Empathy in Conflict

Steven Vasquez

I was in my business statistics class when I first heard the news of Charlie Kirk’s death. Everyone was focused on the lecture, typing out notes. The only sounds came from the occasional squeaks of chairs shifting against the floor. I was half-engaged, swiping through my phone and scrolling on TikTok, when I came across a video about it. The video was instant and shocking. It showed him getting shot and chaos unfolding. People screaming and running away for safety. I was very skeptical when I first saw it. I questioned if the video was AI-generated. After checking with several news sources, I realized it was real. He had really died. That was when I started to question myself.

Charlie Kirk was a man whose ideals and rhetoric I could never agree with, but I still felt empathy for his family. This placed me in an awkward spot. I remembered seeing clips of him mocking social justice movements, and making unjust statements, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified,” and “I can’t stand the word empathy.” The irony struck me hard. My reaction was torn sympathy for his family and resistance toward him as a person.

It wasn’t until I connected this experience with Jamil Zaki’s concept of parochial empathy that I began to understand what was happening within me. In The War for Kindness, Zaki explains that parochial empathy occurs when people feel a strong empathic connection with members of their "in group” people who look, believe, or value similarly to themselves but are unable or unwilling to show the same sympathy to outsiders. “People who feel threatened by outsiders often grow aggressive and reactionary.” (Pg 49). This left me uneasy because it accurately described me. I had automatically divided the situation into two groups, Kirk’s children belonged in my world of empathy, but Kirk did not. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how powerful and destructive parochial empathy can be. It not only restricts compassion, but it also draws the lines between “us” and “them.” According to Zaki, "Ignoring outsiders’ emotions makes it easier to oppress them during conflicts"(Pg 50). Individuals usually experience more empathy for those on their own side, and it becomes easier for them to justify hostility toward the opposing side. That was true for me. In today’s political world, I had trained myself to be compassionate toward people whose views aligned with mine and to withhold compassion from people whose views clashed with mine. In doing this, I had unknowingly developed a habit of selective caring. It made me realize that empathy is fragile it can be shaped by our biases without us even realizing it.

For several days after Kirk’s death, I noticed how this division played out in my head. Every time I saw his face on the news, I felt a surge of resistance, as though feeling sympathy for him would be disloyal to my own beliefs. But when I saw photos of his family, particularly his children, my defenses lowered. I empathized with them, how confused they must feel to lose a father so suddenly, the loneliness that would greet them in the years ahead. This inconsistency made me realize my empathy wasn’t absent, it was conditional. It depended on whether or not I considered someone “inside” or “outside” my moral circle.

Before this class, I would never have been able to name this tension. I had always assumed empathy was an instinct, something you either had or didn’t. To me, empathy was spontaneous and effortless when directed at people I liked or understood. If I didn’t feel it for someone, I assumed it was because they didn’t deserve it. Zaki’s concept of parochial empathy pushed me out of that perception. He showed me that empathy is not about who deserves it, but about whom we choose to include in our circle of concern. If we make that circle too small, our empathy turns into a force for division rather than connection.

The thing I was most surprised by is how difficult empathy was to achieve. It was not an impulsive emotional response that came easily. It was something that I had to repeatedly decide to do. Do I remain on the borders of my “in group” or do I go out of my way to reach beyond it? For me, it was not a matter of excusing Kirk's rhetoric or forgetting his impressionable words. It was a matter of separating his political identity from his human identity and noticing the pain of his family.

The longer I thought, the more I realized how common parochial empathy is in everyday life. It happens when we sympathize only with tragic victims who resemble ourselves, or when we justify the suffering of political adversaries by saying, “They had it coming.” It even happens at smaller levels, like in schools and neighborhood, when we sympathize with members of our social group but ignore or stigmatize outsiders. We see it in online spaces too, where people attack those who think differently, often forgetting that there are real people behind the screens.

My response to Kirk’s death was just one example of a common human tendency that Zaki warns against. By facing my own parochial empathy, I found myself thinking about empathy differently. I had previously thought of it as an automatic reflex tied to closeness. Now, I see it as a practice that requires struggle against the comfortable boundaries of in group and out group. Empathy has to extend outward if it’s going to matter.

My understanding of empathy expanded. I still do not approve of Kirk’s words or his politics, but I no longer see that as a reason to deny his humanity or the grief of his family. The very discomfort I felt in extending empathy proved that I was growing. It showed that I was pushing beyond the limits of parochial empathy and trying to see beyond my own horizon. That is not easy, but as Zaki argues, it is necessary in a fractured world.

© 2026. This work is openly licensed via Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)