Pondering Pig # 3

[PigNewton]

I personally don't think it has much to do with superiority. We feel empathy because it's evolutionary interesting for our species. If we feel each other, we help each other. If we help each other, we have more chance of survival. Also, many people expect something back. This kind of empathy is also evolutionary interesting for the individual.

 

Levinas has said some very interesting things about empathy as well.

"My ethical relation of love for the other stems from the fact that the self cannot survive by itself alone, cannot find meaning within its own being-in-the-world, within the ontology of sameness." (source)

He also calls God (he's a theist philosopher) the Infinite Other. To me the believing in God is for many people some abstract form of empathy (I am not stating anything about God's existence, will not go into that discussion). Some people would say looking for God is looking for youself. I would say, with Levinas, that our longing for something entirely different than ourselves brings us to God/Allah/JHWH/Vishnu.

Imo the loneliest people are those who believe we do everything for ourselves. They have a valid point, but it's a lonely feeling and I don't like it.

 

In any case, very interesting subject pignewton

 

Edit: more directly to your question, I would say we feel empathy with the other, not because they are equal, but because they are different. If they would be exactly like ourselves, the use of their existence would not appear to us. Because this person is different from us, we experience his vulnerability. Example, if we point a gun at someone's face and see the fear in the Other's eyes, we do not want to kill him because we experience how valuable this person is. We would not experience this same value if we saw ourselves looking at us in fear.

 

 

tl;dr: what you call "superior" is what I would call "different".

 

 I'm of the personal opinion that we help each other because we long to have a deep connection. Human beings strive for a connection to all things in many ways. The music you listen to. You like it because it has a part of you in the song but also a part of someone else, or many people. It's also because that sound resonates with your being. We have friends to feel connection and so forth. We help each other because when we do, we feel deeply synchronistic. It's aesthetically pleasing but also necessary for a healthy human being. IMO

[JohnTV]

 When contemplating empathy, one quickly realizes the multidimensionality of the issue. Today I would like to discuss how fear correlates with how we experience empathy in everyday life.

 

 When witnessing suffering, we are suddenly struck with a sharp, dark and paralyzing fear. In a snap. We avert our eyes and pray not to be noticed. . . but also not to notice. With a pocket full of rationalizations, we justify our negligence to help alleviate another’s suffering. We feel shame, guilt boiling down into our unconsciousness which gnaws at our sense of confidence in our identity. We feel great pain watching suffering occur and genuinely want it to end. We do this, not because we feel someone else’s pain, we only ever feel our own. We do this because we simply want our own suffering to end. This unassailable truth will always make ignoring suffering easier and better to experience than confronting the seemingly monolithic cause of the suffering.

 

 What are your thoughts?

 

How does affective empathy, or the lack of, affect apathy? Is that the question? This is more of a discussion on emotionality vs. Stoicism, to me.

[PigNewton]

How does affective empathy, or the lack of, affect apathy? Is that the question? This is more of a discussion on emotionality vs. Stoicism, to me.

 Emotionality and Stoicism are two categories. They are boxes jam packed with associations and theory. For this discussion I wanted to grip the matter a little more firmly then categorizing with labels like Stoicism. Because what we're talking about isn't stoicism, it's our physical daily experience. It's our feelings of shame and anxiety not any one individual's interpretation of stoicism. Since that can be quite confusing and we may well find ourselves debating what stoicism is rather than the topic, lol!

[JohnTV]

To expand upon the idea of superiority in relation to empathy, what about psychopathy? Considering that neurology now considers psychopaths possibly non-humans, what does that mean for the non-psychopath?  Would this make the psychopath superior or inferior to the generally empathetic human being? Sorry if I seem off-topic.

[PigNewton]

To expand upon the idea of superiority in relation to empathy, what about psychopathy? Considering that neurology now considers psychopaths possibly non-humans, what does that mean for the non-psychopath?  Would this make the psychopath superior or inferior to the generally empathetic human being? Sorry if I seem off-topic.

 

 It's all good dude. I'm well versd in psychopathy actually. I did a lot of research at one point and my parents are both narccisists. Ugh! Total reactionaries. I don't think psychopaths are non-humans. I think that's a categorical error. We all like to think we're better than we are so when we see the worst of ourselves in a mirror (aka psychopath) we see the embodiment of all our destructive tendencies. Psychopaths are actually probably more human in some very uncool ways. But human nonetheless. They're assholes though

 

 I think superiority and inferiority are nonsensical terms personally. Let me just point out, I make topics and discuss ideas. That shouldn't imply I hold a particular belief are very long, I'm constantly evolving my consciousness and tend to go back and forth honestly, lol! Disclaimer aside, I think psychopaths are inferior in naturally psychopathic contexts: all business, surgery, police force for sure, attorney work, bomb squad etc etc. I think we can use psychopaths for diagnostic pruposes if we're clever enough. We should look at where they excel and that will indicate where the problems of a culture truly are. So for a short time, I think they can be very useful in figuring out why the word is so screwed up. However, i think we're going to be in for a tedious time trying to oust them from the positions of power we've reluctantly gave them.

