The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > On sympathy, empathy and action > Comments

On sympathy, empathy and action : Comments

By Don Aitkin, published 8/7/2019

The two words are now used almost interchangeably, which is a pity, and both are used much more frequently than they were fifty years ago.

  1. Pages:
  2. Page 1
  3. 2
  4. All
Sympathy is easy and or easily feigned. Empathy is a tad more difficult to feign especially for folk who are at heart, indifferent to the plight of lesser mortals. And allow bean counting o replace normal human empathy!

And then allow cost considerations to allow penny wise pound foolish paradigms to prevail. The usual outcome of this asinine absurdity, is things need to be replaced far sooner and at a greatly inflated cost. Infrastructure delayed for a decade by indifferent bean counters devoid of people skills due to a lack of normal human empathy, of seeing the costs of delay as doubled!

Sadly, this same folk have an infinite belief that they are always right, accompanied by massive egos and intellectual arrogance that needs to be seen to be believed. And therefore, able to overlook or ignore evidence of the contrary indefinitely. And allow outcomes the rest of the world saw until it's too late to do naught about them!

On CO2 induced climate change, label inconvenient evidence to the contrary of their immoveable position as fraudulent etc. And even so, have the unmitigated gall to expect polite respectful debate and discussion!

Here in Oz, we may well not contribute much CO2 to the atmosphere but what we export as coal, gas and oil, may add as much as 40%?

NORMAL HUMAN Empathy for the plight of soon to be inundated, lesser and poverty-stricken nations, would all but compel a change in energy policy to CARBON FREE MSR thorium, because it's safer than coal, cleaner than coal and vastly cheaper than coal, on all available credible evidence!

Able to produce power prices that will have the energy-dependent high tech manufacturers of the world, queuing to enter! And that could be assisted with genuine tax reform rolled out as a stand-alone, unavoidable, flat tax of 15%!

The less well off protected by a generous increase in the tax-free threshold!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 8 July 2019 10:19:25 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Empathy is a tad more difficult to feign especially for folk who are at heart, indifferent to the plight of lesser mortals.
Alan B,
tunnel-visioned bureaucrats come to mind !
Posted by individual, Monday, 8 July 2019 10:22:24 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I liked Don Aiken's good explanation of the difference between the two words. The Greek language is very explicit in meanings. So, there should not be any confusion once a person understands the meanings of such words. The only obfuscation can come from our personal feelings.
Posted by Cyclone, Monday, 8 July 2019 11:58:33 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
A great essay, written by a generous person.

Here is another essay touching on similar subjects. Psychology Today, 2010, reports http://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/life-autopilot/201003/why-is-the-death-one-million-statistic

"...Joseph Stalin is reputed to have said that the death of one person is a tragedy; the death of one million is a statistic. And Mother Teresa once said, "If I look at the mass I will never act."

When Stalin and Mother Teresa agree on a point, I sit up and pay attention. It turns out that the human tendency to turn away from mass suffering is well documented.

[This has been termed] the collapse of compassion. It's not simply that as the number of victims goes up, people's sympathy levels off. No, when the numbers go up, the amount of sympathy people feel goes perversely down. And with it goes the willingness to donate money or time to help.

But why? In a world where people go around saying things like, "every life is precious" and "all people are equal," why do we react with such apparently unequal preciousness? If we take seriously the idea that every life is of equal value, we'd expect to feel twice the sympathy for two victims as for one; and we'd feel a hundred thousand times as much for a hundred thousand victims. And yet, we do the opposite.

[There is] evidence that as the number of victims goes up, so does the motivation to squelch our feelings of sympathy. In other words, when people see multiple victims, they turn the volume down on their emotions for fear of being overwhelmed.

[Studies] provided a first clue that the collapse of compassion might be due to strategic control of emotion, because only those who were good at controlling emotions seemed to do it.

... When volunteers were instructed to keep their emotions under control while reading about the victims, they later rated themselves as less moral people. Keeping cool in the face of great suffering has its benefits, but it might cost even more."
Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 8 July 2019 1:50:05 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Sympathy and empathy are described by folk as concepts? By folk who mostly experience neither? One does, however, reach a stage of human emotion that's overwhelmed by the magnitude of pain and suffering to a point where in order to preserve some semblance of sanity, it is necessary to switch off.

An automatic response to emotional overload. Not something that troubles idiotic ideologues of the far right or far left or fundamental religious fanatics.

Sympathy is a natural and completely normal human emotion and reaction!

Not an intellectual concept! To be examined under some intellectual microscope like some interesting bug.

That said, one can have shiploads of empathy and sympathy for the less well off! But be unable to effectively help because those things that would assist, low-cost cheap carbon-free power and affordable potable water, are verboten, lest they create sovereign risk for our foreign masters/coal miners?

So we are limited to handing over a few comparative pennies and our most generous most empathetic, seem to be those among us with the least

Not for nothing is it writ large that a nation is measured by how well it treats its less well off! And, to quote, inasmuch as you do to the least among you, so also do you do unto me.

We could, if we're allowed, solve most of the problems of the world with cheap clean safe energy and use some of that energy to create and transport cheap clean safe potable water anywhere it's needed. And generate modest profits and good neighbours/future trading partners as we do so

Not that we can't or won't! Just that we are prevented by folk with a very different and clinically indifferent agenda.

And has to include tree hugging narcissists!

Plus the fossil fuel industry, big nuclear, big pharma and other folks for whom the profit curve is king! For them, the rest of humanity is just grist in the mill!

Accompanied by a self-evident mindset, where sympathy and empathy are little more than curious intellectual concepts (bugs under a microscope) that are paid mere lip service to?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 8 July 2019 4:39:53 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Plantaganet.
Mother Teresa was a fraud. Sh actually had no sympathy and her empathy was only with Jesus and the souls that she thought were being saved for him.
David
Posted by VK3AUU, Monday, 8 July 2019 7:31:03 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. Page 1
  3. 2
  4. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy