Political Memes

On the one hand, I think everyone hates that person who pulls the "I'm an empath" card.

On the other hand, "empathy isn't real" is a bad faith attack on the concept of trying to emphasize or even understand people that are different from you.

That's what I got from every Charlie Kirk debate I ever saw: a machine gun of bad faith counterarguments.

Debate is about understanding where the other person is coming from, identifying weaknesses in each other's position, and working towards shared truths.

Since he couldn't empathize, Charlie couldn't debate. So he went with the modern debate strategy: I only win when someone else is losing.

Sorry to nitpick, but technically not a psychopath but a sociopath.

A psychopath recognizes that things like empathy and integrity and morality exist, and just doesn't care. A sociopath (like, by his own admission, both Kirk and the linked poster) doesn't even understand what they are or believe that they exist.

Aside from that - yes - it's deliciously ironic that the linked poster apparently sincerely believes that the context somehow makes it better, rather than, as it actually does, simply driving home the point that Kirk was a sociopath.

Damn, somehow it's even worse with the full context.

Christ on a cracker, the context makes it even worse!

[30 comments in this is probably not an original comment anymore, but I had to write it out]

FWIW, I work with children, and I see every day that empathy is a learned skill. Usually learned at the same time they learn socialising with other kids. This person was probably failed by all adults around him in childhood. By the system. But that doesn't excuse going on social media and whipping the masses into a hateful frenzy.

ATTENDEE: Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?

KIRK: Too many. [Applause]

ATTENDEE: In America, it's five. Now, five is a lot, right, I'm going to give you — I'm going to give you some credit. Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?

KIRK: Counting or not counting gang violence?

If this had gone on, the next question should be "does gang violence only count as three-fifths of a violence to you?"

I thought the quote was bad, the full version is almost worse.

We go from "mean" to "mean and stupid".

Tell me you've never looked up these two words before without telling me bruh wtf, they aren't synonyms, they mean different things lmfao rest in dirt.

Empathy means you realise that you are fundamentally the same as someone else, sympathy comes from a position of power. It's a performance where you are pretending that you are feeling something so you don't appear as a psychopath.

So the rest of the quote reveals a kind of sociopathic narcissism in which he argues that empathy doesn't exist, so instead you just need to passively look down on others.

The context makes it clear that he does not mean “sympathy” in it’s “i support you” meaning but the “you have my sympathy” - aka “thoughts and prayers” - meaning.

Sympathy means you are practicing concern for others from your own perspective. Usually that means relating to someone through your own similar experiences. For example, when someone loses their job, your remember how you felt when you lost your job or when you felt inadequate or betrayed, or when you faced financial struggles. And you sympathize with them through those shared circumstances. This is a great thing, and you should absolutely do this.

Empathy means you take someone's perspective to try to understand how they feel. This is of course, impossible to do perfectly as you are not them. But the point of it to step outside of your own lens and your low personal experiences and get a glimpse of how they feel from their own experiences. This is of particular value when you do not have a comparable experience for what they are going through to pull from. Like a white person in America has never had the experience of being racial profiled by the police. Any attempt to sympathize would be ignorant at best, insulting at worst. Your experience getting pulled over for speeding is not the same as being pulled over for seeming suspicious for having your skin color in a given place and time. Practicing empathy is trying to understand what that must feel like for them from their perspective and given all of the experiences they must have had in their life. Again, this is going to be imperfect, but if services a purpose in making you understand the experiences and world views of others that are different than you.

That is why the right hatesthe concept of empathy. A) It means that their experience and viewpoint is not objective. B) It means that they are expected to practice seeing others as individuals in whole, not as charactictures and stereotypes. C) It means that they are faced with the realities of bias, bigotry, privilege, and systemic racism that does exist and is experienced by everyone differently. And D) It means that their gut reactions, their inherent feelings of fear, disgust, anger, and hatred at those different to themselves needs to be challenged and seen for the bigotry it is.

This is the kind of simplistic 1-2-3 logic they use all the time to destroy entire concepts like… human empathy. Troglodytes around the world will walk around with this phrase in their back pockets for years. Thanks, dead guy.

Charlie Kuck dropped out of college after 1 semester and it shows.

Empathy is about understanding where someone is coming from. Plain and simple.

Charlie Kirk had no empathy because he had no interest in understanding where people were coming from when he debated with them. He was always on the attack and never tried to understand his opponent.

He was the apogee of the thoughts and prayers kind of people.

Empathy for me and sympathy for thee kind of people.

I guarantee he isn't feeling anything now.

So he has neither empathy nor sympathy...

The full context makes it even worse.

Empathy isn’t just about feeling, it’s about perspective. Not only do you attempt to understand the feeling, you try to understand the situation the person is in that led to those feelings. Sympathy is acknowledging something bad happened to someone, but that doesn’t mean you personally appreciate the emotions of the other person.

I am starting to think that this guy was an asshole.

As he said, Empathy requires, well...Empathy. the ability to recognize what a person MIGHT be feeling. It's reading someone, and trying to relate. It doesn't mean literally reading their mind, and channeling their emotions like a Vulcan Mind Meld.

On the other hand, Sympathy can simply mean pity, especially to someone like him. He can't recognize your pain, all he can do is feel superior that he's not in pain.

It's the basic definition of Liberal vs Republican. Liberals (general term, not Neo Liberals) are concerned with society, Republicans are concerned with themselves.

So according to https://www.etymonline.com/word/empathy the word was coined in 1858 in German. And was coined in English in 1908. So "new age" is 117 years (or less, whenever this was actually said).

Then, he seems to imply these things (empathy and sympathy) are mutually exclusive... which they are not.

And the whole point, is to appear intellectual and deep with "and no one can feel what another person feels"... If this was Reddit, this would be pinned, front page of /r/im14andthisisdeep for all time.

And much like many plots in GoT that went no where... the "lot of damage" is brought up but it didn't go anywhere. How does it cause damage? What does it damage? What IS the damage? I'll do you one better, WHO is the damage!

Not understanding the difference between empathy and sympathy also means they can't understand how empathy is a strength that can be used to your advantage.

Is empathy a strategic imperative? A review essay

Despite its softer connotations, empathy is hard, requiring strategists to confront misperceptions and false assumptions, and overcome individual egos and national hubris. This article reviews the literature, examining some of the gaps and costs incurred. Whilst strategic empathy may have transactional and instrumental connotations, it suggests that the concept holds greater potential to transform strategy. Used wisely, it offers an ethos and means to put people first, foster greater security, and offer innovative approaches to contemporary challenges.

Ok. Hear me out.

We lock the doors of cpac after lacing the water with mdma.

Afterwards we let them out. Those that survived will know empathy, the rest … well good riddance I suppose.

This is where I get to say “Fuck your feelings”

This is something similar to what Sam Harris said.

Sam Harris advocates that empathy is the wrong metric by which to evaluate helping someone, and we should use compassion instead.

The difference? Empathy can be highjacked and relies on intuition. You see a news story about some little girl in your city who lost her arm in a dog attack, you feel more for empathy for her than a child in Africa whose whole family was just slaughtered by militant Christians.

So, instead, we should use compassion as our north-star. We can use logic to guide us to making choices which lead to preferable outcomes for those who need it most.

None of this relates to Kirk though because he's a pseudointellectual grifter who failed to demonstrate empathy for anyone who doesn't fit into his Christian nationalist world view. That's my two cents.

Spoken like an undiagnosed autistic. If only there were signs

Now that you mention, I don't really feel a bullet in my neck. Cool.