You know who I blame? Jesus. Going round teaching people to care about one another regardless of creed and colour. His toxic empathy has really ruined Christianity.
There is the biblical Christ, then there is alt-right Christ. One may, or may not, have existed as some weird combination of avatar/son/whatever of God. Then there is corruption and propaganda on the other side.
I’m not a Christian, by any stretch of the imagination, but I was raised in the south and my grandma taught Sunday school. I had read the bible cover to cover before most other chapter books, though against my will. Grandma also believed in the corrective powers of The Switch. So, yeah.
The biblical Christ would, if he were still entombed, be rolling in his grave over what the current GoP party is espousing as Christianity.
Of course, this post involves suspension of disbelief, so its all in the hypothetical sense.
teaching
This
There’s no such thing as toxic empathy. If it’s hurting others, it’s not empathy.
I mean, being empathetic and using for evil… tale as old as the words’ origins.
Empathy, but a lack of conscience allows one to feel for their opponent, assess their weaknesses, and exploit them.
I mean, possessing the capability for understanding harm and doing it anyway is a core characteristic of a “bad person.” We don’t blame a wild animal for attacking someone, at least not if you have two brain cells to rub together. I worked in Yellowstone. We had bears in civilian areas on a few occasions. I was off the clock, but didn’t want to see people hurt, so I helped the park rangers clear the area of tourists, and got the fuck out of the way when they were actually trying to corral the bear (juvenile) and relocate it to a deeper part of the park away from humans.
Black Hat HackersSocial engineers, con men, what have you, all revolve around empathetic traits.Again, people, as an example… A knife is a tool. I carry one every day. Usually, I open boxes, break down boxes, use it as a lever (my “tool” knife EDC is robust and cheap as shit. If it breaks, it breaks, I’ve gotten a couple decades out of it so far) and more. After 20 years or more of service, it has more than paid for itself, we’re looking at like a dollar year here.
Now the knife no one ever sees except my wife (because I disrobe in front of her) is designed for self defense. That one is a weapon. Its only purpose is self defense. It isn’t unsheathed unless I’m checking it for maintenance reasons, or I need to defend myself. Thankfully, the later has not happened since I’ve purchased it. However, in an emergency? Its a sharp blade of good materials. It could be used for other reasons, just at its price point I prefer not to. Awkward grip for a traditional knife usage, but it could be used for an emergency trach if the need arose. Though, that may just be a consideration because of my first aid training.
Both knives serve vastly different purposes for me.
At the end of the day, they’re a tool though. I could bash someone in the head with a claw hammer as easily as I built a house - except I know nothing about building a house, lol.
If you use your empathy to being evil, it’s not the empathy that is the problem, but you being evil.
If you have empathy, but no conscience, it’s not the empathy that is the problem, but the lack of conscience.
No surprises that MAGA wants to teach that we shouldn’t consider someone elses position. Its their way or the highway.
So, this is controversial, but when I hear “toxic masculinity” I understand that it means that not all masculinity is toxic, but masculinity can have toxic forms. In the interest of using precise language, I do believe that, in the realm of all possibilities, there can conceivably be toxic forms of empathy.
Now, I don’t think that left/progressive ideals are toxic in general, and certainly aren’t toxic when they’re based in empathy and compassion. And I realize that the “side” that coined the phrase “toxic empathy” is also the side that thinks “toxic masculinity” is an absolute phrase. So it would make sense that right/conservative people would think “oh we’ll call ideals we don’t like toxic, like the libs do with masculinity” without any deeper understanding.
Just want to be pedantic to try to keep the capital-D Discourse on the nature of empathy from becoming black-and-white polarized.
The only toxic empathy I can think of is Stockholm syndrome.
A hypothetical “toxic empathy” could be our evolved hunting technique. We would run down prey with endurance hunting. If we lost them, we could use empathy to put ourselves in their mindset, and so predict their movements.
Even this would be “venomous empathy”. Toxic masculinity is partially defined by the way it hurts the man doing it. It’s toxic to the host. It’s misused enough however to muddy that, considerably.
Toxic empathy is when you bite them and feel bad. Venomous empathy is when they bite you and you feel bad.
In the interest of using precise language, I do believe that, in the realm of all possibilities, there can conceivably be toxic forms of empathy.
Which situations can you conceive that would be made worse by all involved parties understanding each others feelings?
Some people use the terms empathy and sympathy as two levels of understanding. Sympathy as the ability to understand how someone feels and empathy as the ability to feel the way someone else feels. In that context, empathy can be crippling and a negative trait to possess.
