Society/empathy/etc

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

Sau,

I’m not sure how I did that. The girl in the picture is certainly not my own kind, but I can empathize with her. If one cannot empathize with ONE human being, how can one then empathize with several human beings or more?

Well, I’m not really addressing empathy towards my own kin, but yes, there is an element of personal gain in one’s own kin. I’m not sure that elevates it to selfishness.

I disagree. I think if anything it is a mixture of both not to mention having needs met like protection, etc.

I don’t know that that is true. I think people on the lowest level prefer safety.

I suppose you could say that.

That may well be, but I’m not sure independence is a “will to power” exactly.

I think you are confusing empathy with “pity of the weak”. The two are not the same.

Okay. We’ll go with that. If one cannot empathize with what another is through no choice of their own, then I think it is safe to say they lack the ability to be empathetic. That was my point in bringing up where one is born.

Perhaps those who are pitiful do, but as someone who empathizes I do not confuse the two.

I am aware of that. Empathy doesn’t mean “to feel what that other person feels.” It means to ATTEMPT to do that. It is an effort to see things from some other point of view than your own. You necessarily have to use elements of yourself for this because you cannot escape it. Empathy, on its own, is not sufficient to ACT on anything. People often use the phrase, “I can empathize with you”. That means, essentially, “I can see where you are coming from.” That does not THEN mean they “pity” me or the other person. The empathy comes, and then there is an evaluation of the data that the empathy brings. At that point, someone might pity. Pity, to me, implies a paralysis or a lack of action. Someone who HELPS is not in a state of pity, but in a state of strength. They are DOING. They are “living in the moment” in a Nietzschean way of putting it. They ARE strong. The confusion here stems from empathy and pity being interchangeable.

I’m attempting to, yes. I think it is important that we attempt to understand those who are not us. Shit, we’re doing it in this conversation. You are reading my words long enough to try to make some sense out of my train of thought. These thoughts are NOT yours, but you are being empathetic in the sense that you are trying to understand my points as I present them. You then, based on your understanding of what I’m saying, reply with what YOU would then say. Are you pitying me as you read my point of view while you temporarily empathize to surmise my meaning? I kinda doubt it.

That’s one definition, but I’d add to it to try to understand someone elses thinking by nullifying one’s own thinking inasmuch as it is possible.

Well, it all depends on the assumptions I bring into the situation as to how well I empathize. To really empathize, I’d have to envision me starving. I’d have to envision myself enfeebled. Then, I’d have to imagine what I might think about somebody standing around with a camera waiting for a vulture to land in just the right spot so he can really frame my suffering. To be fair, I might not even notice the guy as my face is likely in the ground from weakness. Then I have to decide what it is that I feel about that, and I have to say, if I were laying on the ground and I noticed some guy trying to take a picture provided I were weak enough I’d simply probably not notice all that much, but if I were sufficiently aware I’d be pretty fucking pissed off. Should I perhaps strike some other poses for him of my suffering at some other point so he can get “just the right frame?”

Now, if I put myself in the photographers position I can see myself being overwhelmed by the immensity of the situation and potentially feeling paralyzed. I could see where I might feel like it wasn’t my place to get involved. I’m just here to document.

Then, when I synthesize these two perspectives, I find that personally, for me, the photographer here is the “weak” one. “Just doing my job Mam” has nothing to do with a will of any sort. It’s a follower mentality.

One could say that a will to power is similarly a fantasy as one is often not powerful before one gets there. Nonetheless, I still maintain that empathy and pity are not one in the same.

2

The appropriate label for this thread would be “shinton pullin’ a strawman on Saully”

I said
Quote:
Africa is a leech

If you’ve ever tried rescuing a drowning child out of a pool, and I can say from experience I’ve done just that, then you should know you’re risking being drowned by that child tugging and kicking you down. There was a case when I was around the age of 5 years old or so I saw my little friend who was the same age drowning. So, I dived in to help her and it was sheer luck my mum walked up and grabbed us both because we approached death rather quickly.

