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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.
Very well put. Thank you.
Yeah, I knew it was taken out of context but is this really that much better? There are plenty of other examples.
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.
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.
At least he’s dead. At least we have that.
What a great concept to teach boys/young adults who are still developing or struggling with emotional intelligence.
The world is better without him.
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Damn, somehow it’s even worse with the full context.
Wait till you see the one about gun deaths and he reduces human life down to a statistic. As america spirals into authoritarianism with no recourse from the 2nd amendment defenders. At least cars do what they purport to do.
Everyday I consent to get in my car. I do not consent, to say, getting shot in a public location, like maybe, a university campus.
Everyday I consent to get in my car. I do not consent, to say, getting shot in a public location
I get that your main point is to debunk this guy’s defence of guns, and that’s a worthy goal, but this is motornormative bullshit. Cars kill thousands of people who gave no such consent, like pedestrians and cyclists. The analogy doesn’t even line up properly. A more apt analogy would be to compare consenting to carrying a gun yourself being equivalent of consenting to get in your car.
And even that implies that you really did give full and uncoerced consent with viable alternative options. Which, if you live in a typical car-dependent American (or Canadian, Australian, etc.) city, you did not. Because your city lacks adequate public transport options, lacks safe cycling infrastructure, and things are too far apart to walk in a reasonable time. !fuckcars@lemmy.world
Guns are also bad and anyone who thinks America doesn’t need radical change in gun culture and gun laws is fucking insane. But don’t let that fact be a reason to also defend motornormativity.
While I agree with the fuck cars concept on a hundred fronts. Our dependency on them is certainly something that can be reduced.
They are still pretty far from equivelant.
IE without a major total rebuild of my city, adding public transfer infrastructure etc… cars are necessary for me to go to the grocery stores etc… Bottom line 500 things need to be done before they start restricting cars.
meanwhile guns, serve pretty much no practical use in civilized society except, potentially protect yourself from someone with a gun.
without a major total rebuild of my city, adding public transfer infrastructure etc… cars are necessary for me to go to the grocery stores
Yes, that was my point when I said that actually, if you use a car today in motornormative societies, it does not count as true enthusiastic informed consent, because you do not have another viable option.
Bottom line 500 things need to be done before they start restricting cars
Not really. You start by doing what New York is already doing with congestion charges in inner-city areas that do have good alternative options. You make licensing requirements stricter, including removing the ability to drive “yanktanks”/“wankpanzers”/“emotional support vehicles”/whatever you want to call those absurdly dangerous impractical vehicles that are some of the most popular cars lately on a regular car licence, and instead require an upgraded, more expensive type of commercial/truck licence.
To do much more than that, yeah, you probably need to start doing more. Building separated bike paths as standard in all new roads and roads getting resurfaced (if there’s more than 2 lanes) or lowering the design speed & speed limit and adding modal filters (on smaller 2-lane streets) is kinda the bare minimum, and costs precious little, since you do it at the time you’d be spending on maintenance anyway
serve pretty much no practical use in civilized society
100%. I’m not at all trying to draw a perfect equivalence between guns and cars. Only to point out when people—even well-meaning people—may be reinforcing harmful motornormative ideas. America’s gun problem is for sure far, far less excusable and far easier to address. Which is the reason that so many other countries have addressed it, most famously when an Australian conservative politician fronted up to a crowd of angry gun owners wearing a bulletproof vest when announcing Australia’s new gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre, and yet motornormativity still pervades Australian culture to almost the same degree as American. And Canadian culture. And even the UK, though to a much lesser degree.
except, potentially protect yourself from someone with a gun
Disagree. Owning a gun increases your chance of being a victim of gun violence. There are valid reasons to own a gun. These are pretty well covered under Australian law which should serve as a model for America, if America actually wanted to become a sensible country. But self-defence is not one of them.
Im not against the movement for better public transportation and walkable living spaces. Not in the least. This is just one example of the argument for cars and guns not being completely analogous. Sure, the argument could use some work but dont just paint me as a car loving yee haw.
Im willing to bet that 50,000 deaths figure is mostly on the road accidents.
I would also suggest if youre debating guns in a public setting dont do yourself a disservice by adding in a secondary debate about cars. Depending on the audience, for the gun argument frame a more car accepting line of attack and tackle the public transportation debate in a venue more exclusively for that. Just a suggestion.
Of course, follow your own moral compass but effecting change is very difficult. Sliding the needle is the best most can hope for in this short life.
Wow, all those armed guards are really good at hiding because I never see them. I feel much safer now
I thought the quote was bad, the full version is almost worse.
We go from “mean” to “mean and stupid”.
Spoken like an undiagnosed autistic. If only there were signs
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.
Starting?
I honestly never heard of the guy until all of this. With that said, he worked for Faux News, so it’s a given.
I mean this is how he argues too. Well, look where that got him.
Charlie Kuck dropped out of college after 1 semester and it shows.
One semester? Looked like he was only there a couple hours TOPS before-- OH, oh, oh… I got ya.
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.
Im not convinced he didnt know empathy existed. I believe he uses these weak cliches as a piffy jumping off point while “debating.” Sure, no one can feel the exact same way as someone but thats not what empathy means. I believe Charlie knew that but instead of conceding the point he would use appeals like this to get suggestable people to deny the reality of empathy.
He demonstrates this by admiting he knows the meaning of the word sympathy and how it is different from empathy.
Mmm… yeah. I think you have a point here.
And on reflection, I don’t know what possessed me to believe that Kirk was honestly relating his view on the matter.
Well sociopath or psychopath, we can both agree he was not mentally well.
Exactly. The whole “just debating” thing is a load of wank. It’s just a way to frame manipulative ideological recruitment.
Why was he going to universities to “just debate” ? Obviously, the purpose was to recruit supporters for his kooky agenda.
Just fyi, I think you might mean “pithy” unless you were going for an onomatopoeia
I mean it as something that makes you go, “pft.”
Im not a word scientist.
Psychopaths are perfectly capable of not knowing empathy is real, especially as they have never felt it. Sociopaths lack the kind of impulse control that Kirk regularly demonstrated and he also had a massive ego and an ‘im Better than you’ mentality that fits psychopathy much more than sociopathy. Kirk was more than likely a psychopath or extreme narcissist.
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!