There’s a form of empathy I, and I think some of my friends, experience by being raised by selfish parents. We’re hyper-aware of others’ feelings, dread upsetting anyone, and take personal responsibility for other peoples’ unhappiness (all of it, even if we didn’t have any influence).
There’s another form, that’s kind of like a complement to retribution and revenge. A person goes overboard trying to soothe their own empathy-inspired unhappiness that they to go absurd ends to address the source of unhappiness. Maybe like PETA, or people experiencing moral panic.
Another form that comes to mind is the mother from Requiem for a Dream - enablers. She knows her son is an addict, she knows that he’s constantly stealing her TV to sell for drug money, but she dutifully buys her TV back from the pawn shop every time, because she can’t say no to her son.
I suppose, taking drastic action to soothe one’s own empathy, and not addressing the real source of unhappiness, can be pretty toxic, especially when used to manipulate, coerce and sway others.
I think you have a misguided sense of what empathy entails. Empathy is the ability to recognize another person’s feelings and to understand how their life circumstances and experiences influence those feelings. Acting out of empathy is selfless, is motivated by a desire to help someone else. Empathy is not self-preservation or self-soothing, though there is nothing inherently wrong with preservation or soothing as motivations.
Your first example is an anxious response rooted in past trauma; you are hyperaware of the other person’s feelings, yes, but you aren’t taking their perspective into account. You’re still in your own shoes (albeit children’s shoes) and exhibiting a trained response to other’s emotions designed to de-escalate a situation you read as dangerous. That is an act of self-preservation and is motivated by a desire to redirect and defuse emotions you feel threatened by, to ensure your own safety.I don’t fault nor judge you or anyone for acting this way but those actions do not stem from empathy.
I’m not entirely sure how to interpret ‘empathy-inspired unhappiness.’ I think I’m familiar with the concept you’re aiming for; I feel a sense of injustice and unhappiness when seeing people who have been failed by society, with homeless people and their children as the most apparent example. The action I have taken to improve the lives of those who have fallen between the cracks that I perceive as motivated by empathy has been to share food with them. I don’t have much money myself and I recognize that money (in some cases) may be used to enable behaviors that are ultimately damaging to the individual, but everyone needs to eat.
The examples you gave, however, read as reactions designed to assuage personal guilt (PETA) and fear (moral panic), not as responses driven by an understanding of others feelings and history. That leads into ‘action to [self-]soothe’ - this is a selfishly motivated reaction as well. Coercion and manipulation are inherently self-serving tactics of influencing the emotions of others as well. Empathetic actions stem from desire to improve another person’s circumstances, not from a need to feel better about yourself. The mother buying her TV back from the pawn shop is a little closer to the mark, I think. While her motivations come from a place of love, however, her actions are misguided and ultimately only serve to mitigate conflict rather than improve her son’s real circumstances. The addict’s mother, the PETA fanatic, even the person reacting to a perceived fraying of morality are not (necessarily) devoid of empathy but their actions are not motivated by empathy, either. Self-preservation is instinctual, a reaction engrained by millenia of evolution and is not an inherently bad or negative emotion. Empathy requires overcoming that instinct in order to act in a way that improves the circumstances of other people.
You are not bad for trying to de-escalate or appease those around you; those reactions were taught and reinforced by people who were utterly unconcerned with anyone’s well-being but their own. Their actions lacked consideration for their victim’s feelings or the circumstances leading their victims to those feelings. Their actions were borne entirely from a selfish desire to get ahead at the expense of those around them.
Empathy tends to require some form of self-sacrifice and always requires you to (briefly) hold someone else’s interests above your own. Empathy is acting to improve someone else’s life. I refuse to believe that actions motivated by a desire to actually help those around us, even and especially at the expense of our own comfort, is toxic. Those proclaiming the toxicity of empathy have likely never experienced actual selfless empathy and those who shout the loudest against it almost always have self-interest as their core motivation.
Yeah exactly, I don’t get it either.
With “Toxic Masculinity” it’s pretty clear how masculinity - which is not a problem in itself - can become over-applied to the point where it’s damaging both to oneself and to others.
But toxic empathy? Is it really possible to care about others too much? To try and see things from someone else’s perspective too much? I feel like it really isn’t, because there can never be enough of that in the world.
Which means “toxic empathy” is genuinely nothing more than a nonsense phrase for people who don’t wish to see or hear about any viewpoint except their own.
I’m not a believer in toxic empathy, I pretty much agree with your assessment here - just going to play devil’s advocate for a sec. If a bad actor purposefully pretended to feel a certain way to elicit empathy to influence a group, that could conceivably lead to toxic empathy.
Thinking about it, essentially what the author of the article is attempting. Projection the whole way down.
