The 800 pound gorilla sitting in the corner during any discussion of empathy is the fact that empathy is the emotion that fuels the sadist. Without the ability to derive some emotional feedback from the subject of their action whether an innocent or a masochist the sadist cannot function.
I think that the respondents to that Quora thread overwhelmingly demonstrated their own sadistic streak which of course can't be sated with a psychopath as the emotional feedback isn't really there
Wow, you have talked to some really rude and stupid people. They obviously lack empathy for anyone not like them.
Having empathy SHOULD be a feeling that connects you too someone's pain or sorrow and helps you too put yourself in their place and try to help them. Maybe it's just me but I never realized before that people could choose where their empathy is or is not placed. That was quite an eye opener for me. I'm so sorry people talk to you that way. It's unfortunate that the internet seems to bring the worst out in people. SHAME ON THEM!
I think that fear has taken them over and they are acting out because of it.
Well I guess I should say I hope that's the issue, but again I can hear my son's voice in my head saying I give humans too much credit.
Empathy is suppose to be a tool to benefit others by it's use. Well that's how I see it. They obviously have no clue how to use it.
I can see your thinking here completely though. Wow (shaking my head in disbelief, just wow).
"It wasn’t fair when you did it either. Unless you want that to be your future, it’s time to come back to a logical way of weighing the world, and leave your emotions at the door."
Good that you posted this here as well as on Quora. I had thought little about empathy until you began discussing it there some time ago. It made me realise that I never thought it as an especially useful emotion because my own is is kinda messed up (there are reasons) and inconsistent and erratic. It can be overwhelming or entirely absent, with no obvious pattern. So is a poor prompt for conduct in those situations where empathy is appropriate, or else something that causes me uneccesary pain in situations where it really shouldn't. I had no choice but to 'go cognitive', and it took a while.
Feb 2, 2022·edited Feb 2, 2022Liked by Athena Walker
Look at our closest living relative. Chimpanzees are known for their lack of restraint in the use of violence. They compete for territory and resources. During the Gonbe chimpanzee war, one troop wiped out another and took all of that territory for itself.
These are the conditions under which both empathy and tribalism evolved in our ancestors. It was useful for our ancestors to have empathy for those who are related or who are part of your tribe and thus useful against the others. On that same token, the desire to destroy the outsiders was useful as it could secure resources for the tribe. And so, both the empathetic and the violent genes were passed on. From the perspective of survival, a tribe should be tolerant enough to trade with other tribes and use them to their advantage, but still intolerant enough to murder them all if there was a benefit in doing so.
Skip forward to today. Our science and our economy are so interconnected that basically all nations and ethnic groups are useful to our ultimate expansion. But we aren't wired for perpetual peace.
The internet was supposed to connect us, but many online spaces serve as echo chambers that amplify tribal fervor. Google and other tech giants send you recommendations based on what you've previously viewed, something that keeps people in their echo chambers.
Extending our identities and our tribe to encompass all of humanity is the only way I see to move past this, and due to the rapid rate of cultural exchange, we've made some progress towards this. There will probably always be an "other," but we can at least move closer to that goal.
There is one genuinely useful aspect of tribalism, that being that it can serve as a motivator to band together and fight back when the other tribe decides come to wipe you out.
Psychopaths are the one group that can never be a threat as a group (to say nothing about them as individuals) as psychopaths lack the emotions necessary for tribalism.
Individually, you are strong (maybe the strongest), but collectively, you are weak. Because you are weak, you are an easy target for those looking for one. You don't even fight back against a collective attack. Well, you Athena, are the only psychopath I've seen fighting back. I suppose that even without a shared identity, you cognitively recognize the threat. And besides, it seems to line up with your interests.
The paradox of intolerance states "if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant." I fear this may come to pass.
Whenever the opposing group specifically wants to eliminate you as a group and is using the levers of power to do so, well, at that point you are no longer required to tolerate them, and should do whatever is necessary to stop them. Though, acting out of emotions that were developed for ancient tribal warfare are not likely to yield the desired results, so this should be done in a more intelligent way. Which unfortunately just isn't what's happening.
Open minds, do in fact, Open Doors and give us a better picture of the world we live in. My only regret is that neither I, nor the person I was invested in, knew about psychopathy. Both of us would have benefitted (each other) greatly had we known.
