Empathy definitely exists but not all people have it or it's not as strong for some...one easy way to gauge how strong or desensitized one's empathy is to watch someone stub a toe...and analyzing the corresponding thoughts...and how you feel the action or thought...could you feel your tow hurt thinking about it? Flinch at the thought of it happening? Is it yourself..or someone else in your minds eye the one involved?....many people are emotionally stunted now days experiencing most interactions through a screen creating detachment from reality and having no real understanding or exposure to emotion outside of short bursts...leading to having a mask of false emotions to get through "encounters" with actual people.....it also imprints the priority of learning from a screen over from people creating disassociation and missunderstanding of real live events...you learn and process many subtle cues from live interactions which help with emotional and understanding of any situation subconsciously you can't do that through text or video... creating some serious social and mental health conditions....

nihilism chuds when helping others and reciprocating love is central to the human experience

Google “Spiral Dynamics”. We don’t see the world as it is. Who we are…and what we are capable of…colors how we see the world. When someone says, “Our thoughts create our reality”, this is what they mean. If you see the world mainly through a materialistic lens? Your friend’s description of empathy is “accurate”. Yes it’s pro-social behavior. So you get the support of your group, your children and family are more likely to survive. You get a survival benefit from it. But what about showing empathy to strangers. Today I watched a video of a guy who encounters a stroller with a baby. Mother had absentmindedly wandered off and left the child on the subway platform. The guy can’t find the mother. So he protects the child. Soothes it. Ellicits other adults to help…until mom comes running back in a panic. Grateful to find her child safe. What is the personal benefit of that kind of empathy and altruism? It wasn’t his child. It wasn’t the child of anyone he knew. In fact he arguably put himself at risk to aid the child, as mom could have accused him of trying to harm the child. As we mature emotionally and spiritually we see the world less in terms of competition, self-interest and transactional. We do things because we see ourselves in others. We are empathetic because we would want to be treated the same way. The result is we build bigger and bigger communities. “There was a monk one day trying to cross a river that had flooded its banks. He sees a scorpion slowly drowning in a puddle of water. He bends over to help it out of the water, all the while dodging stings from the scorpion. “Once it was safely out of the water, the scorpion looks at the monk and asks, ‘Why didn’t you let me drown. You knew I would try to sting you if tried to help. I couldn’t stop myself. It is my nature.’ “The monk replied, ‘I stopped to help you because that is MY nature.” Empathy is our nature as humans once we stop seeing the world through the eyes of fear.

If you're a selfish -blam!- then yeah maybe that's how'd you view it.

Empathy if definitely a thing. I would as far as to say it’s a necessary human emotion. If someone mentally can’t understand empathy or lacks it in their nature they probably have a screw loose

Empathy is a thing. Like lets say some one dies instead of having sympathy and saying "I'm sorry for your loss" Empath is when you sit down with that person and say "I understand your pain and I'm sorry for your loss" empathy is being able to understand and share pain

https://youtu.be/mAisSftGvoI

Yes, empathy is a real thing. Even if the endgoal of empathy is making people like you, that doesn’t undermine the fact that it exists. But, also, that’s not the endgoal of empathy either. What it sounds like your friend actually meamt is selflessness isn’t a thing. That everything we do always has some sort of personal gain. And that is a lot more of a grey area. I would still say it’s wrong, but you can actually make a good argument that selflessness doesn’t truly exist. Back to empathy, though, empathy is a feeling. Does something good happening to someone make you happy? Does seeing someone be sad make you sad? Do you get angry when someone hurts a loved one? All of those things are empathy. It doesn’t matter whether these feelings are selfless or selfish, they exist either way, and as long as these feelings exist, empathy is indeed a thing.

I have no empathy… sadly, I think [spoiler]just kidding, i always have empathy at funerals, even if I don’t know the person that died[/spoiler]

I’m the kind of person that can’t help but cry when I see someone I care about crying, which is empathy. That response is something I have little to no control over, it’s a natural empathetic response. Most people have similar responses built into their brains; being affected when people you love are affected. People who have none of that at all should maybe probably talk to a psychiatrist. I can’t imagine thinking of empathy that way. It’s not always a voluntary thing. Sometimes I have to try to be empathetic, and thats ok bc I’m human, but I can’t say I remember ever thinking about having empathy only to make someone like me

Empathy is being able to feel what someone else is feeling and being their to actually help. Sympathy is being apologetic but not necessarily caring on a personal level. Narcissism is pretending to empathize while also trying to manipulate someone in a rather callous and selfish manner if it benefits only you in the long run...

Yeah I would argue that it's real. To some extent taught but with an innate component that transforms the experience into an emotional sensation. I mean, isnt that pretty much how we differentiate a "normal person" from a narcissist or psychopath. The latter typically have the learned component of empathy - whch they take full advantage of - but lack the innate one - resulting in that they don't actually stop themselves or give a crap when it's more personally beneficial to not act in accordance with the norms.

Your friend is wrong. Empathy means that you understand how the other person feels and are sympathetic to those feelings.