martin Heidegger and later Karl Jaspers, she fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and eventually settled in the United States, where she became one of the twentieth century’s most influential voices on totalitarianism, freedom, and the nature of political responsibility.

In her account of Adolf Eichmann and the “banality of evil”, Arendt described not monstrous ideology, but the quiet, bureaucratic indifference of a man who simply “did his job”. Eichmann was not a fanatic - he was thoughtless without real identity. He followed orders. He obeyed norms. And in doing so, he helped enact unspeakable atrocities. For Arendt, this was the real horror: evil made ordinary not by hatred, but by the absence of independent thinking. The most dangerous acts in history weren't driven by monstrous intent - they were enabled by individuals who followed orders, accepted systems, and stopped asking questions. They surrendered their responsibility to examine what they were doing - or what they were complicit in - because it was easier to obey, to conform, or to focus only on their own role within a system. Bureaucracy, routine, and ideology replaced moral thinking. Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil doesn’t excuse horrific actions. Instead, it warns us that evil often enters through inattention, passivity, and the erosion of ethical reflection. When we stop thinking with others in mind, when we sever the link between self and world, we create the conditions in which atrocity becomes just another task.

Performative empathy follows this logic. It allows individuals and institutions to outsource conscience, to behave as if moral engagement has occurred - while evading the complexity of truth, responsibility, and relationship. Arendt did not frame empathy as mere emotional resonance. What she demanded was judgement - the political capacity to think from the standpoint of another, without collapsing difference. For her, true political judgment involves maintaining the tension between self and other: seeing the world as someone else might, without losing one’s own perspective or collapsing that difference into sameness. This, she argued, is the condition of plurality: living with others not because we are the same, but because we share a world.

When empathy becomes performance, this condition is destroyed. When empathy is hollowed out and performed without substance, what fills the vacuum is manipulation. Because performative empathy doesn’t feel empty. On the contrary, it feels emotionally real in the moment. People cry at televised tragedies - me too, of course. They respond to hashtags. They feel moved, outraged, heartbroken. But that feeling - however sincere - is often disconnected from sustained ethical engagement. It doesn’t translate into structural change. It allows individuals to feel morally aligned - without confronting the deeper mechanisms of harm they may be complicit in.

Empathy depends on a stable, coherent sense of the self - and freedom (© Edie Lou)

Embedded Empathy

But how should we develop real empathy - the embedded one? Not the fleeting emotion sparked by spectacle, but the sustained capacity to see the world through another’s eye without erasing our own? Embedded empathy is not an instinctive reaction. It is an ethical posture - cultivated, deliberate, and sustained. It requires not just the capacity to feel, but the maturity to remain present with discomfort, ambiguity, and difference. This empathy is not reactive. It is relational - forged through attention, practice, and a willingness to encounter the other without reducing them to reflection or extension of the self.

But such relational capacity depends on something deeper: identity. Empathy depends on a stable, coherent sense of the self - not a reactive, performative, or crowd-driven identity. The one built through external validation, mimicry, or alignment with group norms, only. This is performative identity. It is about signaling belonging, often through visual cues or opinions that conform to a perceived in-group. It is fragile because it is built from the outside in. Identity as coherence, by contrast, means having an internal structure - a sense of self that can withstand contradiction, difference, and ambiguity without collapsing. This inner stability allows people to engage with others meaningfully without losing their own perspective.

When someone lacks this internal coherence, they become psychologically fragile. They seek certainty, sameness, and safety, rather than truth or meaningful engagement. This kind of person is often driven by fear - of being wrong, excluded, or of change. In that state, embedded empathy is threatening because it demands openness to perspectives that challenge one’s own. Empathy - true, embedded empathy - requires entering another person’s reality without absorbing it, and without demanding that they be just like “us”. For someone whose identity is brittle or performative, this is intolerable. When someone builds their identity mainly through external cues - trends, approval, group belonging, jobs, prestige, or appearances - their sense of self is not grounded internally. It is performative. That means it is fragile, because it depends on constant reinforcement from others. It can’t tolerate contradiction, because those things shake the foundation. Which is none to nothing.

Embedded empathy asks us to do something very difficult: to enter someone else’s reality - not to agree, not to absorb it as our own, but to hold it with care and without collapse. That requires a solid inner self - a sense of identity that can stay intact even while listening to or understanding something unfamiliar. But for someone whose identity is brittle - shaped by fear or rejection, mimicry, or social pressure - that encounter feels like a threat. Not because the other person is harmful, but because the self is too weakly formed to stay coherent in the face of difference. So instead of openness, the reaction is defensiveness or rejection. That is why embedded empathy is hard for people without a strong, stable - real - identity. It asks them to relate across difference without falling apart - and if their self is fragile, they can’t do that safely.

The Danger of Performative Identity

Performative identity - status-based identity (built around wealth, appearance, prestige), nationalist or cultural supremacist identity (affirms self by dehumanizing or excluding others), career as identity (when one’s job or role becomes the totality of self) etc. - becomes defensive by default. And defensive identities often become aggressive. When someone lacks an internally grounded sense of self, they tend to define themselves by opposition: “I am not like them”. They build identity by excluding others, not by understanding themselves. So difference doesn’t feel like diversity - it feels like a threat.

