The Limits of Empathy!

[Gerald]

We are surrounded by people trying to make the world a better place. Peace activists bring enemies together so they can get to know one another and feel each other’s pain. School leaders try to attract a diverse set of students so each can understand what it’s like to walk in the others’ shoes. Religious and community groups try to cultivate empathy.

As Steven Pinker writes in his mind-altering new book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” we are living in the middle of an “empathy craze.” There are shelfloads of books about it: “The Age of Empathy,” “The Empathy Gap,” “The Empathic Civilization,” “Teaching Empathy.” There’s even a brain theory that we have mirror neurons in our heads that enable us to feel what’s in other people’s heads and that these neurons lead to sympathetic care and moral action.

There’s a lot of truth to all this. We do have mirror neurons in our heads. People who are empathetic are more sensitive to the perspectives and sufferings of others. They are more likely to make compassionate moral judgments.

The problem comes when we try to turn feeling into action. Empathy makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.

In the early days of the Holocaust, Nazi prison guards sometimes wept as they mowed down Jewish women and children, but they still did it. Subjects in the famous Milgram experiments felt anguish as they appeared to administer electric shocks to other research subjects, but they pressed on because some guy in a lab coat told them to.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/op...me&ref=general


Note: September 29, 2011

[Castout]

There's only 2 ideologies in this world ever, good or evil. All others are just superficial.

Each person needs to choose which to follow.

Now I'll tell you something that most people haven't realized yet many others have. We are all connected, all of us. Often many of us are already reacting to one another intention or feeling before they get expressed into words or without any sensory perception. The thing is to most people this happens subconsciously, so natural that they tend to dismiss it as nothing while it is not nothing. They didn't even realize it sort to speak.

Empathy can even mean to literally feel what other people are feeling! Simply because consciousness doesn't stand alone nor separated from one another. Consciousness is not restricted to the person and at the same time it is not a signal. Thus consciousness can be accessed beyond the restriction of distance. Empathy works the same too that one can feel other people beyond the limit of distance. One only needs to be aware of them. For example live television.

The whole things open up many questions than answers about our fundamental existing beliefs of consciousness and about the fundamental of all life. And the revelation and the consequences realized will be earth shattering and revolutionary no less.

These things have been taken notice by many scientists, mostly from the quantum science. Yet that science is merely trying to explain a phenomenon already known by others who live it. It's looking for answer to an observation albeit not a generally known fact.

As for me I dream of a world where there is no secret. A world that has no place for liars. A world which knows everybody, personally when they just have met or even when they have never met. This will certainly be a nightmare to many many people but if mankind are to survive the challenges ahead the only way is to move forward and create a whole new more advance society. A society based on the realization that everybody else is me. I call it EVOLUTION. And I believe it is inevitable. Wars may be fought to suppress it but ultimately mankind have to evolve. The path of regression is not only inferior but it will lead to total destruction of mankind. Chaos and even functional chaos cannot be expected to result in anything than impending destruction of mankind and the planet. Regression has no future. It will only buy time before evolution takes place or before destruction comes.

The limits of empathy are decisions and actions, all of which comes from desire and that comes from the human heart. If they all are coherent the limits will be a heaven in the world. The regressed cannot understand the value of good. Time and death will swallow them up in numbers. Death is mankind greatest ally. A brilliant solution to mankind fallibility.

[CaptainMattJ.]

Originally Posted by Castout

There's only 2 ideologies in this world ever, good or evil. All others are just superficial.

Each person needs to choose which to follow.

Now I'll tell you something that most people haven't realized yet many others have. We are all connected, all of us. Often many of us are already reacting to one another intention or feeling before they get expressed into words or without any sensory perception. The thing is to most people this happens subconsciously, so natural that they tend to dismiss it as nothing while it is not nothing. They didn't even realize it sort to speak.

Empathy can even mean to literally feel what other people are feeling! Simply because consciousness doesn't stand alone nor separated from one another. Consciousness is not restricted to the person and at the same time it is not a signal. Thus consciousness can be accessed beyond the restriction of distance. Empathy works the same too that one can feel other people beyond the limit of distance. One only needs to be aware of them. For example live television.

