(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
EMPATHY [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-31
Definition of EMPATHY: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
“Empathy” is a word that has been thrown around a lot lately. I am exploring it here because it seems to be a KEY CONCEPT that is either dividing or confusing us. I want to sort this out so we can have a better understanding of how this word is being used, especially as part of the Political dialogue.
There are a LOT of different definitions of the word “Empathy” floating around. Many people seem to use it to boost their own ideology.
Empathy exists on a spectrum . It can go from simply being aware of the feelings of others to completely identifying with those feelings and “getting on the same wavelength.” It can involve being an attentive listener, imagining yourself in the shoes of others, being genuinely curious about others, validating their feelings, seeking places where you are similar and places where you are different. Both are necessary.
Also necessary is to regulate the ability to empathize.
One of the most important lessons is Detachment. Too much sympathy and the soul gets pulled down into the mire once more. Sufficient empathy, and the soul can understand the suffering of others and at the same time, to work to release suffering wherever it is found. –Judy Hall
The word “Empathy” is said to be related to the Greek pathos "suffering, feeling, emotion, calamity," penthos "grief, sorrow;" Old Irish cessaim "I suffer;" Lithuanian kenciu, kenteti "to suffer,"
If you have sympathy for another person, you "feel" with that person. Therefore, a sympathetic person can "feel" with another, but may not necessarily have experienced the same emotions herself.
Empathy consists of mutually shared "feelings." Thus, if you are an empathic or empathetic person, you "feel" and thus identify with another person's woes because you have experienced similar "feelings" yourself, either in this life or others. What happens is, well, you get on the same wavelength . Some would say “That’s Entrainment.”
That’s Entrainment by Van Morrison:
Apathy, on the other hand, is lack of "feeling" altogether. An apathetic person does not care at all about the "feelings" of another suffering human being. That doesn't mean that he holds antipathy or a "feeling" against someone, however, as someone who is antipathetic might.
With “EMPATHY,” people seem to take it either as a good thing (a feeling?) or a bad thing (a pathology?) So I am not surprised that some people seem to think that FEELINGS THEMSELVES can be a bad thing.
Elon Musk vs. Empathy
Elon Musk was on Joe Rogan’s show and said the following:
(Musk) told Rogan, "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit." He went on to say, "There they're exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response."
https://thehill.com/opinion/5199381-elizabeth-musk-empathy/
So Musk is looking at “Western Civilization” as some sort of APP or Computer program code. And of course, there is no room for emotion or feeling in computers. If there IS, it’s a bug!
Musk is fully committed to the destruction of western liberal democracy as a viable form of government because he cannot understand empathy, and finds the whole concept of human emotion, altruism and charity to be "inefficient" — and contrary to his desires to cleanse the world of those he finds unclean and unworthy. These are quintessential National Socialist "ideals". To obfuscate his genocidal desires, Musk has introduced concepts like "effective altruism" and "longtermism" which are how oligarchs say "I'm going to steal everything you own and spend it on things that I want, regardless of what you think and regardless who it hurts." He obsessively promotes the concept of "suicidal empathy" to rationalize his own raging sadism. –Jim Stewartson
This idea of “cleansing the world” is a feature of what is called the “Heroic Tradition” of healing (that sees people as dirty and in need of cleaning/sterilizing). The “Wisdom Tradition” of healing (that sees life as a spiral, ever-evolving, always returning to itself, but never at the same place. It is a flexible state, never static.) The trait of empathy is helpful in healing wisely .
Musk himself seems in need of healing, as he has been diagnosed with depression and seems to be obsessed with certain things, to his own detriment. And he expects others to be sympathetic to him, or even empathic to him. Yet, he is said to neglect his own children.
I don't know how widely known this is but there are Ultra-right Christian churches that are currently preaching against empathy, talking about the sin of empathy, etc. Joe Rigney has an essay called "The Enticing Sin of Empathy" which expresses these abhorrent views. Oh, and this essay is a restatement of the position he took in a book he wrote a number of years ago called The Sin of Empathy, so he's been beating this drum for a long time and now is trying to revive the conversation. Anyway, not only does RIgney have an unbelievably contorted definition of empathy, but his viewpoint seems to me to be a political position looking for a theological excuse (reasons why Christians shouldn't identify with BLM, LGBTQ+ rights and so forth). Anyway, such views on empathy in my opinion are un-Christian, a dangerous perversion of the faith which allows its adherents to dehumanize people arrogantly. These same people are also talking against "weaponized compassion" now too. It all seems like an excuse for them to feel self-righteous while hating people and ignoring suffering. It's awful. (comment by bettyb in response to
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/5/2308276/-Musk-believes-empathy-is-the-fundamental-weakness-of-Western-civilization#comment_90854114)
One of the people influencing Musk and the rest of these anti-Empathy people is Dr. Gad Saad, who writes “Parasitic Ideas and Suicidal Empathy Are Killing the West.” He writes:
Evolution has endowed our emotional and cognitive systems with the capacity to deploy our resources strategically. This is why parents are willing to jump in front of a bus to save their biological children but are less likely to sacrifice their lives to save a random child across the globe. It does not make them callous but Darwinian beings capable of cost-benefit tradeoffs rooted in universal features of our human nature.
So I guess he is saying, “Save your own and forget the rest.” And that seems to be the MAGA perspective, too. The don’t seem to believe we are all part of the crew of Spaceship Earth, and what hurts one, hurts us all.
“Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.” –Jesus, a great Sociologist
I am not a Christian, but it doesn’t take much “common sense” to realize we (as a world culture) are on this “ship” together and need to WORK TOGETHER FOR THE GOOD OF ALL. And, as Pope Leo told JD Vance:
"Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others."
