Clarifications on empathy

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

4:20 a.m. I don’t know if it is worthwhile to pursue the subject of empathy. Up to you.

We got a few responses. Why not deal with them in a few words of explanation?

Feel free.

 

Simon Hay [in a comment on my blog]:

I was ready to give my opinion on this subject yesterday, but I decided not to. While I agree that many do have difficulty putting themselves in other’s shoes, I kept hearing myself say “that is their choice”.

In the end, asking why someone is unable to empathize was no different than asking why someone believes what they believe. It is their choice to experience that way to living life, so I am in no position to question their choice to be “single-minded”, which is my judgment.

I think the idea that one can only change themselves and no one else, is a bit counter-intuitive from a human perspective, because that means that the other person must come to their own self-realization of whatever I want them to realize. From my perspective, that means I will also have to experience their choices in life. This is the difficulty that parents deal with when raising children. But at the end of the day, I cannot live their lives, nor can I expect them to be me. Perhaps this explains why some do not understand empathy. They never had to be responsible for another being or they did not care enough to feel any responsibility.

There is a slight misreading of our intent here. Again, it is not that we want you to change someone else; it is that we advise that you are better off being able to empathize and, as a secondary point, that it is the widespread inability to empathize that is shredding society into mutually hostile – because mutually uncomprehending – fragments.

 

Kennedy Golden:

Frank-  I often read, but seldom comment on your postings.  this one hit a nerve, which I always find warrants notice.

Indeed, I struggle with my desire to just claim stupidity, or meanness, or lack of empathy for viewpoints that differ from mine.  And, I often make the time to try to put myself into the mindset of the “other.”  Sometimes I come to realize that I actually do not want to understand how someone else’s mind works, as in the case of Hitler, truly psychotic  people, and those who live in places where violence against others brings what feels to me like pleasure.

So, yes, I believe there are almost always differing points of view, especially in areas of politics, and so many others.  And while it can be helpful to realize that there is no requirement to accept one view or the other, I find that my “judgment” still creeps in where I am clear about the impact that any decision or point of view will have on others- human and not.  When I personally understand the incredible impact that a decision will have on a large part of the population, I find it difficult to just sit back and accept that others think differently than I do.  And, taking that neutral stance of acknowledging differing beliefs can also lead to what amounts to me as apathy.  A nice neutral stance, requiring no further action. Sadly, understanding differing viewpoints and beliefs can be acknowledged, AND action taken to try to change decisions when one finds the impact inhumane and abhorrent.

Empathy, something many have little access to, cannot be taught- I believe.  One either has it or not, and when not a part of a decision making process, it is my belief that it can be pointed out, but will almost never change a person’s stance. So I am trying not to judge decisions as right or wrong, but to look at the ultimate impact, and to do my best to make that consideration an important part of my personal decision making process.

Being clear that there are usually more than one point of view, while an interesting exercise, does not lead to correct  discernment.  It often leads, as you have said, to the villainization of the “other”, and also can lead to lack of action.  There are times when I believe that action, often in reaction, are incredibly important.

Thanks for the opportunity to think this through.

Again, we have not made clear that our intent was not to advocate neutrality, nor inaction, but understanding. “Understanding” does not mean, “Because I see why you feel that way, I’m okay with your having your w ay about things.” It means, “I see more clearly the values that lead you to say, do, think the way you are doing. That doesn’t obviate my right, perhaps my responsibility, to oppose you. It only means seeing you more clearly; what I do with that clearer understanding is my choice.”

One other thing. We didn’t say “be clear that there are other points of view”; that is evident in any dispute. We said, or intended to say, “The other points of view are valid from the perspective of the people holding them, or they would hold not these, but other views. We said, understanding the reasons for the other point of view will lead to correct discernment. They will not lead to villainization. Ascribing reasons (often wildly inaccurate ones) does that.