Apply this metaphor to a country giving up millions of dollars to support another country that’s going down the dumps regardless of its efforts. Africa is a black hole that’s sucking our wealth so it can survive a couple more decades and end up in the ruins it would have without our charity.

AIDS is going to spread the longer we attempt to cure it. The longer we give it to live the longer we give them to reproduce more diseased people to leech out our wealth. It’s ridiculous.

3

Perhaps you’ll be so kind to point out exactly where I did that.

Okay, so what? SilentSoliloquy is a leech! There. Asserting things is fun.

Okay. That sucks for you, but rescuing someone who is drowning is quite a bit different than throwing someone a loaf of bread or picking up somebody on land. I’m not really making the point that there isn’t some danger to you. There’s some danger to you each morning you get out of bed. I doubt that you stay in bed because of it.

Well again, that sucks, but I’m not sure that the fact that you couldn’t save someone from drowning is a good platform for justifying not helping anybody.

Well, that depends on your perspective. You are equating Africa with a “lost cause”. Of course, you aren’t really backing that up particularly. You just keep asserting it’s a lost cause.

I’m not sure our money is “keeping it alive”. I’m sure that it does help, though.

Umm…well, the way I see it is that people with AIDS are irresponsible. They are irresponsible here just as they are in Africa. AIDS is not simply an “African problem”. The help invested in research there benefits not just Africa but everybody.

Also, there are cases where people with AIDS were only guilty of getting a blood transfusion. That happens here and there.

I think the ugly fact of the matter that most people overlook in conversations such as these is that there are people who are simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. The question becomes what, if any responsibility do people have to these folks. I find it odd because the same people who say we have no responsibility are often the ones asking for help the most vocally when something bad befalls them.

Life is hard enough on its own, I don’t think fucking each other over for our own selfish ends particularly benefits anyone and makes life that much shittier. It is true that sometimes a victim becomes parasitical, but at such point those who have empathy know when it is time to move on. The empathy itself is not the problem.

4

Can’t say much to that. However the better question would be: what does africa have to offer economically to a hypothetical world that is neither divided by race or nation.

It is the unfortunate context that puts africa in a losing position. It is underdeveloped and over populated, with no major economic force and a cesspool for disease.

I imagine in the future most of the population will die off and Africa will become a global nature reserve…where future families go for vacation in their matching spandex-gel calvin klein blue civilian suits.

“Look mom, its a house-cat!”

“Yes little Timmy, house-cats were what humans kept as “pets” a long time ago.”

“Cool!”

“And look, its a field of grass!”

"Very good Timmy. Grass is a plant that used to grow in human’s yards when they lived in private “houses” which were built in “neighborhoods.”

5

Africa actually has lots of copper.

And diamonds.

6

Try getting to their resources…

Africans don’t know how to rule their land. Barbaric, uneducated, and useless population. It is a hopeless cause. South African farmers are being brutally murdered by tribes.

7

shin,

That first entry is pretty revelatory, eh? Indeed, it undercuts the second entry, which is probably the one you mean.

My point was that the illusion of empathy demands a relative kinship. You are more akin to that girl than to a stone; but is your kinship close enough? For me, it is not.

One needs not to be able to empathise with that girl to be able to empathise with multiple human beings.

Elevates? I am surprised to see you use that word. Anyway, what I meant was personal gain, yes. But this is not just an element in the love of one’s kin, but the essence.

As if being protected is not a form of power. Like so many others, you appear to think too narrowly of what power is.

Security is a form of freedom, as I have pointed out in JennyHeart’s Freedom Versus Security thread. Oh, and freedom is a form of power.

Independence, too, is a form of power (as a form of freedom).

Right: empathy is the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it; pity is sorrow at another’s sorrow, which includes, however, the illusion that one understands the other’s sorrow, or at least understands that it feels sorrow (but even then one is projecting one’s idea of what sorrow is on the other).