Empaths
Some people are natural EMPATHS:
Empath: An individual with the psychic ability to perceive, absorb, and directly experience the strong emotions and/or intense physical sensations of others.
--Brandi Palechek
There was a character who played an Empath in the TV series of “Star Trek: Next Generation”. Her name was Deanna Troi.
https://www.startrek.com/news/the-radical-empathy-of-deanna-troi
Counselor Deanna Troi
Troi's empathic skills made her an important asset to the Enterprise-D and her abilities were often particularly useful when dealing with hostile races. Since she could usually determine, through the use of her abilities, whether others were lying, she repeatedly proved herself invaluable in many suspenseful situations.
A big part of an Empath’s self-work is to keep from holding on to emotions that belong to others. In fact, the best thing for an Empath is to find ways of recognizing and letting go of emotions as much as possible. Healthy Empaths do frequent inner-housecleaning to check and see if the emotions they are feeling are truly THEIRS. Then letting them go (after learning from them).
Feeling emotions is a way of gathering knowledge. For instance, if you are lying to me, I can FEEL that something is going on with your emotions. I might not know WHY your emotions are mixed up and confused, but I will know there are other things involved that what you are saying to me!
Emotion and Feelings have been mostly attributed to women in the past. Little boys are urged to stop expressing emotion by being told “Big boys don’t cry.” Or simply, “Boys don’t cry.”
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/22/nx-s1-5321299/how-empathy-came-to-be-seen-as-a-weakness-in-conservative-circles MCCAMMON: Some conservatives also argue that women are especially susceptible to being misled by appeals to empathy, often when it comes to helping people who are suffering or in need. Here's Allie Beth Stuckey on "Family Talk." (SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "FAMILY TALK") STUCKEY: They'll use emotional, compassionate, kind-sounding language in order to get a woman to think, well, in order to be a good person, in order to be kind, in order to even love my neighbor, then I have to be pro-open borders. I have to be pro-LGBTQ. I have to be pro-choice. MCCAMMON: In an interview with NPR, Joe Rigney said he believes women are more naturally empathetic, which makes them better nurturers. Rigney says they're also more likely to reject church teachings they see as lacking compassion. RIGNEY: And in that kind of context, the empathetic sex is ill-suited precisely because of the ways that that empathy could be manipulated into, say, refusing to draw lines or in the name of helping a oppressed group, we're going to abandon our biblical confession or something like that. MCCAMMON: David French, meanwhile, says the idea that women are uniquely vulnerable to manipulation ties in closely with Christian nationalism, the idea that Christian men should run the country. FRENCH: And so you do have quite a bit of literature in the far right - the Christian nationalist right - that is decrying what they see as the, quote, "feminized church, feminized political discourse." They say that America is a gynocracy, is what they will call it. And that empathy element is a part of their argument.
Or, in other words, they are telling women, “Don’t you worry your little head about it. We’ll take care of it and you won’t have to even think about it.”
Barbara Bush (wife of the first George Bush) put it this way: “'Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?' Why, indeed?
That’s exactly what the White Christianist Supremacists want us to THINK! (Why should we “dirty” our beautiful clean minds with such stuff?)
In fact, this whole EMPATHY thing for them, seems more like a bunch of males (and their female enablers) trying really hard to tamp down any expression of feeling/emotion from those they consider their underlings (like women, minorities, differently abled, children, those with health challenges, etc.) Of course this also includes those who would oppose them in any way.
My Own Experience
For a long time, many years, I worked for an energy and water research center inside a university that dealt with donors and the government and business people and scientists and research and students.
Emotion was looked down upon. People would get upset about what was happening to the environment....and the managers and directors would say, "we don't make emotional decisions." Basicallly, if you got upset about something, it was discounted and looked down upon.
Well, I am here to say: FEELINGS count. Expressing emotions is vital! If we keep our feelings and emotion stuffed down inside, it hurts us; and it usually ends up hurting others.
YES, feelings and emotions can be messy. And at the same time, they can be powerful. We can be passionate about something and that can give us energy! We can learn from our feelings and the feelings of others. I call it “a little bit of soul.”
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: “A Little Bit of Soul”
One of my best teachers on feelings and emotions in Politics has been the late great Donella Meadows:
Feelings have a purpose, an ancient biological purpose that allowed our ancestors to survive. Anger tells us to act, fear tells us to pay attention, sadness tells us that we have deep needs that are not being met. I find this a helpful way to think. Now when the latest news report leaves me frightened or angry or grief-stricken I try to accept the feelings as information calling me to action, keeping me honest, keeping the fact that our current way of doing business on this planet is just not working. That's what the spreadsheets and the computer models tell us as well, of course. Feelings aren't the enemy of analysis; they are its ally. So, at a time when we need every survival skill we've got, I say make room for feelings, make way for our oldest method of interpreting the world. Invite them up to the front of the room with the spreadsheets and the computer models, not as replacements for analysis, but as full and equal partners in the work of creating a better world. © Sustainability Institute
https://donellameadows.org/archives/bringing-our-feelings-into-the-work-of-changing-the-world/
In other words, Empathy (when balanced with detachment) can be another way of receiving information and knowledge, either about ourselves or others. And for that reason alone, it is a valuable tool of the human mind and soul and heart.
And if the Tech Bro’s don’t like it, too bad. (Awwww....did I hurt their fee fee’s???)
There's a sign on the wall
But she wants to be sure
'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings
In a tree by the brook
There's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.
–from the song “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/31/2325236/-EMPATHY?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
