Are you born with it?

Webster dictionary defines empathy as:

1 : the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it

2 : 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.

 

How can we deal with those born without empathy?  I ask myself this because I know of a person just like this. Even though I am in my early 30's, I don't think I have ever come across such a person.  We will call him Mr. Tiger.  I have heard that perhaps it is a recessive gene, a sleeper gene, that surprises us with it's viciousness. It rears its ugly head by showing no compassion, no guilt, no love.  I have read that only about 4% may be responsible for having no empathy.  Do you know what I am talking about? A class of people we normally think of as criminals is actually quite normal in most respects. They are secretly hidden among us.  Someone without a conscience, without a vital part of what we think of as human.  So again, I question.  Do we learn empathy from our parents, our friends, society?  

 

Perhaps people without empathy can pass as "normal."  Most are seemingly intelligent.  However, to an outsider they should be able to access the emotion.  But, perhaps their processing difficulties and poor communication skills, impedes them to know in the same way what other people with empathy have.   Maybe they are overwhelmed by outside stimuli, they cannot focus on others because they are only focused on themselves.

So I have also learned that people without empathy are characteristically sociopaths.  They are regarded by their lack of emotions.  They are  motivated by other emotions such as fear, envy, anger, sloth, the desire to win. Really, sociopaths feel the same things as the rest of us with the one exception. They cannot love. Sociopathy is characterized by the absence of conscience. They don’t feel guilty about hurting others because they can't empathize.  They can not relate to another in pain. 

 

It's almost unimaginable to me.  I think I am can empathize with people because I don't even think about it.  Perhaps it makes me a good person, or maybe it makes me soft.  Unable to just use people and discard them.  I wanted to be the person who doesn't care.  I do.  I used to want to be that person.  The one that never hurts never feels for someone else.  The person that skips through life.  The conclusion is I know that I know how to care for others.  I am pretty sure the person with no empathy might end up alone.