Sympathy is easy. Empathy is hard.

The woke crusade against the craft of acting, which seems to have started in the last decade, is actually illustrative of woke culture at its core and it's horrifying.

Think about all of the arguments about why straight people shouldn't play gay people or cis people shouldn't play trans people and so-on. It all comes down to, "You aren't this. Therefore you can't understand this. Therefore, you can walk in this character's shoes."

I said "against acting" broadly because, newsflash, empathizing - ya know, walking in a person's shoes who is different from you - is what acting is. The arguments here are not only that empathy is moot; they're that empathy is bad and shouldn't be attempted.

You see this all the time in the divide between liberals like, say, Brendan O'Neill, Bill Maher, basically the people generally on my side and the woke.

Liberals say, "I get the other side. I can articulate the other side. Here's why it's wrong." The woke say, "I can't understand the other side. I don't want to understand the other side. And, if you even have a conversation or a debate with someone on the other side, you're betraying our values."

Empathy is never an easy thing to experience and it's often uncomfortable. Sympathy is easier because it doesn't force you to step out of your own bubble; but, only managing sympathy from your own lived experience deeply limits you. Ralph Fiennes and Christoph Waltz didn't take their roles in Schindler's List and Inglourious Basterds (spelled the way Tarantino spelled it) because they sympathize with Nazis; but, compelling portrayals of villains don't include a bad guy twirling his mustache and talking about what a bad guy he is all the time. You have to play a bad guy in a way in which the bad guy feels like he's the good guy. You've gotta walk in the bad guy's shoes.

There's no pride or virtue in not understanding something or someone. If you're going to hate someone or even act violently toward someone, you sure as hell better understand that person.

You don't build muscle by being comfortable all the time. You have to sweat. You have to be sore. The same goes for the mind. If you find empathy with your detractors too hard to handle, your mind is weak. If your only goals and actions in this regard are to block out your opponents, your mind is going to remain weak.

Sympathy is easy. Empathy is hard. In my experience, very few things of value come easily.