Kindness Is Not Empathy | Simon Sinek

You know what's really fascinating to me is empathy requires you to feel what somebody else is feeling. Kindness requires you to do something about it. You do not need empathy to be kind. That's something that I find interesting. You can be kind without feeling. And some people be like, no, you can't. You know, you can. You can literally not feel. You may not feel what the other person's feeling, but you go, you know what? I. I think they deserve justice. I think they need help. I can't feel what they're going through. But the opposite isn't. You can have empathy and no kindness. And that's something that stuck with me as I was thinking about it. In fact, when we're talking now about Ukraine, Russia, the world, everything we're going through, one of the biggest things I've noticed is populists are brilliant at weaponizing empathy. Do you know what I mean? Wherever you go in the world, populists are brilliant at feeling what people are feeling. Criticize Donald Trump all you want. That man feels what many Americans feel. He knows how to feel it for them. How he acts doesn't necessarily address what they're feeling, but, boy, does he feel it. Viktor Orban, you go wherever you want in the world. These people are good at weaponizing the empathy because they go, I do feel what you're feeling. And so I'm gonna act on it in a way that may not address what you mean.

So I have a question. I have a question, and I like breaking these things, too, down. So if somebody can express empathy, do people just give them credit, that things they do are kind because they feel the empathy?

Yes. So here's the best analogy I can think of. If you've ever been to a hospital and you've ever had to be helped by people in the medical industry, nurses in particular, I find this with a lot of nurses are not nice. They really aren't. But they're kind. And what I mean by that is they do what they need to do to help you, and they really do it. And I've seldom met a nurse who doesn't go above and beyond to help you get to where you need to get to, helping the doctor address your needs, helping the hospital move. They're often overworked, but they're very seldom nice. Do you know what I mean? But they're very kind. And I always think to myself, what would it be like if they were the opposite? What would be if they specialized in empathy but not being kind? They would come in and they'd be like, oh, it must feel so bad. Oh, I can only imagine what it feels like. You are describing your heart having this attack. Oh, oh, I know how you must.

Feel right now, describing an AI friend.

That's exactly what it is.

You're describing an AI friend.

And can I tell.

Very nice. Not kind of.

That's exactly what I think of when people will tell me. You know, when people are like, the AI thinks, the AI feels it can connect with you. It can sh. No, no, no, no, no, no. It can pretend to connect. It can pretend. It can perform these acts of empathy because it can write them the way we perceive them, but it cannot do. And the doing fundamentally becomes the thing that separates us.

You know, the annoying thing about kindness, The annoying thing about kindness is very often for the person being kind, for them, it's easy or obvious. Like they're driven by cause or faith or purpose, or they have a talent. They're just good at checking in on someone or they lean into it when somebody's struggling. That general who said, go on, I don't think he perceived that as an act of courage. It's just something you do. And I think, again, that goes back to where I started, which is acknowledging kindness and saying thank you or receiving the gift when it is given is an incentive for them to keep doing it. Because I think very often they don't realize how kind they're being when they're being kind.

Yes.

Which plays to a lot of what we've heard while we're here, going right back to the beginning to Arthur Brooks, which is having that sense of purpose, having that sense of cause or faith, that's number one, is the thing that might help us be more kind, because the actions that we're supposed to take for others then become obvious and easy.