Toxic masculinity has always appeared to be a typical in group/out group thing to me.
Scammers take advantage of our empathy. If the response to the scam is empathy, that doesn’t make it toxic, it makes the attempt to take advantage of it toxic, and that isn’t empathy, but a lack of it.
Couldn’t what we typically call concern trolling be a type of toxic empathy? Of course you could make an argument that concern trolling is entirely removed from empathy, but then things like toxic positivity tends to only be positive at a very surface level view.
Concern trolling is trying to hijack other people’s empathy for their own goals. It may look like empathy, but it really isn’t.
Toxic positivity, on the other hand, really is positivity, but ramped up to eleven, to the point where it becomes harmful.
there can conceivably be toxic forms of empathy.
certainly aren’t toxic when they’re based in empathy and compassion
Pick a lane? I mean no offense, but I did kinda feel like I had a stroke trying to follow your argument.
The way I see it, “toxic empathy” is self contradicting, which is a regular tactic of fascist propaganda. The whole point is to interfere with the listeners’ ability to approach their argument with reason and logic, leaving them more vulnerable to emotional manipulation.
Anyway, I’ll just go ahead and say it: no, there is no such thing as “toxic empathy”. It’s a meaningless word salad to dress their appeal to emotion up to look like some kinda of reasoned argument (but only if you don’t look to close, which of course a radical will do everything to avoid).
Toxic empathy is when you try to see the good in people when there’s no conceivable good to be found. For example, the fools who think Nazis can still be brought around to reason instead of culled.
Not really making an argument, just want to speak precisely.
Empathy used to justify or enable harmful actions is toxic. Like, say, people who use at an excuse for retribution, or people who do something harmful to soothe their own empathy, or people who enable another’s toxic activities out of empathy.
Empathy and compassion aren’t very well-defined, but I have always understood empathy to be about sharing in another’s feelings, good or bad. Compassion is a little more distanced, it’s about understanding another’s feelings and simultaneously being considerate about it.
Empathy can be very powerful, and introduce feelings and emotions into someone who doesn’t know how to deal with them well.
BTW I’m not trying to make a case against empathy, not at all. But I think about empathy and compassion a lot, and while I still want to champion them as virtues, they can be just as complex and subtle as any other human experience. I think our lack of nuanced understanding of empathy and compassion is a root cause of a lot of human problems, especially recently.
They’re SO DAMN CLOSE TO ACTUALLY BEING SELF AWARE
And yet so very far
Their understanding is asymptotic
It’s frustrating to read Christians trying to distinguish themselves from one another based on interpretations of a book while also all believing in a magical creature that lives in the clouds who will both condemn someone to an eternity of torture and provide unconditional love and acceptance.
unconditional* love
* terms and conditions apply
Depends on who you ask.
Is there a slur for christians?
christian is sufficient
and the wierd way they are called in some form like XTIANS.
These sorts? Absolutely.
My favorites:
- y’all qaeda
- talibangelicals
Christofascist is arguably both a slur and a precise, factual description
I’ll put that one in my pocket, cheers
Vanilla ISis, meal team sex.
Bible Humper
unbelievable christian
The idea that anything anyone could ever do warrants an infinite amount of suffering is crazy.
Ehh I mean some people who are irredeemably awful and would do awful things when given the chance 10 times out of 10…
Though that’s more about who they are.
There are acts which deserve severe punishment. Perhaps multiple lifetimes of the most severe punishment one can imagine.
But there is no such act that, in this finite world, by finite humans, merits infinite punishment.
Which is why traditional understandings of Hell are just distance from God in the eternal group hug.
Larry niven and Jerry pournelle did a riff on Dante’s inferno where a science fiction writter wakes up in hell with this theme. Do recommend.
Even that is a product of their upbringing. They can be fixed, it’s a matter of long time, it hey, God has all the time in the world.
But eternal damnation is more fun
Having an explanation does not magically make someone fixable.
Even if that were true, we’re literally talking about magic here. Either through therapy or wiggling his magic digits a deity should be able to fix anyone.
No, it’s literally true. Some people are irredeemable piles of trash.
Interesting how so many are voting me down while the US has a PRESIDENT on a SECOND TERM that openly admits to sexually assaulting women and ignoring many, many basic tenants of human decency…, it’s almost like you morons are completely disconnected from reality. Sad.
No one said it’s easy, and when someone has terrible concepts at the core, it might actually require some time in Hell before any change can be made. But it is possible.
Also, the other commenter rightfully stated that a deity can literally flip the worldview of anyone if they want to.
You just completely ignored a good philosophical take to make a “Trump bad” statement, which already pervades everything here and adds 0 context to the conversation.