I suspect your point was that if I would have been born in Africa, and that girl had been born in Holland, then I could have lied there and she could be typing this now. But there is no such “would have been”. What if I would be you? Then I would not be me. Simple.

But you do project, in your imagination, a subjective state of yours into that girl so that the girl appears to be infused with it. You are not empathising with that girl. You are empathising with yourself.

Not really, because empathy is integral to pity.

Helping may be a strong, active state, but what is your interest in helping such a child?

So what you were trying to do is understand what that girl meant by lying there? “Hm, I wonder what she is trying to say by the signals she gives…”

Ah, self-abnegation! Excellent! Let’s all nullify our own thinking as much as possible in order to understand other people! But wait: what is there to understand about a person who has nullified his own thinking? Ah, but now I’m thinking - I know I shouldn’t do that! Nullify, nullify, nullify.

You cannot “envision” those things without having experienced them. And on top of the things you have mentioned, you ought to have that girl’s history, which precludes having your own. In short: the “you” you envision in that girl’s place would not be you, but that girl. So you are right back where you started.

You obviously do not know what it’s like to be a sensational journalist. His will is only to get sensational pictures he has made published, for his own personal gain. That’s what I call a will to power. And how he waited for the right moment, the right angle, the right shot! Merciless efficiency.

I agree with the latter, as you can read above. But empathy is similarly a fantasy, indeed, it is the empathy which is the “fantastic” part of pity.

Will to power presupposes the power to will. “Powerful” is a relative concept.

8

I suppose it is. I tend to find dictionaries only marginally useful in philosophical discussions.

Okay…but couldn’t that just mean you really suck at having empathy?

Really? How? What allows you to empathize with other people and not that particular girl? What is the difference, exactly?

I’m not so sure of that. I’m skeptical of “essences” in the first place.

Or contrarywise, you think too broadly of what power is.

That’s the trick isn’t it? I suppose I can take a word like “love” and say freedom is actually just a form of love and make a pretty good case for it, but really all I’m doing is defining things by the anchor point that I’ve set. I’m not sure I’ve accomplished anything by doing this other than making my definition fit other situations allbeit rather precariously.

I’m not sure that all this talk about “imagining” is a blow to empathy and is a point in the column of the will to power. The will to power, as far as I’m concerned, is as imaginary and as “unreal” as empathy for it is a state that has to be arrived at.

Nah. My point was more about making an EFFORT to understand someone in a different circumstance, particularly one that they didn’t ask for.

I am attempting to envision what that girl is experiencing. I am attempting to understand what it is she is enduring. I cannot escape myself, but I think we can get a general idea about things outside ourself, and again, simply because we cannot “be” the other person I don’t think is a point against empathy.

So sayeth you.

What would my interest be in leaving her? I suppose my decision to help would be motivated in large part by what I would hope someone else would do if I were in a similar situation.

I’m trying to understand her situation and what she might be feeling or thinking.

You are right, the alternative, being selfishly driven and not considering how somebody else feels in response to us is clearly more desiriable. We should all simply run about considering only ourselves and everyone else be damned that gets in our way. This, clearly, is a much superior lifestyle.

I find that to be incorrect. Imagine a bear with a beak. Ever experienced a bear with a beak? I bet you can envision one anyway.

Sort of, but not exactly. In the same way I can imagine a bear with a beak, I can get a pretty good approximation about how that girl is feeling. Human societys work in part because we ARE predictable and our emotional responses are not hard to surmise; if it were the opposite and people were more unpredictable and we therefore could not understand at all how the other person was thinking, society would grind to a halt very, very quickly. If you want an example of people void of empathy, take a look at the autistic folks. They don’t exactly look like they are “willing themselves to power” to me. In fact, it seems as though they have a very hard time getting anything done because they cannot understand other people in general.

And then he got back home and blew his head off.