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.
That’s what I got from every Charlie Kirk debate I ever saw: a machine gun of bad faith counterarguments.
Spoiler alert: That’s how fascists argue. It’s all bad faith arguments.
I noted a while ago that I never once heard Kirk say an argument that wasn’t a debate fallacy. Not one time.
Every kirk debate I saw: spontaneous lead poisoning poor guy fell right out his chair.
What is the “I’m an empath” card?
Are there people who try to make out like they’re Deanna Troi style empaths?
Or do you just mean people who claim to have particularly strong empathy / be particularly empathetic?
As an aside, emphasize isn’t related to empathy, and I didn’t think empathize is a word, although my spell-check apparently thinks it is?
As an empath, I’m really in tune with other people’s emotions, and I cry all the time, so I know that you’re super broken up about not knowing about the empath card - even if you can’t stand to admit it to anyone but me, who’s more in tune with your emotions than you are… Because I’m an empath.
No shit Susan, getting sad at the commercials for starving children doesn’t make you an empath.
It was half-facetious, but I think a lot of conservatives hear the word “empathy” and think of means this. (Watch the first 60 seconds and tell me you didn’t cringe.)
Empathize is a word. It means" to feel or experience empathy", or “to be understanding of”.
When I say Charlie Kirk was arguing in bad faith, I’m saying
he’she was pretending only the first definition exists and that it sounds like the Jubilee video, when most people use the second definition in real life.I think a lot of conservatives hear the word “empathy” and think of means this.
I think it’s even simpler than that. Certain words just make them go “Are you calling me a nutcase/soyboy??!!” (or sth like along those lines)
Or the suggestion that therapy is actually a good thing and not a stigma.he was pretending only the first definition exists and that it sounds like the Jubilee video, when most people use the second definition in real life.
Empathize: to feel as you imagine others feels. Sympathize: to understand/relate to others’ feelings.
When I read about empathy & compassion in Daoism, Buddhism, various Hindu traditions, etc, they’re referring to your 1st definition. The most important part is not to merely feel or understand, but to respond with support, ie, act with compassion.
Your 1st & 2nd definitions are typically understood as going together: to feel as we imagine others feel, we try to liken them to ourselves & understand their experiences vicariously. If you want to separate feeling from understanding though, the word sympathize exists for merely understanding or relating to.
I remember as a child getting upset and someone telling me they sympathize, explaining the difference with empathize (eg, they say that means they understand but they don’t feel), which just infuriated me further
What the fuck do I care about whether you feel or understand? You understand & aren’t helping. Fuck right off with your bullshit words!
Empathize is definitely a word.
I didn’t think empathize is a word
It’s weird you haven’t figured out dictionaries.
LOL. Super witty. I hope you’re having a great day chief.
He certainly wasn’t trying to reach a shared truth. He was trying to win the argument. Which is usually the point of debate. But it would be nice if the goal was to reach a shared truth…
You’re describing Hegelian dialectics - not debate.
Debates are usually about proving your position, and thereby proving the other person’s wrong.
That’s how I was taught to debate.
Unless your positions are mutually exclusive, it’s often possible for both parties to justify their position.
From my experience, the zero-sum I’m-right-you’re-wrong style of debate started when we started televising them. You may disagree, but I think debate was more productive when we weren’t incentivized to score points on each other.
If that’s Hegelian dialectics, then I prefer that to what you call debate.
Debate is about convincing your audience, not the people you’re arguing against.
Anyone can teach anyone anything and call it whatever they want.
What you’re talking about is the Hegelian concept of thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
As the other commenter pointed out debate is about convincing your audience or judges that you’re correct.
Your way of doing things is a much more constructive way of discussing almost anything on which you disagree with someone, in like, most cases, imo.
I despise when women say “I’m an empath” and then continue to tell you how you feel when that is not actually how I feel. No. You don’t get to claim to know me better than I do.
“…so…you’re an alien from Betazed? I don’t understand.”
