Empathy

rambot · Oct 2, 2025

Servus said:
It's not really about actual empathy. It's really about capitulating to the leftist woke agenda. They just replaced "woke" with "empathy", because "woke" was co-opted as a pejorative for their agenda.

Honestly, you're just making this up right?

Because this reads like self serving nonsense more than anything resembling reality.

Meakaiame · Oct 3, 2025

Godcrazy said:
for those interested in lack of empathy and narcissism psychopathy I recommend Prof. Sam Vaknin on youtube a self professed narcissist and professor teaching many and very good about these things. He said for someone like narcissism they have to be left totally without "supply"(everything they do is fake) to then have a mental collaps and rebuild from there turning bi polar instead from there you might be able to treat them.

Yes, Prof. Sam Vaknin shares in-depth information. He is good.
Here's a series for anyone hurt by narcissists, and for the narcissists too:

FOUNDATION 2: HOPE AFTER NARCISSISTIC HARM

Hope After Narcissistic Harm is a series that uncovers the profound effects of narcissism on human relationships and the values of love and connection. Start...

www.youtube.com

RileyG · Oct 3, 2025

rambot said:
A quote from Chuck Kirk.

Now I look at this quote and I get seriously confused. I cannot understand why a person would have a problem with empathy.

How would the Good Samaritan Help someone that thinks their terrible without it?

How can Jesus heal someone without it?

In my view, empathy connects us and allow people sympathy to flow more greatly. It creates stronger bonds between strangers.

So help me understand how and WHY empathy is bad.

What an odd comment. Empathy is NEVER bad.

Godcrazy · Oct 3, 2025

Meakaiame said:
Yes, Prof. Sam Vaknin shares in-depth information. He is good.
Here's a series for anyone hurt by narcissists, and for the narcissists too:

FOUNDATION 2: HOPE AFTER NARCISSISTIC HARM

Hope After Narcissistic Harm is a series that uncovers the profound effects of narcissism on human relationships and the values of love and connection. Start...

www.youtube.com

These are very good. It is very tragical. X narc that I know do cry out to God to help him, he has other mental physical issues as well. He believes, but has issues. I keep warning him. He listens. It is tragical, as he keeps praying to God to help him. Please pray for Chris Neil.
We can`t be near them, yet they were created too. And their minds ruined by evil.
It`s heartbreaking to watch. When you know they want God.

Meowzltov · Oct 18, 2025

rambot said:
A quote from Chuck Kirk.

Now I look at this quote and I get seriously confused. I cannot understand why a person would have a problem with empathy.

How would the Good Samaritan Help someone that thinks their terrible without it?

How can Jesus heal someone without it?

In my view, empathy connects us and allow people sympathy to flow more greatly. It creates stronger bonds between strangers.

So help me understand how and WHY empathy is bad.

All moral systems are built on a foundation of two things: empathy and a sense of fairness. People instinctively know something is wrong because they anticipate and feel the pain it would cause others.

You take away empathy, and what you have is a psychopath or sociopath without a conscience. Sometimes they still manage to be moral, but for practical reasons: they want to avoid negative social consequences (jail, getting fired, etc.). But the odds of harming others go way, way up.

stevevw · Oct 26, 2025

rambot said:
A quote from Chuck Kirk.

Now I look at this quote and I get seriously confused. I cannot understand why a person would have a problem with empathy.

How would the Good Samaritan Help someone that thinks their terrible without it?

How can Jesus heal someone without it?

In my view, empathy connects us and allow people sympathy to flow more greatly. It creates stronger bonds between strangers.

So help me understand how and WHY empathy is bad.

Because its an unqualified word that could mean different things. Its a subjective attempt to describe a natural human sense that as humans we can know what it is like to be a human. More a conscious awareness than any particular word meaning. Empathy seems to best capture this sense and knowledge.

I think it may relate to the idea that we are made in Gods image. Unlike other creatures where perhaps only the emotional aspect is displayed. Humans go deeper than that. We are spiritual and by extenstion moral beings. We are born with a sense of empathy. Studies done show babies can destinguish the cry of another baby in distress.

But I think unqualified empathy. That is not grounded in something outside human emotion and rationalisations can be distorted. As humans we can rationalise all sorts of reasons why some deserve more empathy than others. But empathy in Christ is grounded in the radical idea that your putting yourself below others for the sake of a greater good that is beyond human ideas.

