It's moral in that you do it for good's sake. You do it be decent. You do it for rightness. But it's also an art - because you apply it dexterously, and carefully, and with care and attention - the way that you do any art. You respond moment by moment. As opposed to a skill that you learn once and apply it the same way every time.

Writer Cris Beam considers the politics and potential of empathy - as a personal experience increasingly mediated by digital technology, a skill co-opted by capitalism, and as a kind of 'moral art' with the radical potential to move society beyond neoliberal isolation and towards collective care.

Cris is author of I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.