 

Sharon Hurtley-Durand:

This sentence:  “Many people have no interest in understanding; they are content with choosing a stance and condemning those who don’t shared it.” prompts a question that has been troubling me for some time.  I have some friends that I consider to be intelligent people.  If there is a subject within their interest realm, they will pursue investigating it until they come to a conclusion, and then promptly shelve it, as it no longer holds interest.  But, if there is a subject that is outside of their sphere of  interest, then they resort to main stream hearsay and defend it to the last shout.  I wonder why this is.  If I confront them with my side, I get told that the “news said so” and then they don’t want to talk about it any more.

An interesting point, peripheral but related. We would say, you all do that, for the simple reason that your mental energy is limited. You can’t be investigating everything, so you tend to take for granted most things. Where people differ is in whether they identify with a point of view, a “fact” learned through the media, a “common knowledge” shared by their peer group, and feel they need to defend it, or whether they merely accept it as they accept the law of gravity or the periodic table, unexamined. It is the taking of sides that we agree is the illness overtaking your society, and, as we said, it stems from villainizing those one cannot understand.

 

Kennedy Golden’s VML reply to Sharon:

Sharon-  I believe that the art of conversation, without judgment, has mostly been lost.  When I was working with college students (for 45 years), I was often heard to say that if we could send our students out into the world with the tools needed to have a good conversation about a “difficult” subject or situation, we had done our work.  Sadly, I believe that is no longer something being taught, or learned by many.

A major source of the problem, often unrecognized, is that people are growing up primarily “interacting” with one-way media – radio, TV, every form of prepackaged entertainment often called news. They get in the habit of mistaking familiarity with understanding. Thus, they have heard the word Kosovo, say, day after day, and so they then assume that Kosovo is something they know. Or they see a given public figure day after day and think they therefore know him or her, perhaps not reflecting that their “knowledge” comes from packaged snippets put together by proponents or opponents of the person, or by people with an agenda into which they fit that person as hero or villain or space-filler.

Nothing of this process is education, and none of it has the value that people get in one-on-one interaction that is likely to rub the corners off, so to speak. So, rather than education, you see indoctrination. This is not only the fault of those who deliberately take advantage of the opportunity. It is also, even primarily, the fault of the system that leaves its children (of whatever age) vulnerable to manipulation and stunting of critical abilities.

Finally, Jim Szpajcher posted a response too long to quote in full. He pointed out that the lack of understanding of why others do what they do “is why some people make good leaders and others are disasters.”

He would certainly get no argument from us.

He pointed out that:

This is a phenomenon larger than a discussion of Jung and Nietzsche: this affects everything. Current events, in the United States and around the world demonstrate leadership which is devoid of empathy and imaginative ability discussed in today’s post.

The very pervasiveness of the phenomenon should demonstrate that it is not a localized problem. To put it into a nutshell, your civilization is doing something wrong. It isn’t just the political parties, nor the groups of ideological know-it-alls, nor the indoctrinated rather than educated classes that are in charge of matters beyond their ability to comprehend. It is not just an American nor a Western problem. It is a civilization in decline, dying by the sword it lived by. This is not grounds for despair (unless you believe in chance); it is one more bit of evidence that an old way of seeing things has come to its limit and, indeed, surpassed it. The next civilization will arise from bits of this and that, but it will have a very different central core of beliefs, as people learn (to some extent) from the failures they have lived through.

Jim also says:

It is as if Someone, Somewhere’s goal in running this 3D life system was to maximize the production of emotional energy – what Bob Monroe called Loosh.

That is one reading of the situation, not ours. We remind you, the purest form of Loosh, Bob Monroe said, was pure unconditional love. There is no need to assume that because people’s choices, combined with the energies of the times, and combined with humanity’s unfinished business, is producing chaos and suffering, that this is what the system is designed to produce. That is, there’s no reason to assume a system preference for chaos. It would be perfectly happy, so to speak, if people and their interactions were producing love. But it is people’s choice, in this their First Life, and you can’t expect everything to be sweetness and light.

 

So you see, even a few responses are helpful in removing ambiguities in our meaning. Enough for the moment. We can deal with others if they arise, or an move on to other things, as the moments suggests.

Okay. Our thanks as always. The theme simply, “Questions on empathy”?

“Clarifications” might be better.

Yes, so it might.