@BrianJopek
While I thought Pavlozitz’s blog post was quite good, it suffers from a poor disctinction between compassion and empathy. This confusion is widespread. I have recently caused an uproar on my timeline about this because most comments confound the two terms.
Empathy is generally described as the ability to take on another person's perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience. (Source: Wikipedia)
Compassion is a social [act] which motivates people to go out of their way to relieve the physical, mental, or emotional pains of others and themselves. Compassion is sensitivity to the emotional aspects of the suffering of others. When based on notions such as fairness, justice, and interdependence, it may be considered partially rational in nature. (Source: Wikipedia)
If I were to sum it up, I would say that empathy, inate in human nature (possibly due to physionomy - mirror brain cells), allows us to feel as if in the mind of another — it’s an imagining that arouses deep-seated feelings, especially of suffering as the Other. Compassion, on the other hand, is a social act which results from moral/ethical imperatives which enables us to live harmoniously with Others. I.e. Empathy is not an act, whereas compassion is.