I have been enjoying the Twitter as of late and got into a chit chat session. @hager_badger was talking about pop music (adjusted for non-Twitter reading), "I don't care how talented a professional is, if their moral compass doesn't encompass empathy, I won't support them...". We got into a little back and forth about how she views empathy. I did this because I found myself thinking that morality and empathy were essentially the same thing. I posed the question, "Would you agree that the more empathetic a person is, the more moral they are". That's where the wheels came off. What is moral and right
Without too much thought I remembered the character Peter Petrelli from the now defunct t.v. show Heroes. I will use this show, and several of its characters, as a backdrop to analyze this word, Empathy.
Peter Petrelli was an Empath. All he would need to do to acquire another person's ability was to be in their vicinity. Peter struggled learning how to access these individual powers, which lays the foundation of the Season 1 plot. When Peter does figure out how to use his powers on purpose, he simply had to remember how the individuals (from whom he acquired said power) made him feel. Essentially, Peter, the Empath, only had to harmonize with others to acquire, and use, the powers of others.
Another person who could acquire powers was Sylar. The crucial difference is that Sylar is not empathic, his power was knowing how things work. He would have to kill a person, cut their head open and study their brain in order to learn their ability. Sylar did eventually learn how to obtain another person's ability, without killing them, by accessing his empathy. He only acquired a single power in this manner. Sylar could make the choice and be empathetic, but it was not to be.
The individual who taught Sylar to use his empathy was Arthur Petrelli, Peter's Father. The only important characteristic of Arthur, at this point, is that while he could take the power's of others, the power would leave the person. Arthur was an ability thief. His ability to obtain power was from a total lack of empathy.
Now onto the boring dictionary definition of Empathy : the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.
I cannot help but think Empathy means being able to harmonize with another person's experience, to feel it one's self. In this sense, I believe an empathetic person would never knowingly harm another as they empathetic person would directly experience that harm. Along these lines, Peter Petrelli is truly empathic, Sylar is capable of it, but choses not to use it, & Arthur is not.
To be continued...
