Empathy

In preparation for writing this post I was discussing empathy with my boyfriend.  A little bit of context here, I am dating a 24- year-old college graduate who for some odd reason I asked to define empathy.
Now according to Merriam-Webster Online empathy is : "the feeling that you understand and share another person's experiences and emotions : the ability to share someone else's feelings. " 
My boyfriend on the other hand thinks that empathy is (and I quote) "I don't know, feeling sorry for other people and shit?"  I know for a fact that there are no words to express my facial expression when I heard those words.  How could someone so intelligent, so well raised, be so ignorant?  Unfortunately, that was not the first time I had heard such a line and I'm sure it will not be the last.  For some odd reason, we have a rough time understanding and implementing empathy today.  

Empathy is something I have struggled with all my life but usually for the opposite reason that most people do.  In every Social Justice or Human Relations class I have ever taken I have listened to my classmates clash with the concept of empathy and not just as a scholastic theory but as something that should be socially applied.
This is hard for me to accept because it comes more readily to me than just about anything else.  I feel empathy like an emotion; instead of having to imagine what someone else must be going through I feel it with the same part of my body that experiences my own pain and joy.  Sometimes those feelings are so strong that I am convinced that there must be a few crossed wires up in my hypothalamus because it doesn't seem normal to feel something like empathy so readily and with such conviction.   
One of the only ways in which it has always made sense to me is from an evolutionary standpoint.  Like many apex predators we are pack (or tribe) animals and the survival of the pack depends on the survival of each individual.  Individuals cannot survive by themselves hence we are incredibly social creatures.  Humans have created so many complex systems by which to communicate with each other over time and distance largely for this very reason.  We use our cell phones, social media, we can write letters or send emails all in order to maintain contact with our pack. If a member of ones family or social life is having some sort of problem be it medical or social our instincts pick up on those things regardless of if the communication takes place in person or over the phone.  Empathy comes into play when it is our turn to support, nurture, and live with one another.  Jane Goodall noticed this quality in the chimpanzee's that she studies at the Gombe stream Reserve in Tanzania.   Some of Goodall's first observations about the chimps was in the way that they interacted with each other.  Goodall noted that they had friends and they would note each others absence, even that they would rush to greet a chimp whom had been away.  She noted that they fed each other and that within the hierarchy of their society even the littlest chimps were fed and groomed which they use as an emotional bonding mechanism.  As Goodall notes, I think that we are much more like chimpanzees than we would ever like to admit and just as empathy is a vital part of their society, so must it be a vital part of ours.



Citations:
Empathy. (n.d.). Retrieved February 9, 2015, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy

Goodall, J., & Peterson, D. (2000). Africa in my blood: An autobiography in letters : The early years. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.