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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.
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.
Charlie Kuck dropped out of college after 1 semester and it shows.
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.
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!
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.
I thought the quote was bad, the full version is almost worse.
We go from “mean” to “mean and stupid”.
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.
Ok. Hear me out.
We lock the doors of cpac after lacing the water with mdma.
Afterwards we let them out. Those that survived will know empathy, the rest … well good riddance I suppose.
So he has neither empathy nor sympathy…
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?
American Christ ig
I found Cheesus Christ on a Cracker
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
This denies free will.
explain
It’s your brain performing that function
Performing a task is not the same as a performance but you know that.
