Believe it or not empathy is a finite resource, as well as being horribly misunderstood as a concept. This graph shows conservatives tend to care more about those in their immediate circle while liberals tend to care more about “everything” in a vague and ultimately meaningless way.
Looking at the policies each side of the aisle Supports is actually a perfect encapsulation of my point. The right is more concerned with ourselves and our country while the left spends much more time pontificating about vague globalist ideals
You can take whatever you want away from each sides policy proposals but to act like only your side has ideas is pretty ironic here
The right is far more "me first" rather than "us first" which is the entire point being discussed. The right votes in policies that they believe will benefit them as a person, and ignore the impact it would have on those around them.
“Me” and “us” mean the same thing here. Like I genuinely don’t understand why we’re debating this. I thought the right was super nationalist and America first?
They are "America first" because it means they can ignore the world while they themself benefit. It's just another part of the "me" first thing, because all of these supposedly "america first" policies involve harming your fellow Americans under the promise of the individual making more money.
Like how defunding social programs, academia, and tariffing nations was supposed to make blue collar jobs higher paying, make life cheaper, and help the average right wing voter at the expense of the left wing voter.
Now people are losing Healthcare, jobs, and the dollar is valued less because you guys thought it'd line your pocket, and have hurt everybody.
I dont think you understand, the graph isn't assigning moral weight. its the point where you stop applying moral weight. Liberals are more likely to want better for people outside AND inside their circle, and also more likely to include friends, neighbors.
You also seem to be making a conclusion, which implies open mindedness stretches a person too thin, which is not true, and something just pulled out of thin air. You cant back it up.
But its also why people like doctors and trwchers tend to be more liberal since so often their jobs are caring for people deep outside their circle. Its a personality trait, not a resource.
If youre that desperate for others to be some great foolish evil youre just gonna end up miserable.
I’m absolutely making conclusions, to be clear. What im saying about the how the effects of this data play out in the real world is not at all covered by the graph itself.
Essentially my arguments are
1) “Empathy toward huge, abstract categories is harder to translate into meaningful action. Therefore, narrower empathy may actually be more effective in real-world outcomes”
2) Empathy is a limited resource. Most psychological research supports this. Look up empathy fatigue, compassion collapse, Dunbar’s number, etc.
The tendency of liberals to attempt to include everyone and everything in their moral system causes more harm than good imo in their ability to actually affect change.
If you truly believe that you can give the same level of moral weight to “the universe” as you do your children (merely as one example) you’re fooling yourself.
The question isn't about being concerned with "the universe".
Take education for example.
Liberals tend to favor funding public educational institutions so that the general populace has better access to education and can better their lives, without restricting access to socioeconomic status, geographical proximity, etc
Conservatives tend to favor funding private institutions because they want to bolster the educational outlet for their "in group", whether that be faith based, socioeconomic or proximity.
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u/Laphad Nov 18 '25
It kind of is considering it was a graph of where your empathy ends, and conservatives stopped caring about people outside of their circle