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right wing christians, to be exact. They only see things from an evangelical perspective.
Nevermind that it’s 2000 years old
The parts they stole from older religions are much older.
While the book they put it all in is about 1500 years old.
they stole from greeks alot. oh and thier utter obsession with “the god” being the creator of other religions gods, like in shows and movies about God.(eg sandman and Supernatural(retconned in the last few seasons))
sandman
I’m pretty certain gods in Sandman work like in American Gods or Discworld, i.e., they’re created by people believing in them (and die when people stop believing). See for instance Bast, who’s surviving on a handful of old believers, if I recall correctly.
(That said I haven’t seen season 2 of the adaptation, so maybe they changed it from the books and you’re referencing that…?)
I legit felt my brain cells dying reading this!
Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trials:
“In my work with the defendants, I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
Did he conclude whether those people started without empathy or just lost it due to the things they did?
I think a good number of them have it educated out of them, by growing up in an environment where empathy is actively discouraged and portrayed as a negative trait.
There’s also conditional empathy, where you’re taught that there are certain groups to whom empathy doesn’t apply (or that empathy only applies to your group), or applies to a lesser extent (e.g., your pet dog deserves empathy — unlike the neighbours’ —, but that empathy only extends to taking it behind the shed and shooting it, not to paying for a veterinarian to take care of the minor problem it’s suffering from).
He did not. But it’s most likely both.
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This comment will probably seem tone-deaf at best and malicious at worst. I want to be clear that I am not saying people shouldn’t be empathetic. I’m not saying that empathy-based morality is a problem. I’m not saying being a bigot is okay. So what am I saying?
It’s just that yesterday I learned from the Healthy Minds program that empathy can sometimes be problematic, and that the solution is compassion.
The problem has to do with the fact that some service workers are immersed in workplaces filled with suffering. Think of nurses. Think of first-aid responders. These people constantly see human suffering. And if these service workers empathize with the suffering, they themselves can suffer immensely.
The solution, the Healthy Minds program claims, is to not be empathetic, but compassionate. The difference is that empathy, at its core, is about understanding and feeling what others are thinking and feeling. However, compassion is about understanding others enough to be able to understand their difficulties, and (crucially) wishing them well. Empathy over-identifies with suffering and compassion believes suffering is the current reality but improvements are possible.
If you are interested in reading about this, it’s ironic that the Wikipedia article is titled “Compassion fatigue”. I suppose that the Healthy Minds app uses different definitions than the Wikipedia article.
Anyway, I will do what the program suggests and wish you all the best!
You oversimplified. The problem is not empathy on it’s own, but that’s how you worded it. The problem is life is fucked up.
That sounds like an oversimplification.
Religion. The only mental illness not in the DSM.
When one person believes a delusion, it’s schizophrenia. When millions do, it’s religion
I often wonder if the combination of schizophrenia and heat stroke explains why so many religions started in deserts.
that’s… wow. I had never considered that before!
Don’t forget to add the fascism subtype.
Literally every religion is in that subtype, so it’s a bit redundant.
Ehhh they’re two circles. Not wholly separate, not wholly the same. If it were a venn diagram, it’d be two circles with a lot of overlap. So… two distinct groups that merely share a lot of similarities in many cases.
All the genocides, wars, slavery, and ordained atrocity from every brand of faith kind of makes me feel otherwise.
The not-shark makes a valid point
Them both being responsible for some of the terrible things from history does not magically make them equivalent in all aspects.
Believing in the Easter Bunny also requires one to ignore reality but that doesn’t make it equivalent to religion, either.
Nobody ever ran a totalitarian regime, started a war, caused a genocide, or justified rape and slavery due to the easter bunny.
Also, religion is tantamount to believing in the easter bunny.
You cite several things that differentiate them, but then say they’re the same… Are you sure you consider yourself self-aware?
You never heard about the sex cults and weed smokers.
Sadly, this is a thing.
(Note: I am not encouraging one to read the link.)
Witnessing to Liberals by Ron Rhodes
God’s primary attribute is said to be love. His holiness, judgment, and wrath are practically ignored. Thus, it is not surprising that liberal Christians hold out the hope of immortality for all people. The idea that any will spend eternity in hell is rejected.
The writing spends a lot of time arguing against the “mischaracterizations of evangelicals”, while mischaracterizing “liberal Christians”.
Such a horrible out world view.
(I don’t care to find out what this detestable person has to say about Atheists.)
The idea that any will spend eternity in hell is rejected.