Akita Suggagaki · Nov 24, 2025

rambot said:
A quote from Chuck

So help me understand how and WHY empathy is bad.

Well what more does he say about it?

ViaCrucis · Dec 21, 2025

What's crazy to me is that being empathetic just means understanding and recognizing another person is really human, in all the same weird ways I am. I can have empathy for someone even if I don't agree them. I can be empathetic without supporting, agreeing, and even having serious problems with something they say or do. Empathy doesn't mean I can't be critical of someone. Empathy for a person doesn't mean empathy for every possible feeling. I can be completely befuddled and put off and offended and disturbed by what a person says or thinks or does--but in their humanity empathize with them. Empathy is an intrinsic aspect of loving someone and, since I am a Christian, acknowledging the Image of God in another person.

I am unaware of someone arguing that empathy means agreeing and affirming every thought, statement, or act by a person. I am not aware of that being a definition used by anyone.

A call for empathy toward a person is not a demand to agree, but an invitation to consider how you would want to be treated in their shoes; and thus how you ought to regard and act toward and about a person--even when you disagree.

zippy2006 · Dec 22, 2025

ViaCrucis said:
What's crazy to me is that being empathetic just means understanding and recognizing another person is really human,

The claim that this is all empathy is is just intellectually dishonest. Empathy has to do with resonating with another's feelings. It has nothing to do with claims of being "really human." In fact it's pretty common for the "empathy" crowd to ground things like veganism in their same doctrine. Such an intellectually dishonest framing precludes the real debate from taking place.

Akita Suggagaki · Dec 22, 2025

zippy2006 said:
The claim that this is all empathy is is just intellectually dishonest. Empathy has to do with resonating with another's feelings. It has nothing to do with claims of being "really human." In fact it's pretty common for the "empathy" crowd to ground things like veganism in their same doctrine. Such an intellectually dishonest framing precludes the real debate from taking place.

What do you think is the “real debate”?

zippy2006 · Dec 22, 2025

Akita Suggagaki said:
What do you think is the “real debate”?

Any of the objections that Charlie Kirk or others have leveled at empathy. None of those objections can be addressed or even parsed if someone is going to fall back on the claim that empathy is nothing more than recognizing that other humans are human. If empathy were nothing more than recognizing that humans are human, then no one would object to it. We need to grow up and start having real discussions.

Akita Suggagaki · Dec 22, 2025

zippy2006 said:
Any of the objections that Charlie Kirk or others have leveled at empathy. None of those objections can be addressed or even parsed if someone is going to fall back on the claim that empathy is nothing more than recognizing that other humans are human. If empathy were nothing more than recognizing that humans are human, then no one would object to it. We need to grow up and start having real discussions.

Than maybe start with someone defining what Kirk meant by “empathy” and see if that align with common consensus definitions.

zippy2006 · Dec 23, 2025

Akita Suggagaki said:
Than maybe start with someone defining what Kirk meant by “empathy” and see if that align with common consensus definitions.

The OP is not interested in that, as you yourself encountered.

From what I've seen, Charlie Kirk didn't spend a great deal of time on this. The OP is taking one quote out of context and refusing to give the source for his quote (which should incidentally be an infraction on any site that cares about honest discourse). I give an alternative source here. I could give others (Rowan Williams, Patricia Snow, Paul Bloom, etc.).

But if someone wants to critique an objection to empathy, they at least need to provide the source for the objection they are critiquing. The fact that this has been so consistently refused by @rambot shows that this was never a serious discussion from the get-go. It was always a kind of propaganda, and the quip that empathy is just recognizing that humans are human is more of that propaganda - one could call it a motte and bailey fallacy, but I'm not even convinced it rises so high.

zippy2006 · Dec 23, 2025

Empathy is a moral fad. The idea that we finally figured out morality in the 21st century and it's just empathy is a silly idea. The idea that all of the moral individuals throughout history were empathetic individuals and all the immoral individuals were non-empathetic is another silly idea. The fact of the matter is that in the 21st century we are more confused about morality than ever before. We've suffered an entire century of beleaguered moral non-cognitivism issuing in various forms of subjectivism and emotivism, and empathy is the outcome of that process. It's a bit like when a starving man stumbles upon contaminated water and thinks it is the greatest thing since sliced bread—at least until the dysentery begins.

Akita Suggagaki · Dec 24, 2025

Morality is subjective social norm. Empathy is a human experience. Two different critters.

