By Kaung Kin Ko (translated and adapted into English by Dr Ko Ko Gyi)
Many people believe that unless you have personally experienced suffering, it is difficult to empathize with others. That may be true. However, the opposite assumption—that anyone who has suffered will naturally become empathetic—is not always true.
Millions of Myanmar people, myself included, are immigrants living abroad. Some entered their host countries legally, while others did not. Yet when protests or social unrest erupt in countries such as France, many Myanmar migrants in Thailand can be seen expressing hostility toward immigrants in France.
Back in 2017, during the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, there were even Myanmar migrants living unlawfully in Thailand who openly supported the persecution and expulsion of people they regarded as “illegal entrants” in Myanmar. Of course, this does not apply to everyone, but such attitudes were undeniably present.
Myanmar civilians have themselves suffered airstrikes and military violence. Yet there are many Myanmar citizens and people of Myanmar descent who celebrate or justify the bombing of civilians elsewhere. When a hospital in Gaza is attacked, some react with satisfaction rather than sorrow.
This is not uniquely a Myanmar problem. It is probably a reflection of a broader aspect of human nature: empathy is often in short supply.
In the real world, whether or not you genuinely possess empathy is frequently less important than whether you conform to prevailing social expectations.
When the majority lack empathy, as in the case of the Rohingya crisis, expressing compassion may cause others to treat you as if you are carrying a contagious disease.
Conversely, when empathy becomes socially fashionable, even in a superficial form, failing to display the expected emotions can result in public condemnation. During periods when everyone changes their profile picture to a black square or adopts a symbolic gesture of solidarity, simply appearing cheerful at the “wrong” moment may be enough to earn criticism.
Imagine spending 360 days of the year living quietly and modestly. Yet if you happen to celebrate something on the very day the public has chosen as a day of mourning, social media’s self-appointed judges may attack you relentlessly.
On the other hand, a person who spends the entire year pursuing pleasure and self-interest may still be praised as compassionate simply by joining public displays of grief on a single symbolic day.
This does not mean all expressions of empathy are superficial. Genuine empathy certainly exists. But our society often rewards appearances more than sincerity, and fitting in frequently matters more than authentic moral concern.
Albert Camus explored a similar theme in his novel The Stranger. Its protagonist, Meursault, does not cry at his mother’s funeral. He refuses to display emotions merely because society expects them. Throughout the novel, he resists performing approved social feelings.
Ironically, many readers admire Meursault precisely because he is a fictional character. In real life, if you behaved with the same emotional independence, many of those same admirers would likely be the first to condemn you.
That raises an uncomfortable question:
In order to survive comfortably in society, is genuine empathy most important, or is it the ability to perform the appearance of empathy when circumstances demand it?
Further Context and Analysis
Kaung Kin Ko’s essay touches on an important distinction recognized in psychology and sociology:
1. Empathy Is Not Automatic
Modern psychological research suggests that suffering does not necessarily make people more compassionate. Sometimes it does the opposite.
Individuals who have endured hardship may:
- Become more empathetic because they understand pain.
- Become less empathetic because they believe others should endure hardship just as they did.
- Divide the world into “deserving” and “undeserving” victims.
This phenomenon partly explains why certain immigrants oppose newer immigrants, or why some victims of injustice fail to sympathize with other persecuted groups.
2. The Difference Between Empathy and Social Signaling
The article highlights what social scientists call virtue signaling or social signaling.
This does not mean all public expressions of concern are insincere. Rather, it recognizes that people often display emotions publicly because social approval depends on it.
Genuine empathy asks:
“How are those people suffering?”
Social signaling often asks:
“How will others judge me if I do not appear concerned?”
The two can overlap, but they are not identical.
3. The Rohingya Case as a Test of Empathy
The author’s reference to the Rohingya crisis is significant because it illustrates a situation where empathy carried a social cost.
During periods of intense nationalism, those expressing concern for Rohingya civilians often faced accusations of betrayal or disloyalty. Such situations reveal whether empathy arises from personal conviction or merely from following majority opinion.
4. Camus and the Problem of Authenticity
Albert Camus’ The Stranger is not simply about a man without emotions. It is about a society that punishes people who refuse to display expected emotions.
Meursault’s greatest “crime” is arguably not the act he commits, but his refusal to perform grief, remorse, and conventional social rituals.
Camus challenges readers to ask:
Do we value truthfulness more than conformity?
Many people admire honesty in theory, yet demand conformity in practice.
5. The Central Paradox
The essay ultimately points to a paradox:
Society praises empathy, but often rewards conformity.
People may condemn cruelty, yet frequently direct hostility toward those who fail to express approved emotions in approved ways.
Thus, true empathy may require not only compassion for victims, but also the courage to hold compassionate views when they are unpopular.
Concluding Reflection
Kaung Kin Ko’s post is not arguing against empathy. Rather, it challenges readers to distinguish between genuine compassion and performative compassion. It asks whether we care about the suffering of others because we truly understand their humanity, or because social pressure requires us to appear caring.
That question remains relevant far beyond Myanmar, touching every society where public opinion, identity politics, and social media increasingly shape how empathy is expressed, rewarded, and judged.
Empathy is easiest when it costs us nothing. Its true measure appears when compassion requires us to stand apart from the crowd. History rarely remembers those who merely echoed popular sentiment; it remembers those who recognized the humanity of others even when doing so was unpopular, inconvenient, or risky.
This post is valuable because it explores a difficult truth that many people prefer not to discuss openly: empathy and personal suffering do not automatically go together, and societies often reward the appearance of compassion more than compassion itself.
