Alright, I guess I can revise my comment to say that I feel like it's kind of fucked that GP's empathy only extends to his self and no further.

Empathy is an often overused word. It is quite likely your empathy only extends to yourself and a few other intimate relationship. Empathy refers to the ability to actually feel another's pain. Very few people can do this for anyone more than their family and close friends.

Most people ought to instead focus on cultivating sympathy, which is the intellectual realization of another's suffering, and turning that sympathy into action.

Empathy is understanding, sympathy is recognition.

If I stub my toe you don't have to feel that pain to empathize it, you have to understand what it feels like to suddenly be in pain. Sympathy in that situation would only require recognizing and pitying someone who is in pain, without necessarily understanding it.

The word empathy was originally understold to mean actually feeling the pain of someone else in pain. Sympathy had the meaning you ascribe to empathy: understanding intellectually that the person in pain is having a tough. That the words take on ever extravagant meanings indicates that theyve become so cliche as to be meaningless.

I'm not talking about an intellectual understanding, I'm talking about emotional understanding. Sympathy is intellectual understanding (i.e., recognition), but is not emotional understanding.

Emotional understanding means feeling the emotions of the other. If you do not feel what the other is feeling yourself, then you simply have an intellectual appreciation, which you agree is sympathy. Don't take my word for it.

Merriam-webster defines empathy(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy):

> the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings,

Notice the 'and vicariously experiencing'. If there is no experience, it is not empathy. Stop using the word to mean something it is simply not.

I have very high levels of empathy for others, but without a viable alternative I am willing to accept the current system. I would be happy to see it improved. The European model for justice doesn’t work either. Crimes are simply not prosecuted.