Hell isn’t a scriptural concept, it was taken and evolved from Hellenism. While I’m deconstructed, I know several “leftist Christians” that reject most modern evangelical dogma as “unscriptural.” I agree with them, but there is no ethical justification for things like “God told the Israelites to genocide an entire people, including babies.” At the end of the day, even if you agree with Jesus’ humanist teaching, the Bible is full to the brim with “God” ostensibly telling people to do horrible, unjust, repugnant things.
The hell everyone thinks of was basically just biblical fan fiction.
Most people’s understanding of Satan and Hell is more from Milton and Dante than from the Bible. With the “Rapture”, it’s all Tim LaHeye, Hal Lindsey and basement church videos regurgitation of John Darby.
There absolutely is support for the existence of hell in scripture. Of course, the bible is constructed in such a way that you can use the contradicting passages to support nearly any viewpoint you want.
A large amount of the early christianity is Hellenistic, hence the influences.
There isn’t. Every single word that gets translated to “hell” in English has a different and specific meaning in the source documents… usually “grave” but sometimes “Gehenna” which was an actual place with bad connotations, and “Hades” in the context of a parable, being literally the Greek/Hellenist underworld.
Jews, including Jesus, did not believe in an afterlife, per se. Instead, there were two schools of thought. First was that you get one life die, that’s it. This was espoused by the ruling, priestly class. Second, and what Jesus literally espoused, was that at the end of time, everyone would be resurrected and judged. Those judged righteous would then be granted a new life in a newly created place and everyone else disposed of, permanently dead.
There is text in the bible referring to unworthy people suffering after their deaths.
That it was not literally called “hell” in the original text is a distraction.
There is not. Not in an afterlife, at least. You may be thinking of the last judgement, which is part of the “resurrection of the dead” that I previously mentioned. That’s the part with the “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Luke 16:24 is absolutely in the afterlife.
That is actually a parable, just as fictitious as the one that comes immediately before it. It utilizes Hellenist terms and imagery for the benefit of an audience familiar with those concepts. The parable is set in Hades, the literal greek underworld. The point of the parable is to drive home the hopelessness for hoarders of wealth, as the more someone has, the more is expected of them.
Against my best judgement, I read the whole thing. (You practically begged me to!) He’s just offering incredibly disingenuous “talking points” for “liberal Christians” that are actually things you might say to an atheist. The whole thing just exists to characterize non-conservative Christians as fake Christians.
100% agree. It is fully repugnant.
Christ: Please be kind.
Christians: Empathy is toxic.
Christ: Please love thy neighbour.
Christians: Go back to Mexico!
Also jesus: “I come not to bring peace, but a sword”
Christ: didn’t exist
Christians: This is what Jesus said and meant I know for a fact!!!
there are plenty of kind Christians who are absolute pieces of shit
Exactly, their kindness only extends the people they know who look like them.
Kindness and empathy are very different things. It is easy to have either and not the other. Empathy is insight. Kindness is behavior and disposition. I have met many people who prioritize kindness but do not have the insight to do perform it in a meaningful way. I have known people who are emotionally insightful and even experience the feelings of others, but for whom kindness is not a priority.
Why do people associate the two inherently. It’s like some sort of rationalization fallacy that insight leads to benevolence. There are people who use empathy with malice.
I see people saying bigots just don’t understand others enough so that’s why they hate. So if they just understand then the hate will go away. Some of them know very well. They use that knowledge to be more hateful.
There’s a dark side to social media and the internet in general. People have been using it to get insight into different facets of humanity. Some have been using it to study how to be more effective bigots. I noticed this after lurking subreddits for so many years.
This is sort of tangential but I’ve found these types of sociopathic people on mental health subreddits. They prey on the vulnerable. Those individuals will dump on anyone who will listen. Quite frankly there are malicious who are stalking around subs like that. They prey on and nudge those individuals further down into darkness.
Those predators have evoked empathy on an individual which is mistaken for kindness. So they think that person is on their side. How can you tell an individual they might want to reconsider the things this person or people have been whispering in their ear.
I suspect this happens on other places too like LGBT+ and racial minority subreddits. Though it’s more difficult to understand from the outside. The subreddits for mental health / personal issues is more universally relatable.
We didn’t evolve to have a 24 hour news cycle, with 8 billion people someone will always be having a bad day and at some point you run out of fucks to give.
There is a difference between “I don’t have the energy to care about everyone” and “empathy is toxic”.
Yep! Toxic empathy is the main reason, besides Global Warming that I decided right-wing isn’t for me.
This value formed the base of what would become the antithesis to my previous beliefs.
What is toxic empathy…?
BE Right-wingers believe Empathy is toxic basically. Empathy was important for me. So I questioned the whole honor nonsense, what is it for? I speedrun de-radicalizing myself in my teenhood.