It sort of comes to the Machiavellian question of whether stability is more important that morality in a leader. I think some people would be concerned about the risk of corruption. Assuming a psychopath’s goal was to stay in power, it would theoretically be in their interests to set up a very authoritarian system, because that would help them maintain power.
I suppose that this applies to NTs, too, but I feel like they might be more likely to play by the rules. Is that accurate?
I can’t see any reason a psychopath would want to be a leader, though.
Proper empathy is not a favoured trait in the current social environment. If you try to stay in the middle of debates, and listen to both sides, they both end up hating you. That probably doesn’t bother psychopaths, but it can be quite distressing for NTs.
It baffles how the user somehow assumes they know what other people feel.
My expressions often don't match my feelings. I have dealt with empathetic friends who in problematic situations would side with the person who would show more emotion. In some of those cases, the person who I was having trouble with grew up and admired they were behaving like toxic self-entitled brats. They would put so much pressure on me, because I was trying to express myself rationally and figure out solutions that would work best for both or deny some entitlement of them over my life.
I could be anxious or distressed, I could be sad or emotionally wounded. A lot of times it wasn't until I started to feel tears streaming down my face that they would realise that maybe their emotional empathy wasn't going both sides.
With that input as a kid, I tried to emulate what others were doing and how they expressed emotions, I would read descriptions of which muscles twitched, how their voices changed (try to keep the speech slow when I was trying to express I was sad, giving it some more impulsity to seem more lively when I was somewhat happy). In the moments I knew my expressions didn't communicate my emotions and it was getting me trouble, the "acting" kicked right in. You might imagine it often didn't go as well as I might making it sound because from the moment I would also use my features to communicate the emotion, some would call that move manipulative and deceiving. I attempted really hard to also explain the reason for those types of behaviour but those some would not seem to care.
I am glad I am an adult and have more chances of looking for people who actually take me seriously and I don't fall in the pitfall of despair that was the gap between NTs and I.
A psychologist diagnosed me with high functioning autism when I turned 19. There is probably more to me. I have a lot of maladaptations to undo.
Another thing that is interesting and seldomly mentioned is how having the mechanisms for emotional empathy is a recquirement for sadism or how some helpers prolong the suffering of the victims needlessly so they might feel good about themselves. The book "the dark sides of empathy" is an interesting read for those who might be interested in more. I think Athena has mentioned it a couple of times.
You are completely right in your replies and I agree with every word you said (and it comes from a hyper-empath - or at least a guy who once was an empath).
The thing is, empathy, like cognition, is made up of 3 distinct parts:
1) Affective (emotional) empathy
2) Cognitive (perspective taking) empathy
3) Egocentric empathy/empirical empathy.
Naturally, the if you're a psychopath, you're lacking in the emotional subset, thus, in affective empathy by default.
However, people only need 2 types of empathy in order for the 3rd one to emerge itself, so even a psychopath (with you being an obvious example) can be more empathetic than a hyper-empathetical person who wields only 1 type of empathy (most often it's egocentrical when Neurotypicals and Autism are concerned, but if it's cognitive only, in that case I believe the diagnosis gets a name - narcissistic personality disorder :) I think it's pretty logical because narcissists do not rely on their personal experiences, because their self-esteem is low and they would much rather compare themselves to others, thus, relying on the cognitive empathy instead).
The egocentrical empathy is a given - everyone has that one built in (except the NPD patients who don't rely on it) - It's basically a system of projections based on personal experience. It's the first empathy we develop while growing up.
Next comes the affective - provided that you have neurological circuits for that available - which is basically "feeling" what others feel, and letting that influence how YOU feel. And that is what most of these cases you end up arguing with have developed highly, naively thinking that it is sufficient to be "good"; "empathetic"; or any other BS thrown around in their environments.
And finally, cognitive empathy (it took me 25 years or so to develop this one, even though I've wielded the affective and egocentrical ones pretty much whole life - so I guess it's not that quick to emerge, but emergence is what it eventually does, sooner or later) which enables us to view things from OTHER's perspective (or if you wanna simpligy things, cognitive empathy in theory would be equal to tuning into other person's egocentric empathy, but in practise, we just come nearer and nearer to doing that based on our knowledge of that other person).