Now, if empathy demands recognizing the full humanity of others, and the identity is built on denying or diminishing that humanity to protect your own self-image or group belonging, then empathy becomes destabilizing. The individual will reject it, avoid it, or actively suppress it - not consciously, but through instinctive resistance. And in systems - political, cultural, digital - this becomes dangerous because it enables othering, scapegoating, cruelty, and authoritarianism. When people cannot hold space for the other, they look for control. When people can’t tolerate ambiguity, they seek certainty through force - whether that’s moral righteousness, nationalism, or dogma.

This was what Hannah Arendt warned about: The inability to think form another’s position - not just intellectually, but ethically. This is not merely about sympathizing -it is about making space in one’s mind for the reality of another person’s perspective, experience, and dignity. To recognize that another person’s life has value, even when it is radically different from your own. When this ethical imagination is missing, people stop seeing others as fully real. That dehumanization doesn’t need to look like overt hatred - it can manifest quietly, through bureaucracy, silence, obedience, indifference, and moral detachment.

This is what Arendt meant in her concept of the “banality of evil” - how ordinary people, through thoughtlessness and moral passivity, participate in systems that cause real harm. Violence becomes embedded in the system - in laws, procedures, economic structures - and no one feels personally responsible. The real danger, Arendt said, is conformity, cowardice, and the refusal to think critically. When people have fragile or performative identities, they are often threatened by difference. Seeing the other as truly human might shake their worldview, moral certainty, or social belonging. And rather than facing that discomfort, they retreat - into indifference, denial, or obedience.

Performative empathy often disguises exclusion as care. In emotionally charged contexts - like political conflicts - people may publicly express support for one side not out of deep ethical reflection, but to signal belonging or moral superiority. This kind of empathy divides the world into “us” and “them”, silences complexity, and justifies cruelty toward those who don’t align. As Hannah Arendt warned, when empathy lacks thoughtfulness and openness to difference, it becomes dangerous - enabling tribalism, not justice. True empathy resists simplification. It resists the temptation to turn suffering into spectacle or identity into a dividing line. In today’s media-saturated world, emotional responses are often shaped by visibility, speed, and alignment. As a result, public expressions of care can drift into performance - not always out of malice, though, but because our attention is fragmented and our identities are often built through affiliation.

Yet, when empathy is offered only to those we agree with, or when care is expressed through curated gestures rather than sustained engagement, we risk mistaking performance for solidarity. This does not mean that people are insincere - but that our current systems reward visibility more than depth, and alignment more than understanding. The challenge is to cultivate an empathy that can hold complexity, remain rooted in ethical attention, and extend beyond the bounds of personal agreement.

Not to mention that performative empathy is an emotion-driven empathy only. Especially when ungrounded in reflection or structure, it can be easily manipulated. Its intensity makes it powerful, but that same power can be redirected - often by media, politics, or group pressure -to serve polarizing agendas. When empathy is governed by emotional proximity, it risks becoming selective, tribal, and even weaponized. Performative empathy can bypass critical thinking, it can be used to rally support for policies or actions that are unjust, as long as they appear morally justified in the moment. It can create moral blind spots, where certain forms of suffering are amplified, while others are ignored or dismissed. True, embedded empathy needs more than emotion - it requires ethical orientation, self-awareness, and the ability to pause, think, and stay open even when it is uncomfortable. Without those anchors, empathy risks becoming a tool of division, rather than solidarity.

Identity - the work of becoming truly human (© Edie Lou)

External Sourced Identity

So, identity becomes fragile when it lacks inner coherence - when it is built on external validation, rigid roles, or inherited scripts rather than a grounded sense of self. In this condition, it is easily threatened by difference, ambiguity, or criticism because it cannot adapt without feeling like it is being erased. When identity is externally sourced, anything unfamiliar or different can feel like a challenge to its very existence. It has no deep anchor to return to, so even a small difference can feel destabilizing. This fragility often comes from developmental interruptions: environments where autonomy, trust, or emotional safety were not cultivated. Erik Erikson described identity as the outcome of successful negotiation between internal needs and external realities. When that negotiation is blocked - by fear, shame, control, or performance - identity remains brittle.

A fragile identity must constantly protect itself because it is built on unstable ground. It hasn’t formed through deep self-reflection, personal autonomy, or a secure sense of worth. Instead, it often forms around external validation - social norms, group allegiance, inherited beliefs, or status symbols. Just like we said, it doesn’t have a stable internal foundation, so any disruption feels threatening. That’s why change - whether in ideas, culture, relationships, or power structures - feels like disintegration to such an identity. It can’t adapt without fearing the loss of self.

What many in Western societies mistake for identity is actually the fragile, performative one. Build on a set of inherited symbols, narratives, and surface-level expressions that create the illusion of coherence. Flags, language, traditions, political ideals - these become identity markers, but they are not identity itself. It is something else. Real identity is interior. It is developed. It is rooted in humanity. Humanity is the one thing we all share beneath the layers of culture, belief, and performance. When identity is rooted in our shared conditions, as human beings - in vulnerability, interdependence, and dignity - it becomes resilient. It can include others without fear or collapse. It allows us to remain distinct without needing to dominate.

