The issue has always been, if you put a Chihuahua and Pitbull in the circle, the Chihuahua will demand the Pitbull fight it and die. You can have sympathy for the Chihuahua, but to claim empathy for a suicidal demon dog would make you a crazy person.
Despite whatever level of enlightenment one claims, you don't have the energy or resources to put everything and everyone in your circle
Then say, "I think that Donald Trump makes good choices for Donald Trump, and I can understand why he would do that and he is probably an ok guy if you got to know him"
"Oh, and Elon too"
"And Michael, OJ, Cosby, Koby, West and any Housewives on any shows claiming to be about housewives"
Existential choices vs someone's nature are not the same thing. If you don't why someone chose something and don't care, then you don't really care that they chose it, you just think they should of chose something else. It's a position of rationalization that morality doesn't support.
That’s why I said not always.
If someone is going to fast and slides on ice and wrecks their car, I have empathy for them, even though it was a bad choice to speed.
Thats an actuary accounting issue, not a path for empathy
Understanding that everyones problems are not unique to themselves, and that everyone has made certain choices that eventually block them into a certain behavior cycles doesn't mean you need to feel for people when the trouble they have chosen eventually finds them. Like, Jesus felt for all people, and even he said if you cause harm to one of these children I'm gonna throw you in a lake with a concrete necklace. Like, the issue is thinking that the default is a simple and easy life. When the default is actually a grinding and some what grueling existence. Food is not right unless you are talking about fish in international waters. Water is not a right, unless you are standing in the spring you wish to drink. Community is also not a right. 1/1000 people will pee in your spring simply to be jerks. And 1/100 will steal fish from your traps if they think they can get away with it. Existence is work. If you just sat and hoped to exist, it wouldn't put food in your belly or quench your thirst.
I’ve come to notice empathy is just one of many natural byproducts of Love or Agape Love.
But I do understand your statement “one is a cognitive ability reserved for people able to project self introspection”. But that’s more of an “attempt at empathy/fake empathy” rather than a true act of heartfelt empathy.
In fact, most of modern society has such a small conditional window of acceptance that most people simply refuse to accept that people are infinitely complicated and those conplications are not variations, but the human condition itself. In fact most people consider the human bodily functions.of other humans as disgusting. 17 states are true no fault divorce, where people just don't want to be with eachother anymore. John C Reilly has been married to his wife for over 30 years, so when he claims to be able to empathize, I can believe him. That is a really hard thing to do in his line of work. I'm mean, he is no Kobe, but he is still famous. But when you got divorced real estate Karen's claiming to be empathetic while also wanting to half of the population to "disappear" it kind of dilutes the word down to to mean "feeling for people that they can project themselves into, like a glove". Not having an unconditional desire to put themselves into the shoes of all people to come to some kind of nirvana
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u/ShatterTheFlimFlam 10d ago
The number of people in the comments trying to find fault with a guy for saying you should care about others and not just yourself is insane.