Verv · Sunday at 5:21 PM

zippy2006 said:
Empathy is a moral fad. The idea that we finally figured out morality in the 21st century and it's just empathy is a silly idea. The idea that all of the moral individuals throughout history were empathetic individuals and all the immoral individuals were non-empathetic is another silly idea. The fact of the matter is that in the 21st century we are more confused about morality than ever before. We've suffered an entire century of beleaguered moral non-cognitivism issuing in various forms of subjectivism and emotivism, and empathy is the outcome of that process. It's a bit like when a starving man stumbles upon contaminated water and thinks it is the greatest thing since sliced bread—at least until the dysentery begins.

This is completely accurate.

I read Stephen Pinker's book Better Angels and one of the funnier aspects of it was how he tried to say that novel writing was what expanded the human heart to care about more people than just those who are similar to them. Due to his Jewish background, he clearly has no idea of the role that Saints play in the church...

For millennia, Christians have regarded various Biblical figures as heroes and heroines who came from completely different classes, the opposite gender, etc., and this was expanded to Saints who are white, black, Asian, etc., from various regions and backgrounds, sometimes Kings and noble of class, but more often poor and humble...

I speculate that he was able to miss this more because he not only is unfamiliar with Christian belief, but is more familiar with a general Protestant, theological, sola scriptura approach to the Bible, and does not have much familiarity with the traditions of venerating saints.

ViaCrucis · Monday at 7:18 AM

zippy2006 said:
Empathy is a moral fad. The idea that we finally figured out morality in the 21st century and it's just empathy is a silly idea. The idea that all of the moral individuals throughout history were empathetic individuals and all the immoral individuals were non-empathetic is another silly idea. The fact of the matter is that in the 21st century we are more confused about morality than ever before. We've suffered an entire century of beleaguered moral non-cognitivism issuing in various forms of subjectivism and emotivism, and empathy is the outcome of that process. It's a bit like when a starving man stumbles upon contaminated water and thinks it is the greatest thing since sliced bread—at least until the dysentery begins.

Weird.

Here's an example of my basis for empathy.

"We give this rule: the good things which we have from God ought to flow from one to another, and become common to all, so that every one of us may, as it were, put on his neighbor, and so behave towards him its if he were himself in his place. They flowed and do flow from Christ to us; he put us on, and acted for us as if he himself were what we are. From us they flow to those who have need of them; so that my faith and righteousness ought to be laid down before God as a covering and intercession for the sins of my neighbor, which I am to take on myself, and so labour and endure servitude in them, as if they were my own; for thus has Christ done for us. This is true love and the genuine truth of Christian life. But only there is it true and genuine, where there is true and genuine faith. Hence the Apostle attributes to Charity this quality, that she seeketh not her own.

We conclude therefore that a Christian man does not live in himself, but in Christ, and in his neighbor, or else is no Christian; in Christ by faith, in his neighbor by love. By faith he is carried upwards above himself to God, and by love he sinks back below himself to his neighbor, still always abiding in God and His love, as Christ says: "verily I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." (John i. 51.)" - Martin Luther, On the Freedom of a Christian, 1520

zippy2006 · Tuesday at 6:28 PM

ViaCrucis said:
Here's an example of my basis for empathy.

Your mind has become increasingly dull. Your quote from Luther no more supports your point than does your awkward claim that empathy means recognizing humans. Again, a fourth grader could refute such a simplistic idea by pointing out the way that empathy-promoters regularly champion animal rights on the basis of empathy.

ViaCrucis · Tuesday at 8:41 PM

zippy2006 said:
Your mind has become increasingly dull. Your quote from Luther no more supports your point than does your awkward claim that empathy means recognizing humans. Again, a fourth grader could refute such a simplistic idea by pointing out the way that empathy-promoters regularly champion animal rights on the basis of empathy.

And yet you've failed at specifying any actual issues with my understanding of empathy. You keep grabbing at some nebulous boogey-man, but all you have succeeded in doing is parroting vague "empathy is bad, actually" talking points. Speak of these boogey-man figures who insist empathy means something other than what empathy means. And now you've sunk down to ad hominem arguments.

Congratulations. You've said nothing meaningful at all.

zippy2006 · Wednesday at 4:07 PM

ViaCrucis said:
And yet you've failed at specifying any actual issues with my understanding of empathy.

I've pointed out how incredibly intellectually dishonest your definition of empathy is. No one has been tempted to claim that your bizarre definition is not intellectually dishonest. Not even you.

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