 

 So in summary: Psychopaths are the embodiment of humanity's destructive characteristics. They are good for diagnosing issues. Since the brain can be rewired (there are many studies on this) we should focus on rehabilitation even though cleft assholes like Robert Hare feel it's a waste of time. Striving for humanity in others is never a waste of time. At the VERY least, it helps us practice how to be more human and empathetic even to the worst of us. How on earth can someone possibly call such an activity a "waste"?

[PigNewton]

 It's all good dude. I'm well versd in psychopathy actually. I did a lot of research at one point and my parents are both narccisists. Ugh! Total reactionaries. I don't think psychopaths are non-humans. I think that's a categorical error. We all like to think we're better than we are so when we see the worst of ourselves in a mirror (aka psychopath) we see the embodiment of all our destructive tendencies. Psychopaths are actually probably more human in some very uncool ways. But human nonetheless. They're assholes though

 

 I think superiority and inferiority are nonsensical terms personally. Let me just point out, I make topics and discuss ideas. That shouldn't imply I hold a particular belief are very long, I'm constantly evolving my consciousness and tend to go back and forth honestly, lol! Disclaimer aside, I think psychopaths are inferior in naturally psychopathic contexts: all business, surgery, police force for sure, attorney work, bomb squad etc etc. I think we can use psychopaths for diagnostic pruposes if we're clever enough. We should look at where they excel and that will indicate where the problems of a culture truly are. So for a short time, I think they can be very useful in figuring out why the word is so screwed up. However, i think we're going to be in for a tedious time trying to oust them from the positions of power we've reluctantly gave them.

 

 So in summary: Psychopaths are the embodiment of humanity's destructive characteristics. They are good for diagnosing issues. Since the brain can be rewired (there are many studies on this) we should focus on rehabilitation even though cleft assholes like Robert Hare feel it's a waste of time. Striving for humanity in others is never a waste of time. At the VERY least, it helps us practice how to be more human and empathetic even to the worst of us. How on earth can someone possibly call such an activity a "waste"?

 

 

I think psychopaths are inferior in naturally psychopathic contexts: all business, surgery, police force for sure, attorney work, bomb squad etc

 

 I meant to say        "superior" above  lol

[JohnTV]

 It's all good dude. I'm well versed in psychopathy actually. I did a lot of research at one point and my parents are both narcissists. Ugh! Total reactionaries. I don't think psychopaths are non-humans. I think that's a categorical error. We all like to think we're better than we are so when we see the worst of ourselves in a mirror (aka psychopath) we see the embodiment of all our destructive tendencies. Psychopaths are actually probably more human in some very uncool ways. But human nonetheless. They're assholes though

 

 I think superiority and inferiority are nonsensical terms personally. Let me just point out, I make topics and discuss ideas. That shouldn't imply I hold a particular belief are very long, I'm constantly evolving my consciousness and tend to go back and forth honestly, lol! Disclaimer aside, I think psychopaths are inferior in naturally psychopathic contexts: all business, surgery, police force for sure, attorney work, bomb squad etc etc. I think we can use psychopaths for diagnostic purposes if we're clever enough. We should look at where they excel and that will indicate where the problems of a culture truly are. So for a short time, I think they can be very useful in figuring out why the word is so screwed up. However, i think we're going to be in for a tedious time trying to oust them from the positions of power we've reluctantly gave them.

 

 So in summary: Psychopaths are the embodiment of humanity's destructive characteristics. They are good for diagnosing issues. Since the brain can be rewired (there are many studies on this) we should focus on rehabilitation even though cleft assholes like Robert Hare feel it's a waste of time. Striving for humanity in others is never a waste of time. At the VERY least, it helps us practice how to be more human and empathetic even to the worst of us. How on earth can someone possibly call such an activity a "waste"?

 

Ah you know who Robert Hare is, much respect! And you know what they say about people who can entertain a notion without subscribing to it... I can only differ in that there's a lot of talk about R-complex domination of the psychopathic brain, and I don't know if that would be 'curable' per se. You've got good points for me to ponder. Thanks

 

And yes, I figured that was a mix-up lol.