There was a time when empathy and compassion were viewed not only as personal virtues, but as cultural imperatives. They were rooted in religious traditions, philosophical ethics, diplomatic behavior, and social contracts. They have influenced humanitarian law, inspired multilateral cooperation, and galvanized struggles for justice and liberation.
Today, empathy and compassion are increasingly seen as weaknesses in a world fascinated by power, interests, showmanship, and tribalism.
Empathy and compassion do not disappear because humanity has suddenly become inherently cruel, but are systematically eroded by political and economic systems, media environments, and ideological systems that reward separation, competition, and fear at the expense of relationships, dignity, and care.
The late bell hooks wrote: Dominance requires emotional detachment. Hannah Arendt warned against “the banality of evil,” not as a brutal sadism, but as the normalization of moral indifference within bureaucratic systems.
Zygmunt Bauman similarly argued that modernity specifically facilitates violence; Because it distances the perpetrators from the humanity of the victims. Today, digital modernity has brought this divergence to a head. We do not experience suffering through relationships, but through screens. Not out of moral obligation, but rather through a passing glance.
The result is not just emotional exhaustion, but a gradual collapse of our collective moral imagination.
The atrocities unfolding in Gaza represent perhaps the clearest contemporary example of this moral erosion. Thousands of civilians have been killed, hospitals destroyed, children buried under rubble, entire neighborhoods wiped out of existence, and yet much of the international community remains paralyzed by selective outrage, geopolitical calculations, or outright dehumanization. The crisis is not just a crisis of international law or a diplomatic failure, but rather a crisis of compassion itself.
Traditions are trying to save the situation
Religious teachings, despite their institutional failures and complicities, have always tried to resist this dehumanization. This was the topic discussed at a two-day conference, organized jointly by the Royal Institute for Interreligious Studies (in Amman, Jordan), headed by Prince Hassan bin Talal, and the Vatican’s Department for Interreligious Dialogue, headed by Cardinal George Jacob Kovacad.
The meeting focused on “human compassion and empathy in the modern era,” and was held on May 12 and 13, bringing together an elite group of Muslim and Christian religious scholars, as well as those working in the field of development and humanitarian work.
We listened to Prince Hassan, along with many of the Muslim religious scholars present, in this expanded meeting held in the Vatican, as they talked about the concept of mercy in Islam.
Some researchers have pointed to the Hebrew word “mercy” in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) – which also carries the same meaning of mercy, compassion, and deep love.
The two words – Arabic and Hebrew – share a single linguistic root derived from the word “rahm” (rahim in Arabic, and “merciful” in Hebrew).
As for me, I spoke about the African philosophy of Ubuntu, which is the core of moral thought in the culture of the Bantu peoples in central and southern Africa, and about indigenous concepts of relationship-based care, which in turn emphasize, in different ways, that human survival depends on interdependence, not domination.
The remarks of Pope Leo
In his speech to the audience, the Pope emphasized what Prince Hassan had previously stated that these values are not just marginal feelings, but rather are “core positions in all our religious teachings, and important aspects of what it means to live a truly human life.”
This framework is gaining importance; It is important because it resists the contemporary tendency to reduce compassion to a mere emotion or personal morality, by restoring compassion to its proper place as a general moral value and a spiritual duty.
Based on Islamic and Christian teachings, the Pope pointed out that mercy stems from God himself. Referring to the concept of compassion in Islam, the audience mentioned that mercy is inseparable from divine mercy, and that it is manifested in one of the most beautiful names of God, the Compassionate. Likewise, he recalled the biblical image of God who says: “I saw the misery of my people… I heard their cry” (Exodus 3:7), emphasizing that divine mercy in Christian theology is embodied through the willingness to “share the suffering” with humanity.
Sharing in suffering
The concept of “sharing in suffering” may be among the most radical and counter-mainstream ideas in contemporary political life.
Our age is based on distancing ourselves from the pain of others – geographically, emotionally, digitally, and politically. Entire technological and political systems are designed to enable viewing without responsibility.
We see the devastation in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Congo, Ukraine, and others in real time, but increasingly without any sustained moral intervention. Mercy threatens to become merely a formal performance rather than transformative.
Pope Leo
His remark echoes Pope Francis’ warning following the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean: “We have become accustomed to the suffering of others.” Perhaps there is no more severe diagnosis for our contemporary civilization than this normalization of emotional dullness.
In fact, one of the most dangerous dangers of the digital age is not a lack of information, but emotional exhaustion. The constant circulation of images of war, displacement, famine, and disaster can dampen moral sensitivity rather than awaken it. Human suffering becomes just a passing event in a never-ending stream of content competing for attention. In such an environment, empathy itself begins to fade.
However, the interventions of Pope Leo
Giving a voice to those who suffer, turning indifference into solidarity. This is not a religious call, but rather a civilizational call.
The importance of this call goes beyond interfaith relations, as it directly addresses the crisis of multilateralism, humanitarian action, and global governance itself.
Institutions cannot survive without moral legitimacy, laws cannot endure without moral foundations, and diplomacy cannot function sustainably without recognition of common human dignity. Therefore, compassion and empathy are not secondary to political life, but rather are prerequisites for any meaningful collective future.
Perhaps most importantly, religious scholars and humanitarians remind us that mercy has social and political implications. This understanding challenges the contemporary tendency to view vulnerability as a personal failure rather than a collective responsibility.
In many respects, empathy has become politically inappropriate because it destabilizes systems of domination. True compassion requires redistribution, accountability, inclusion, and justice. It requires societies not only to acknowledge suffering, but to confront the structures that produce it.
This is why authoritarian and exclusionary policies are often based on dehumanization. Fear can only mobilize the masses when feelings of empathy are greatly weakened.
So, the question facing humanity is not whether mercy matters or not. The evidence of our interconnected crises – climate breakdown, war, displacement, inequality, and the erosion of democracy – shows that human survival itself depends on restoring forms of solidarity capable of transcending nationalism, sectarianism, and ideological fanaticism.
The Persian poet Jalaluddin Rumi once wrote: “Close your eyes to see with the other eye.” What Rumi realized centuries ago is that empathy requires more than mere observation. It requires moral imagination—the ability to recognize oneself in the suffering of another. But modern political systems, increasingly, reward the opposite: emotional isolation.
Martin Luther King Jr. warned that societies that prioritize material things at the expense of people inevitably descend into spiritual death. His criticisms remain troublingly relevant in an era in which financial markets are more urgently protected than human lives.
And yet, despite all signs of moral decline, compassion persists:
- It is a list of doctors who work under the stress of bombing.
- And humanitarian workers crossing front lines.
- And students who protest injustice despite repression.
- and communities hosting refugees.
- and interfaith alliances that combat hatred.
- And the general public who refuse to normalize cruelty.
Compassion endures because it is inherent in humanity. The problem is not that empathy has completely disappeared, but that contemporary systems increasingly punish, marginalize, and exhaust those who consistently practice it.
If humans lose the ability to recognize each other’s suffering as meaningful, and to actively seek solidarity with the oppressed—even if it costs them resources or rewards—no technological advance, military superiority, or economic growth will save us from collective decline. We will have mastered innovation while forgetting our humanity.
The future of our world may depend more on emotional intelligence than on artificial intelligence; On moral interdependence rather than on geopolitical hegemony; And to rediscover the fragile and difficult, but necessary, practice of human compassion rather than relying on nationalist victory.
Empathy and compassion are not signs of weakness in a collapsing world.
As we struggle in an age of uncertainty to know what to do and how, working together out of empathy and compassion may be the last remaining means of reshaping our survival as a species.
The opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera Network.
