Throughout the SPEAK OUT project, hundreds of young people across Europe came together to discuss democratic participation, misinformation, stereotypes, and the barriers that prevent people from making their voices heard. While the conversations touched on different national realities, a common question kept emerging: what gives people the courage to speak out when it matters?
Reflecting on these discussions, one idea stood out. In public debate, empathy is often dismissed as a weakness—something that makes people too emotional or too vulnerable. Yet the experiences shared during the project suggested the opposite. Listening to others, understanding different perspectives, and caring about the consequences of our actions are often what motivate people to challenge injustice rather than remain sile
Inspired by conversations with young people across Europe throughout the SPEAK OUT project, the author developed this opinion piece to share a personal reflection on empathy, conformity, and the courage to speak out. It argues that empathy should be understood not as the opposite of strength, but as one of its greatest expressions.
In recent years, empathy has increasingly been portrayed in parts of the public debate as a weakness rather than a strength. A year ago, the world's wealthiest man even described it as "the fundamental weakness of Western civilisation." Somewhere along the way, the very thing that gave us tribes, communities, healthcare, human rights, and global cooperation got rebranded as a liability.
In reality, humans evolved for empathy because it was useful. That's why we have mirror neurons and brain regions that respond to others' emotions. When those systems don't work, psychology classifies that as a disorder. Psychopathy. Sociopathy. Names we usually reserve for individuals. But what do we call it when those conditions take hold of a whole society? Because empathy isn't a fact about us. It's a value to live up to.
The Western civilisation in question once gave us gladiator fights, public stonings, witch hunts, the Inquisition, slavery, world wars, and concentration camps. In a world like that, showing empathy counts as a rebellious act - especially because it is so often mistaken for weakness. Much like kindness is.
Two faces of empathy
The most common argument against empathy is that “feeling for others” leaves us vulnerable to manipulation. As the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom notes in his book Against Empathy, empathy is easily exploited by anyone who knows how to tell a story. He would be right if empathy were just a feeling. But it isn't. It's also a choice. And it’s not just a trait, it’s a skill.
In fact, there are two types of empathy: emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. Emotional empathy makes us feel what others feel, while cognitive empathy helps us understand why they feel the way they do.
Bloom is right that emotional responses can lead to poor decisions. But he fails to acknowledge that empathetic responses aren't always emotional, and unempathetic ones aren't, in turn, rational. Anger, hate, and fear are emotions too — and most of the time, they come from a failure to understand “the other.” Resolving conflict requires both sides to be understood. That’s why we need to step away from our own feelings and understand others’ perspectives. This is why empathy has always been understood as strength by people whose lives depended on getting it right: generals, negotiators, diplomats, intelligence officers.
“Know your enemy,” Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War over two thousand years ago. Not their troop numbers - their psychology, their fears, what they believe they're fighting for. That's what Abraham Lincoln thought when he built a now-famous "team of rivals" in his own cabinet. That's what Nelson Mandela did when he learned Afrikaans and studied Afrikaner history to understand the people who had imprisoned him. That's also how John F. Kennedy stopped the Cuban Missile Crisis from turning into a nuclear war - by stopping to ask what Khrushchev needed in order to back down without humiliation.
This is the pattern: an empathy deficit at the top creates a knowledge deficit, which creates bad decisions. Leaders who can't model how others actually think, including their opponents, end up governing in a reality that doesn’t exist.
Studies confirm what these examples suggest: empathetic leaders are more effective. So are empathetic teachers, doctors, employers, parents. Yes, highly empathetic people can be manipulated — but only before they learn to use their empathy properly. Which is why it is so important to understand empathy as a skill.
Understanding others' perspectives has always been an advantage. But there is a different weakness hidden in plain sight — and it may just be our biggest one.
Our actual biggest weakness
We all like to think we'd be the one who stands up when it counts. Someone who knows how to say no. We all like to think we'd be the one to say the emperor has no clothes. But statistically, we're far more likely to be part of the crowd. History, and science, prove it.
In the Milgram experiment, ordinary people delivered what they believed were dangerous electric shocks to strangers because a man in a lab coat told them to. In the Asch experiment, people gave obviously wrong answers because the group did. In the Robbers Cave experiment, two groups of boys turned on each other simply because they'd been labelled differently. And in Marina Abramović's Rhythm 0, audience members violated a woman in public the moment they were given permission.
These studies are reminders that most people cave to authority. Most people follow the crowd. Most people abandon their own values just to fit in. And most people, given the right pressure, will hurt someone else to stay in line. And sometimes no one even has to be watching. We police ourselves.
There's a concept called the panopticon — a prison designed so inmates can never tell when they're being observed from the central tower, so they act as if they always are. In an age of surveillance, most of us carry an inner panopticon wherever we go. That is why we don't wear what we want, post what we want, say what we mean, or go after what we want. We need to recognise this tendency — in the small, everyday ways — because one day it might matter in a big way.
The hard truth is that most people you know, when the moment comes, will follow the crowd, obey authority, and — without quite realising it — do things they never thought themselves capable of.
This is what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. Observing the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who organised the logistics of the Holocaust, she concluded that ordinary people will commit atrocities when they're part of a system that dehumanises others and normalises violence. Eichmann himself was ordinary - just a bureaucrat following orders, convinced he was doing his job. "The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic. They were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal,” Arendt wrote. Evil doesn't always come from passion or hatred. Often it comes from thoughtlessness and obedience. This is our actual biggest weakness. Conformity.
Some of the worst outcomes in human history - groupthink, dehumanisation, moral silence - come not from a lack of empathy, but from an excess of conformity. It’s why authority figures can reasonably expect us to abandon our empathy when it matters most. It's how regimes turn us against entire groups of people. It's how those in power divide and conquer.
Many of the discussions held during the SPEAK OUT project echoed these ideas in a contemporary context. Participants reflected on how misinformation, online hostility, and social pressure often discourage people from expressing opinions that differ from the majority. Speaking out, they noted, is rarely about having the loudest voice—it is about having the confidence to remain true to one's values even when conformity feels easier.
The way out
In order to defeat this, we need to practice empathy in our everyday lives. We need to make our own empathy stronger than fear. Stronger even than conformity.
How do we do that? We think for ourselves. We practice not conforming in small, everyday ways. We step up when it matters. We participate in real community life. We engage with the real world. We read. What we need is moral bravery, which comes from empathy.
Empathy is what tells us when it's time to speak out. It signals to us what matters enough to break the silence for - to make every voice heard. Empathy, in other words, is one of our greatest strengths.
So much so that we've been systematically taught to see it as soft, uncool, naive — when it's the one thing capable of standing up to the division and hate that has shaped so much of human history.
Projects such as SPEAK OUT remind us that empathy is not simply an individual virtue but a democratic one. By creating spaces for dialogue, encouraging young people to listen to different perspectives, question stereotypes, and engage with their communities, they help build the confidence needed to speak out against injustice, misinformation, and exclusion.
If there is one lesson that emerged from these conversations, it is that empathy is not the opposite of courage—it is often what makes courage possible. It is what encourages us to defend others, question harmful narratives, and refuse to remain silent when our values are at stake.
