INTRODUCTION:

Empathy is defined as: *noun

the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.*

Take the verbs from the definition you'll find that empathy is the sum of two actions: understanding and sharing. You can't influence others without the former, the latter can be dispensed with.

THE DUALITY OF EMPATHY:

To clarify this duality these elements could be renamed logical, cold or rationale empathy (i.e. understanding). This being juxtaposed by emotional, warm or irrational empathy (i.e. sharing). An example of the harmony of these in action would be watching a horror movie. The monster appears and the protagonist freezes and hides. Logically you understand why they are afraid, you can predict they will freeze up and that'll get them eaten that is cold empathy. Warm empathy is the feeling in your stomach as the monster comes near, you're sharing the emotions of the protagonist, this is irrational because you know you're not in danger and the movie isn't real.

INNER-GAME IS ABOUT LEARNING TO SHUT OFF WARM EMPATHY:

The premise of developing inner-game being that strengthening your internal workings will externalise as more attractive behaviour. To avoid emotional liability (i.e. anger, sadness, over enthusiasm) and its effects on decision making: the goal is to develop a stable self-image maintained exclusively from within.

To increase self-esteem and self-worth people are told to start a hobby, get that promotion or get into shape etc. Essentially basing self-worth on things within ones control. So when someone says they hate you, those feelings directed at you are not shared or internalised. Reliance on external validation is also discouraged, the praise of others is too unreliable to build anything on. If you work out do it for yourself not with the expectation of praise.

With practice and time the negative feelings of others won't affect you. You won't need praise or admiration to feel accomplished, you already do. Others can love you but you always remember to love yourself. The feelings of others don't alter your perception of your own value or place in the universe - their feelings cease to bear any emotional weight for you - without any weight their feelings are unable to impart any changes to your emotions. You no longer share the feelings of others.

GAME IS ABOUT DEVELOPING COLD EMPATHY TO REPLACE WARM EMPATHY:

Warm empathy is sharing the feelings of others and often those feelings are not about you. Elimination of warm empathy creates problems as the emotional "sixth sense" is lost with it.

Fear is often described as infectious as the panic of one person spreads to others. What about someone who doesn't share the feelings of others, someone confident and self-assured not prone to panic? If sharing the feeling of fear produces an instinctive response to run or hide, then those without warm empathy are dead. On the other hand just because you are feeling panic that doesn't mean that others will pickup on it. This is where development of cold empathy becomes important. Warm empathy is a primal if unreliable means of affecting and responding to the behaviour of others, when it stops functioning it has to be compensated for.

Cold empathy is the understanding form of empathy, this is what we use to work out what someones reaction to an event will be. Or why one person reacts to an event one way while someone else is totally unaffected. When learning pickup people often look to identify indicators or signs of a womans interest in him. This is an example of cold empathy, it is matching events to emotions and matching those emotions to behaviours. For example: I buy her flowers, she seems to be happy, she smiles and has a twinkle in her eye. I understand that flowers make her feel happy, when she has a twinkle in her eye she is extra happy. While none of that example involves feeling happy because she is happy (i.e. sharing her feelings), it does focus on an understanding of her feelings.

An example of where cold empathy clearly outperforms warm empathy could be the death of a friends old dog: you may be devestated and "share" your friends sadness (i.e. warm empathy). Whilst your friend may be glad the dog is dead because it was old and suffering, plus it always shit on their bed. So a little upset maybe, devestared not so much. In this case your emotional reaction to an event is not reflective of the other persons. Whereas if you felt nothing and looked for language or body language plus knowing the history (i.e. cold empathy) you may predict your friend wouldn't care that much.

With practice cold empathy is more reliable than warm empathy because 1) it is independent of your own emotions 2) recognition of cause and effect, and the signs of emotions are better predictors of another persons emotions than using your feelings as a gauge for their feelings

COLD EMPATHY IS PROACTIVE WHILE WARM EMPATHY IS REACTIVE:

Cold empathy is logical and as a result it allows for a prediction of reactions. You could for example be talking to a woman and notice she frowns a little when you mention siblings, so you drop the subject and dont talk about family. She smiles when jazz music comes on so instead you ask about that. Or, while talking to your friend you know they had a car crash last week which their grandma died in, so you may avoid watching worlds wildest police videos. He does like animals though so you decide to watch funny animal clips on youtube Cold empathy allows you to analyse a situation and be proactive about planning conversation, hitting positives and avoiding negatives.

Let's try those examples with warm empathy. You bring up siblings which you want to talk about, she doesnt. After asking why she feels that way she snaps at you to shut up. Now you share her disdain for the subject. She lightens up when jazz comes on, it seems to ease the tension and you're glad for the jazz music. You put on the police videos and your friend breaks down crying, you now feel super guilty and decide against watching it. In both cases warm empathy lead to you sharing the emotions of the other person, it also lead to the same outcome. However, to share those emotions they must first have a reaction be it good or bad. In this way warm empathy is reactive and can often lead to you being on the back foot.

A REAL LIFE EXAMPLE FROM MYSELF:

I was out and opened a group of five or six girls on my own. I tried an opener about how I should wear my tie. The one closest to me, the bitch, smirked and then said "let me fix it" before grabbing my tie and violently ripping it off and leaving it creased, stretched before throwing it on my lap. Her friends all grinned with approval. A logical (cold) analysis tells me: the bitch valued her friends opinion and her friends approved of my humiliation. They all think I am a fool.

Their satisfaction was based on warm empathy, I needed to feel humiliated so that they could feel my humiliation. I played the fool, acting as if I thought she had tried to help me. For 5 minutes I sat next to them visibly mincing about whether I looked better with or without the tie. Eventually I put it back on and asked one of her friends for their opinion explaining The bitch thought it was better off but I wasn't sure. The bitch wanted her friends approval and I was expressing doubts about her to her friends. They wanted to feel my humiliation but it wasn't there.

What happened next was glorious because if this hadn't worked I would have felt like a fool. The bitch gave a grin to her friends who all smirked back like a bunch of cheshire cats. With her friends approval The bitch grabbed my tie AGAIN and as she started to pull I loudly exclaimed so her everyone in the vicinity could hear "Woah, can you at least wait until we get back to mine before you try to rip my clothes off!?!" The approval dropped from her friends faces. The bitch turned red, said sorry and mumbled something about trying to help and I said "it's ok you're just too drunk."

CONCLUSION:

Empathy can be broken into warm or cold empathy. Cold empathy is by far the most practical, while warm empathy is a hinderance to effective game. But eliminating cold empathy is like rendering yourself "emotionally colorblind" and you will lose a lot of the human experience for doing so. Personally I lack warm empathy (trust me it has been suggested by clinicians), and yeah it works for being ruthlessly efficient - but I don't know if I'd advocate it... read this and do as bruce lee tells us "take the good and reject the bad"

peace.