This is the kind of thing that fuels his argument. People who are claiming they can literally read your emotions psychically. I get they don’t really mean that, but that is what the damn word means.
It’s different from when they are using it as leverage vurses using it to relate. When it’s used to relate it’s a completely justified use of the word.
I dont know why you brought up “empaths.” That is kinda bad faith if you ask me. No one is talking about pseudo science spirtualism. Empathy, mirroring the feelings of someone else when observing them, is a completely scientifically proven trait people have. There is no debate.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352154617301031
Did you stop reading after the first sentence?
…okay. I’m blocking you now, so I’m literally not including you anymore.
Bye Felicia
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Isn’t Christ THE cracker? Wouldn’t Christ on a cracker be two crackers?
I found Cheesus Christ on a Cracker
American Christ ig
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?”
But also - even if you add gang violence to the figures, all it would do is dilute the number of trans shooters further, if taken as a genuine premise, he devastates his own argument.
Of course it’s not a genuine question though as he’s not attempting to have an honest discussion, he’s just trying to throw in a racist whataboutism to distract (and hopefully derail) the initial discussion. Standard right-wing chud ‘debate’ behaviour.
No the reason he asked that question about gang violence is because gang violence numbers are a huge percentage of mass shooting numbers, so if you take them out of the calculation then the percentage of trans shooters is much higher and it is a debate about trans shooters. On the other hand, if you include those numbers then it is a debate about guns in general and ideologies or mental health issues get lost in the noise. I would guess he mostly wanted to make a point that the definition of mass shooting is not really in line with how people think of them.
This was their framing before they went to the event https://www.instagram.com/reel/DN69cs5Ecab/
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.
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.
I thought the quote was bad, the full version is almost worse.
We go from “mean” to “mean and stupid”.
What a great concept to teach boys/young adults who are still developing or struggling with emotional intelligence.
The world is better without him.
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.
He pretty much gave a common definition of empathy. What do you think it means?
Well to be fair he doesn’t really explain what he thinks the word sympathy means, but I can tell you that it doesn’t serve as a better term than empathy except in the case where you actually mean sympathy and not empathy. They are different concepts, lol. If you are talking about sympathy, that’s the better word to use. 😆 Apples and oranges. Though tangentially related, just like the fruits in their category.
He was also dead wrong that someone cannot feel what another person feels, or understand what they are feeling. That’s what empathy is and he’s claiming it isn’t real, which is false.
My impression is that he was just trying to be edgy and stretch the concept of the Explanatory Gap to its limits. That he was just trying to win philosophical points to seem like he’s nothing but factual, and it’s bullshit. I’m seeing right through that shit.
They are different concepts, lol. If you are talking about sympathy, that’s the better word to use. 😆 Apples and oranges.
They overlap. To quote Merriam-Webster
Sympathy and empathy both refer to a caring response to the emotional state of another person, but a distinction between them is typically made: while sympathy is a feeling of sincere concern for someone who is experiencing something difficult or painful, empathy involves actively sharing in the emotional experience of the other person.
More generally, sympathy means sensitivity to share feelings or have common feelings with another.
He was also dead wrong that someone cannot feel what another person feels, or understand what they are feeling.
You can guess or imagine without truly knowing that’s actually how they feel. In all likelihood, you’re probably right: people aren’t that radically different & unique.
His mistake is claiming empathy means feeling as if sympathy doesn’t when it does, too. Neither of them excludes feeling & means only knowing or understanding how someone would feel or only grasping the weight of their experience.
I honestly don’t think it matters whether anyone feels, understands, or tries to imagine how I (or anyone) feels or went through if they won’t try to understand the problem & help. The other side is shit, and there are better arguments to throw at them than to chide them for lacking empathy & humanity (which is what they hear).
Sympathy is surely more about showing that you care about someone and their feelings. But empathy is actually feeling what they feel, or understanding how they could feel and being affected by it.