The whole things open up many questions than answers about our fundamental existing beliefs of consciousness and about the fundamental of all life. And the revelation and the consequences realized will be earth shattering and revolutionary no less.

These things have been taken notice by many scientists, mostly from the quantum science. Yet that science is merely trying to explain a phenomenon already known by others who live it. It's looking for answer to an observation albeit not a generally known fact.

As for me I dream of a world where there is no secret. A world that has no place for liars. A world which knows everybody, personally when they just have met or even when they have never met. This will certainly be a nightmare to many many people but if mankind are to survive the challenges ahead the only way is to move forward and create a whole new more advance society. A society based on the realization that everybody else is me. I call it EVOLUTION. And I believe it is inevitable. Wars may be fought to suppress it but ultimately mankind have to evolve. The path of regression is not only inferior but it will lead to total destruction of mankind. Chaos and even functional chaos cannot be expected to result in anything than impending destruction of mankind and the planet. Regression has no future. It will only buy time before evolution takes place or before destruction comes.

The limits of empathy are decisions and actions, all of which comes from desire and that comes from the human heart. If they all are coherent the limits will be a heaven in the world. The regressed cannot understand the value of good. Time and death will swallow them up in numbers. Death is mankind greatest ally. A brilliant solution to mankind fallibility.

mankind is, and always will be falliable and broken.

we simply cant evolve in such ways as to develop a more neurological connection with one another.

you want to see the good in people, and the ideal behaviors of people, but as terrible as it is, people are never going to resolve these problems.

There will always be killing. there will always be violence, rebellion, greed, lies, adultery, ect. peace activists are wasting their breath, even though their cause is just, because the only thing that could make us put down our arms is something that will threaten us all. something like an asteroid. And if we survive it? A termporary peace would ensue as long as possible, but eventually there will be more violence.

And lies and greed by those few ruling the many, not to mention the lies and adultery that ensue in the average person's life.

sucks to come to such a realization. it just sucks.

But, this is what we live with. we must deal with it. We must make the best out of the situation, and strive to find the few people who your can pour you love, trust, and kindness into.

[Castout]

Originally Posted by CaptainMattJ.

mankind is, and always will be falliable and broken.

we simply cant evolve in such ways as to develop a more neurological connection with one another.

you want to see the good in people, and the ideal behaviors of people, but as terrible as it is, people are never going to resolve these problems.

There will always be killing. there will always be violence, rebellion, greed, lies, adultery, ect. peace activists are wasting their breath, even though their cause is just, because the only thing that could make us put down our arms is something that will threaten us all. something like an asteroid. And if we survive it? A termporary peace would ensue as long as possible, but eventually there will be more violence.

And lies and greed by those few ruling the many, not to mention the lies and adultery that ensue in the average person's life.

sucks to come to such a realization. it just sucks.

But, this is what we live with. we must deal with it. We must make the best out of the situation, and strive to find the few people who your can pour you love, trust, and kindness into.

Well I didn't mean neurological connection at all. I mean non physical non biological connection. Aha, something new to you.

True that men are fallible, foolishly selfish and whose foolishness knows no bounds.

I believe mankind has the capacity to be good. It's just that mankind has seldom been put under the circumstances to choose. A long drawn out crisis or emergency situation would force people to choose and live to see their consequences. All I'm saying enlightenment often comes after a period of darkness and evil. Without the persecution of evil people will be grey, undecided and in doubts. Once people realize the true nature between good and evil they will realize they have to make a stand.
It's like people who are aware of evil spirits are more likely to be drawn to seek God. Without knowledge of the unseen and or evil people will assume there's no God.

[heartc]

Originally Posted by Castout

Once people realize the true nature between good and evil they will realize they have to make a stand.
It's like people who are aware of evil spirits are more likely to be drawn to seek God. Without knowledge of the unseen and or evil people will assume there's no God.