But when people cling to external signs without doing the internal work, they confuse performance with actual presence. They believe they are themselves but they are actually defending an image. What often passes for identity in the contemporary West is a fragile construct mistaken for depth. Many believe themselves to be independent thinkers, progressive actors, or post-national citizens, yet their sense of self remains anchored in shallow markers: internalized ancestral pride, moral positioning, or curated cultural symbols. This confusion allows internalized nationalism to masquerade as ethical clarity. Other cultures are flattened into consumable clichés - food, folklore, or aesthetic difference -while the self is exempted from scrutiny.

Even those who vocally reject exclusionary politics often replicate its logic unconsciously, reducing identity to image and mistaking symbolic alignment for real connection or shared responsibility. The result is a brittle structure that cannot engage with complexity. It gestures toward openness but retreats from ambiguity. It is a cultural drift where empathy, identity, and politcal life are all flattened into symbols that can be consumed but not really lived. In some ideological circles, empathy is extended only when the other aligns with a preferred political narrative - collapsing individual complexity into national or cultural stereotypes. What appears as solidarity often becomes projection, reducing people to symbols or objects rather than seeing them as subjects. It is a form of dehumanization disguised as moral clarity. When individuals are reduced to proxies for political regimes or national narratives, their subjectivity is erased. This is not identity; it is symbolic appropriation. True identity begins where projection ends - in the recognition of others as complex, autonomous beings, not as extensions of our own ideology.

Real Identity - The Work of Becoming Human

But how to get there. Dear identity, how to find you? Where are you? Well, a resilient identity does not arise from performance or affiliation - it is cultivated through lived experience, ethical responsibility, and the capacity for interior life. It is built from coherence - the ability to remain internally whole while facing contradiction and difference. When that inner coherence is missing, people grasp for substitutes: ideology becomes a costume, heritage becomes a defense, belonging becomes a performance. Identity is hollowed out. These are not sources of strength; they are protective shells, rigid and unyielding. They cannot absorb discomfort or tolerate nuance. And when identity is shaped by such posturing, empathy cannot take root.

Identity begins in relationship - not just with others, but with oneself. To built a grounded sense of self, individuals must first be given space to reflect, question, and explore without immediate judgment or comparison. This begins in early life, but it is never too late. Moments of solitude, creative expression, and honest dialogue all allow the inner architecture of identity to take form. Rather than anchoring the self in labels, affiliations, or trends, this process cultivates coherence - a quiet alignment between one’s thoughts, values, and actions. An identity built this way is not reactive; it is resilient. It does not need to be performed because it is lived.

Education plays a central role in this formation. This is an education that teaches individuals to think, not just to perform. It prioritizes inquiry over instruction, dialogue over dogma, and understanding over memorization. Ethical reasoning is developed by exploring real-world dilemmas, history is taught not as a series of facts but as a living process of human decisions, and literature becomes a way to inhabit other minds - to practice seeing from another’s point of view. It is cognitive and emotional training in complexity, interdependence, and ambiguity. This education is value-based; and in a value-based education model, emotional literacy and pluralistic thinking are treated as core competencies - equipping individuals to understand themselves and others without fear or collapse. By learning to regulate emotion - not delete it, regulate it - and engage with difference, people build the foundations for empathy, critical reasoning, and democratic coexistence.

Who we shall become is not the outcome of authority or tradition alone, but of our capacity to interpret, integrate, and question. In the context of today’s performative culture, this insight is radical. It suggest that true identity cannot be imposed, branded, or inherited - it must be lived into, through critical thinking, emotional depth, and sustained engagement with difference. To become fully human is not a matter of perfection - it is a matter of depth. A strong identity is built through the slow, personal work of aligning who we are with what we value.

Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg called this moral development: a journey from external rules and social approval toward inner principles - dignity, justice, care. At first, we may do what’s right because we’re told to. Later, because it wins us praise. But over time, with reflection and real experience, we begin to act not from fear or reward - but from conscience. That is the beginning of a real self. This kind of moral clarity doesn’t come all at once. It grows in moments of honesty, in choices made quietly, when no one is watching. It grows when we ask not just “What should I do?” - but “What kind of person do I want to be?” We build it by listening deeply, by staying present in discomfort, and by refusing to treat other people as objects. The more we align our actions with these values, the more stable and open our identity becomes. We no longer need certainty to feel safe. We don’t need to perform care -because we’ve built the capacity to give it. And that capacity is empathy, not as performance, but as presence. It is not always easy - but it is deeply human.

There is quiet power in choosing this path. It doesn’t require perfection - only the willingness to grow. In a time of noise and spectacle, it offers something steady: the dignity of inner alignment. Real identity is not about control. It is about coherence. And empathy, when rooted in such a self, becomes more than a fleeting feeling - it becomes the foundation for a more lovable world. A worlds where we see each other as real. A world where care is not a trend, but a practice. Internalized. A world where becoming human is the greatest act of resistance - and the greatest hope we have.

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