I can have sympathy without empathy. And I can have empathy without showing sympathy. Right? Or am I way off?
Sympathy is surely more about showing that you care about someone and their feelings.
Not an element of any definition I’ve seen. The phrase hidden sympathies exists.
As the rest of the Merriam-Webster entry states, it’s a more general word:
Sympathy has been in use since the 16th century, and its greater age is reflected in its wider breadth of meanings, including “a feeling of loyalty” and “unity or harmony in action or effect.”
Empathy implies the general sense of sympathy defined before: an actively shared/vicarious feeling is a shared feeling.
Every word has some degree of vagueness. Some (like you) claim personally feeling as another feels isn’t essential: it’s more about understanding or caring. That empathy is about a serious effort to imagine or understand another’s experience as if it were one’s own, which sympathy doesn’t imply.
While that sense is admissible, the word empathy without qualification doesn’t communicate that sense exclusively, so I don’t fault people interpreting feelings from it. Wouldn’t following empathy (either sense) mean picking up the room for interpretation & communicating a distinction more clearly or perhaps jumping straight to the reasons driven at by empathy?
it’s a more general word.
including “a feeling of loyalty” and “unity or harmony in action or effect.”Sure, you could be a “sympathizer”, but those meanings I feel are out of scope of what Kirk was talking about.
empathy is about a serious effort to imagine or understand another’s experience as if it were one’s own, which sympathy doesn’t imply.
I don’t think empathy implies any serious effort. Empathy is something you just have, or something you experience/feel, rather than make an effort to “do”. It’s innate (in some).
I’m not sure I understand your last question.
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.
Its not a performance… its a neurological function of your brain.
If you don’t have empathy, I don’t see how it’s possible to have genuine sympathy.
This would be news to those with Empathy Deficit Disorder.
It’s your brain performing that function
Performing a task is not the same as a performance but you know that.
This denies free will.
explain
Oops…I meant to respond to this comment… “Its not a performance… its a neurological function of your brain.”
I think sympathy can be something you can try and understand but not fully grasp. I can TRY and understand why women are emotional during menstruation, but will I ever KNOW what that feels like? No I won’t.
Can you really not see what it’s like? When I see how someone is reacting, I can understand and almost feel what they are experiencing, even if I don’t experience it myself. Humans are pretty standard and come with common emotions and feelings.
Well, maybe it’s my education on the subject. A women’s hormonal cycle is completely different than a male’s. Males have a 24 hour cycle and women can fluctuate depending on their cycle. So just with that alone I know their emotional system is run on a different hardware. I am not sure how I can relate much.
I have two sisters and listened, but do I know what it’s like to feel like that? Nope.
Youre not getting it.
No one is asking you emulate a menstrual cycle.
Its about being able to empathize with your sister that are feeling, pain, anxious, flushed, anger, et .
If your sister gets upset, its as simple as being upset too. You know what upset looks like. If you are able to empathize you should be able to feel that same emotion despite not having the stimulus that is causing it.
It can be difficult, no one is saying its easy, but the first step is acknowledging the others humanity and relating it to your own.
I will never be an immigrant. One of my core memories is me bullying an immigrant because he was different than I am. It took his sister to point it out to me that I was being mean until I was able to empathize. Not that I was able to imagine what it was to be an immigrant but that I was able to feel what it was like to be bullied. It stays with me to this day because what this boy was feeling is exactly the same as I would feel/felt. Hurt.
You’re not getting not getting it. I can’t relate to sensations I cannot feel myself. My own sisters agree with me on this. The fact that you think I need to see it beyond that.
The point of empathy is you don’t have the stimuli…
Can you relate to missing a finger or having a plate in your arm? No. You can understand the mechanism of pain but you can’t truly relate.
Regardless sympathy works too.
sympathy comes from a position of power
I don’t think that’s anyone’s serious definition of sympathy.
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.
I am starting to think that this guy was an asshole.
I mean this is how he argues too. Well, look where that got him.
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.
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.
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.
