Empathy Is No Good Thing
But it's not a bad thing either…
"Extreme acts of cruelty require high level of empathy."
— Hannibal
“I'm an empath”. Heard that one before? I bet you have. Maybe you've even said it yourself. There is an implicit assumption when hearing this that the person also means that they're good and ethical. But, there's no reason this should be the case. If you are truly empathic then you should be able to empathise with the darker parts of human nature as much as the good.
If you hear of some crime scene you should be able to empathise with the pain of the family members who've lost a loved one (and the specificity of that pain depending on their specific relation to that person), the fear that the victim felt in their last moments or that sense of desperation, maybe the feeling of begging and pleading, or the oddly liberating state of fighting for your life and, in a twisted way, having nothing to lose whilst having everything to lose. It's a complex web of emotions that many shy away from, but an empath should be capable of navigating through them. But, you should also be able to empathise with the perpetrator too. The sense of power, domination, the thrill, the god like power over life and death, the untouchable feeling of impunity of getting away with it (assuming you do). You get the idea.
Empathy, is a neutral thing. Yes, there’s a correlation between being empathetic and being nice. After all, if you deeply feel the pain of other people then that might make you want to avoid causing or intensifying it. However, for the more sadistic folk among us, having empathy for their victims can… well… enhance the experience. Empathy, in its purest form, is an amoral thing, since one can empathise with both good and bad people alike. It’s only after you apply a judgment afterwards that it loses its neutrality and becomes good or bad. Empathy is like any tool — at the behest of the wielder’s intentions.
Worth pointing out that Hannibal from the series Hannibal was a cognitive ENFJ commonly mistyped as INTJ. Whilst I can see where you're coming from are neutrality I will add that in the context of typology & neurology assigning moral value to said acts of sadism etc would be indicative of a lack of an Fi-Si dip. Let's take an INTP for example, if they haven't developed or don't have the neurology to develop their Fi-Si dip from their dominant Ti this leads to irrational, unempathetic decision making. I'd correlate sadism with a lack of rationality here much to the surprise of many who'd equate sadism with cold hard logic when the opposite is in fact the case in many ways. I'd say that whilst empathy can be denoted as neutral, for the cognitively healthy & developed this isn't the case; empathy requires a symbiotic relationship between rational & limbic processes otherwise one is stuck in a degenerate state - we often see this with kids who have been severely abused who are statistically more likely to become abusers themselves. I feel like there's an implicit sense of 'transcendence' in this post by posting that it's a neutral term when in fact heightened aspects of empathy accompanying by severe deficits in some aspects is a defective way of being. Some people can indeed move off the narcissism spectrum & so forth but it takes a lot of psychoanalytic work. These kinds of people whilst they may initially do well in terms of work hierarchies etc tend to end up being the bane of the company/the reason the economy crashes etc as the concurrent inability to self regulate & rationalise simply isn't there. We need to look at this from both a cerebral & limbic standpoint & how these intersect, plus the varying facets of what constitutes empathy...no notion of cognitive & affective empathy in the context of psychopathy is indeed being challenged in research. I also think you're assuming that the will to dominant etc & deriving pleasure from this is normative...it's not...great leaders seek to lead not subjugate. I also wouldn't state that feeling empathy is a necessary component for subversive acts but can act from a deficit in such; look at the likes of Vladimir point: completely irrational & ill-founded empathy on the notion that the Ukraine wants to be sublimated back into the motherland; he's clearly delusional & has no empathy for the thousands of people who have been displaced & killed.
Being able to empathise with everyone, even people with whom I vehemently disagree, can be quite trying. My OH half calls it 'gandhi-ising', which irritates me further. I've tried explaining that when I empathise it's not the same as agreeing or excusing, but he just doesn't get it. He's ISFJ and I'm INFJ. Or son is ENFP so my OH is constantly on edge over his seemingly lackadaisical ways, whereas I'm more understanding and accepting.
Sometimes I envy people who seem to see things in black and white. It must be so much easier for them.