I was recently asked what my thoughts on “suicidal empathy” were.
It’s a jarring phrase — two words that should never belong together. Yet they do. Because empathy, when left without boundaries, can become self-destructive. It can turn from virtue to vice — from healing to harm.
We’re taught that empathy is always good, that to understand someone is to move closer to peace. But what happens when empathy forgets its purpose — when it defends cruelty, excuses failure, or silences anger? That’s when empathy begins to turn its blade inward.
The Line
Every civilisation has its moral measure. As Gandhi said, “The true measure of any society is how it treats its most vulnerable members.”
But vulnerability isn’t only found in the powerless. It’s in the communities betrayed by failed systems, in victims whose pain becomes politically inconvenient and in citizens punished for outrage while officials speak of tolerance.
Empathy should protect the broken, not embolden the brutal.
When violent offenders are mistakenly freed, or when victims’ voices are overshadowed by moral grandstanding, we are not witnessing compassion — we are witnessing collapse. Bureaucratic empathy — the kind that prioritises procedure or optics over protection — isn’t empathy at all. It is negligence dressed in virtue.
The Collapse
Suicidal empathy is what happens when compassion forgets consequence.
It’s the moral equivalent of open borders — not in politics, but in psychology. Every feeling is let in, no scrutiny, no customs, no defence. A nation — or a person — that cannot decide who or what deserves its compassion eventually loses the ability to protect itself.
That’s how a society built on care ends up ashamed of its own instinct for justice. How people start confusing empathy with approval.
Empathy without discernment isn’t noble. It’s naïve.
The Rebuild
The answer isn’t less empathy — it’s better empathy. Bounded, conscious, discerning empathy that knows where it stands.
The kind that says: I can recognise when someone acts from ignorance of our customs or our laws, yet understanding motive is not the same as absolving harm. I will understand your pain, but I will not excuse your cruelty.
True empathy isn’t about choosing sides; it’s about choosing standards. Compassion should never demand we abandon our moral spine.
When empathy and justice walk together, humanity thrives. When they walk apart, one becomes tyranny and the other tragedy.
When empathy begins to police expression itself, it has left the realm of virtue and entered the realm of control. In recent years, thousands of people in the UK have faced investigation or arrest for online comments deemed offensive. Some of those comments were clumsy, some cruel, but many were simply emotional reactions to injustice — empathy in its rawest, angriest form. A society that punishes compassion while excusing the initial cruelty has mistaken civility for morality.
The Loop
Empathy is the soul’s architecture. But even architecture needs load-bearing walls.
Without them, the whole structure collapses — under the weight of its own goodness.