Which God? From previous entries I will assume you are referring to the Abrahamic God in the Christian flavor. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Assuming further that this God

- created ALL things
- knows all things in advance

why did he create Satan?

[Castout]

Originally Posted by heartc

Which God? From previous entries I will assume you are referring to the Abrahamic God in the Christian flavor. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Assuming further that this God

- created ALL things
- knows all things in advance

why did he create Satan?

One true God, the God of all, the creator of all and every realm. The living Lord God who I have seen (albeit its glory) and who answered my prayers and showed me the true nature of death and more.

The thing is for every creature they are endowed with free will. I have never seen satan(unless evil spirit counts as satan or devil which is not) but it is said it was an Angel before his fall from grace.

You see satan decided to be satan on his own will. The same with people who choose evil than good. The created sufferings caused are not God's fault. They are the direct result of man's actions and decisions. If God can be faulted then He is not holy and if He is not holy all things will not submit to His will, but all things submit as I have witnessed.

I believe God doesn't know things in advance. God knows everything before everything even began in the beginning. The end is known even before it started. But that's my expression of faith alone. In practice it is seen as if God knew things in advance indeed. That is an expression of my experience.

why did he create Satan?

Satan actually lived in Heaven as head of all music, because he fell into the trap of pride before God, he could no longer stand in Gods Presence and had to leave. (Unofficial version)

Hmm another atheist who hates anything God

No man can be an Atheist merely by wishing it so: Napoleon

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Castout

There's only 2 ideologies in this world ever, good or evil.

As soon as you come up with a universal unbiased definition of these terms, I hope you will share it with the rest of the world.

[Skybird]

People do not necessarily do something good (for which they may be perceived as being empathically acting) becasue it is "good, but because it makes them feel good themselves.

And yesterday or the day before a short article caught my attentiuon in a German newspaper, an empirical study done by a German university in cooperation with a British university and Germany's biggest serious online partner agency, basing on a dataset of 200,000 entries. They say the empirical finding is overwhelming that religions do not make people feel good and more optimistic and "safe" in life, but thast people may feel like that indeed if they are in the company of other people sharing their views. And these views can be religious of this or that kind, or completely areligious. It is about the shared opinion, the similiarity of the other.

And when you see somebody jumping into the water to rescue somebody drowning - why does he do that: is it due to empathy or due to a "phobia" of seeing somebody dying, or is it because the rescuer knows the drowning person is a rich multimillionaire who can pay him a fat reward, or is the rescuer hoping to collect some good karma or some heavnly cash hat will help him to pass the gate to poaradise once he has died?

And from my experiences of having been in so many therapy training sessions when I studied psychology, and having heared so many students and psychologists and social helpers: I would claim that many who will be seen as helpful or empathic, in fact are just acting in conformity with this or that form of deamnds expected from that, namely expectations that in a way could be seen as politically correctness issues, and since they are not aware of that they fall under the rule of such demands and then obey it's dogma more or less unconditionally. After I got my diploma and worked - for free - iun several projects for some time, I quit psychology for several reasons, idealistic and pragmatic reasons - and I have my reasons why I never have wept a single tear about that decision.

Beyond that, hjaving seen some bits of the world and having the better part of my statistical life expectancy behind me, I would never ever claim again - like I did as a late teen interested in Buddhism - that man in principle is good and a "creature of light". I think you can trust and place your money on the darkness also being part of man always showing up in this way or the other, and so I only believe in some good in some people.

Everything in the world seems to be dualistic, andf the older I get, the more I realise how far the valdity of that claim indeed goes. Look up, and you define by that: down; say "good" and realise that only has a meaning when you define "bad"; construct something and see it falling apart sooner or later; what exists, will seize to exist; where nothing seems to have been, suddenly something appears; every action has reaction and what force you inflict inevitably returns.

One should be careful to deal and to think in absolutes - especially when aiming at terms like "good", "well", "social", "just" - and also this "empathy". These terms often can - and do - bring out the worst in man.

Now, should I go and collect some Dr. House quotes about the good and empathic in man...?