U Nu’s Burmese translation of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (မိတ္တဗလဋီကာ) also connects interestingly to this theme. Carnegie emphasized understanding other people’s perspectives and emotions as a practical skill, while Kaung Kin Ko’s essay raises a deeper question: Do people genuinely understand others, or do they merely perform understanding when it is socially advantageous?
One of the strongest lines in the article, in my view, is the implied distinction between:
“Feeling for others because they are suffering”
and
“Displaying feelings because society expects you to display them.”
Those are not always the same thing.
Historically, many humanitarian crises have demonstrated this contradiction. During different periods, majorities have opposed empathy toward unpopular groups, only for later generations to view such indifference as a moral failure. This has occurred in situations involving refugees, ethnic minorities, war victims, and displaced populations across the world.
The Camus reference is also particularly insightful. In The Stranger, Meursault’s refusal to perform socially expected emotions disturbs society more than many objectively harmful acts committed by others. Camus was highlighting how societies often judge people not only by what they do, but by how convincingly they display approved emotions.
Kaung Kin Ko
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ကိုယ်တိုင် မခံစားဖူးရင် ကိုယ်ချင်းစာတတ်ဖို့ ခက်တယ် ဆိုတာကတော့ မှန်ချင်မှန်မယ်။ ကိုယ်တိုင် ခံစားဖူးရင် ကိုယ်ချင်းစာတတ်လိမ့်မယ် ဆိုတာကတော့ အမြဲမမှန်ဘူး။
ကိုယ်အပါအဝင် သန်းပေါင်းများစွာသော မြန်မာနိုင်ငံကလူတွေ နိုင်ငံတကာမှာ immigrant ဖြစ်နေကြတယ်။ ခိုးဝင်ရသူတွေရော၊ မခိုးဘဲဝင်လို့ ရသူတွေရော ရှိမယ်။ ဒါပေမယ့် ပြင်သစ်မှာ ဆန္ဒပြပွဲတွေ ဖြစ်တော့ ပြင်သစ်က immigrant တွေကို လှမ်းမုန်းတီးနေတဲ့ ထိုင်းက မြန်မာ immigrant တွေလည်း အများကြီး။ ၂၀၁၇ လောက်တုန်းက မြန်မာမှာ ဒေသတခုမှာ ရောက်နေတဲ့ လူတွေကို ခိုးဝင်ဆိုပြီး သတ်ဖြတ်စေချင်ကြသူတွေထဲမှာ ထိုင်းမှာ ခိုးဝင်နေရတဲ့ မြန်မာတွေလည်း ပါတာပဲ။ (အကုန်လုံးကို မဆိုလို)။ မြန်မာမှာ အရပ်သားတွေ ဗုံးကြဲခံရတယ်။ ဒါပေမယ့် ဂါဇာက ဆေးရုံတရုံကို နေတန်ယာဟုက ဗုံးကြဲရင် ပျော်ကြတဲ့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသားတွေ မြန်မာအနွယ်ဝင်တွေ အများကြီး။ ဒါက မြန်မာတွေချည်း ကွက်ဖြစ်တာလို့တော့ မဆိုလိုချင်။ လူ့သဘာဝ ကိုက ကိုယ်ချင်းစာတရား ခေါင်းပါးတာ ဖြစ်မယ်။
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ခင်ဗျား တနှစ်မှာ ရက် ၃၆၀ လောက် အပျော်အပါး မလိုက်စားဘဲ တိတ်ဆိတ်နေပြီးမှ ….. blamer လူအုပ်ကြီးက target ထားတဲ့ ရက်မျိုးကျမှ တည့်တည့် သွားပျော်မိရင် ခင်ဗျားကို ဆဲကြမှာပဲ။ တနှစ်လုံး အမြဲတမ်း အပျော်အပါးလိုက်ပေမယ့် အများဝမ်းနည်းပြကြတဲ့ တရက်မှာ ခင်ဗျား လိုက်ဝမ်းနည်းပြနိုင်ရင်တော့ ခင်ဗျား ကိုယ်ချင်းစာတတ်သူ စာရင်းဝင်ပြီ။
ကိုယ်ချင်းစာတတ်မှုတိုင်းက အပေါ်ယံတွေ မဟုတ်ပေမယ့် လောကကြီးမှာ အပေါ်ယံတွေများပြီး ဘောင်ဝင်ဖို့က ပိုအရေးကြီးသလို ဖြစ်နေတယ်။
Albert Camus ရဲ့ The Stranger ဝတ္ထုထဲမှာ ဇာတ်ကောင် Meursault က သူ့အမေ သေတာကိုတောင် မငိုဘူး။ ဘယ်တော့မှ လူ့လောကအကြိုက် ခံစားချက်မျိုးကို မပြဘူး။ ဒါပေမဲ့ သူ့ကို စာဖတ်သူ အများစုက သဘောကျကြတယ်။ ဘာလို့လဲဆိုတော့ သူက အပြင်က တကယ့်လူ မဟုတ်ဘဲ ဝတ္ထုဇာတ်ကောင် ဖြစ်နေလို့။ အပြင်မှာ အဲလို ကိုယ့်စိတ်နဲ့ကိုယ် နေကြည့်ပါလား။ Meursault ကို သိပ်သဘောကျလှပါတယ် ဆိုတဲ့ စာဖတ်သယောင်ယောင် လူတွေကပဲ ခင်ဗျားကို အရင်ဆုံး ရှုတ်ချကြမှာ။ ဒီတော့ လောကကြီးမှာ အဆင်ပြေဖို့ ခင်ဗျားအတွက် အရေးကြီးတဲ့ criteria က ခင်ဗျား ဟန်ဆောင်တတ်သလား?
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