After thoroughly reading the piece “ Empathy is Overrated” by Paul Bloom I am left with mixed emotions too what he provides in his essay. My initial response to his essay was that Bloom used very vulgar and aggressive examples for when he provided explanations for his claims. There’s a benefit and downfall to this tho, it could offend some readers but it also helps get the point across to the reader and allows the claim to stick out in the reading. An example of the hard edged explanations given by Bloom was “The murders of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012” (Bloom). Or even the topic he brings up such as “Intellectually, a white American might believe that a black person matters just as much as a white person, but he or she will typically find it a lot easier to empathize with the plight of the latter than the former” (Bloom).
This essay was about how empathy played into daily life, and how it could change who we are and our views. The essay goes into how empathy is narrow, biased and insensitive, leaving the reader with a strong initial response. Bloom stated that “…empathy spotlights have a narrow focus…spotlights only illuminate what they are pointed at, so empathy reflects our biases… is limited as well in that it focuses on specific individuals” (Bloom). In my opinion, like I said I believe that the author’s main three claims about empathy was that it is narrow, biased, and insensitive. This essay interacts with the other essay we read “ This is Water” because they both have a darker side of writing and thinking so they might have different ideas but they have similar writing styles.