And IMO that pretty much covers it all. In the hands of someone like you, I have no doubts, many other things can be inferred from such a point of view.
I'm trying to give you a compliment while at the same time pointing you to the existence of a 3rd variable (just like I did yesterday in a reply about emotions vs logic dichotomy, adding experience to the equation). It's always 3 (when it's not 4 xD) - Tesla wasn't obsessed with that number for no reason.
If you find these replies useful in your thinking, as much as I found your posts useful in mine, we might do well to research into things together sometimes :)
The 800 pound gorilla sitting in the corner during any discussion of empathy is the fact that empathy is the emotion that fuels the sadist. Without the ability to derive some emotional feedback from the subject of their action whether an innocent or a masochist the sadist cannot function.
I think that the respondents to that Quora thread overwhelmingly demonstrated their own sadistic streak which of course can't be sated with a psychopath as the emotional feedback isn't really there
Wow, you have talked to some really rude and stupid people. They obviously lack empathy for anyone not like them.
Having empathy SHOULD be a feeling that connects you too someone's pain or sorrow and helps you too put yourself in their place and try to help them. Maybe it's just me but I never realized before that people could choose where their empathy is or is not placed. That was quite an eye opener for me. I'm so sorry people talk to you that way. It's unfortunate that the internet seems to bring the worst out in people. SHAME ON THEM!
I think that fear has taken them over and they are acting out because of it.
Well I guess I should say I hope that's the issue, but again I can hear my son's voice in my head saying I give humans too much credit.
Empathy is suppose to be a tool to benefit others by it's use. Well that's how I see it. They obviously have no clue how to use it.
I can see your thinking here completely though. Wow (shaking my head in disbelief, just wow).
"It wasn’t fair when you did it either. Unless you want that to be your future, it’s time to come back to a logical way of weighing the world, and leave your emotions at the door."
How do you suggest we do this?
Good that you posted this here as well as on Quora. I had thought little about empathy until you began discussing it there some time ago. It made me realise that I never thought it as an especially useful emotion because my own is is kinda messed up (there are reasons) and inconsistent and erratic. It can be overwhelming or entirely absent, with no obvious pattern. So is a poor prompt for conduct in those situations where empathy is appropriate, or else something that causes me uneccesary pain in situations where it really shouldn't. I had no choice but to 'go cognitive', and it took a while.
Look at our closest living relative. Chimpanzees are known for their lack of restraint in the use of violence. They compete for territory and resources. During the Gonbe chimpanzee war, one troop wiped out another and took all of that territory for itself.
These are the conditions under which both empathy and tribalism evolved in our ancestors. It was useful for our ancestors to have empathy for those who are related or who are part of your tribe and thus useful against the others. On that same token, the desire to destroy the outsiders was useful as it could secure resources for the tribe. And so, both the empathetic and the violent genes were passed on. From the perspective of survival, a tribe should be tolerant enough to trade with other tribes and use them to their advantage, but still intolerant enough to murder them all if there was a benefit in doing so.
Skip forward to today. Our science and our economy are so interconnected that basically all nations and ethnic groups are useful to our ultimate expansion. But we aren't wired for perpetual peace.
The internet was supposed to connect us, but many online spaces serve as echo chambers that amplify tribal fervor. Google and other tech giants send you recommendations based on what you've previously viewed, something that keeps people in their echo chambers.
Extending our identities and our tribe to encompass all of humanity is the only way I see to move past this, and due to the rapid rate of cultural exchange, we've made some progress towards this. There will probably always be an "other," but we can at least move closer to that goal.
There is one genuinely useful aspect of tribalism, that being that it can serve as a motivator to band together and fight back when the other tribe decides come to wipe you out.
Psychopaths are the one group that can never be a threat as a group (to say nothing about them as individuals) as psychopaths lack the emotions necessary for tribalism.
Individually, you are strong (maybe the strongest), but collectively, you are weak. Because you are weak, you are an easy target for those looking for one. You don't even fight back against a collective attack. Well, you Athena, are the only psychopath I've seen fighting back. I suppose that even without a shared identity, you cognitively recognize the threat. And besides, it seems to line up with your interests.
The paradox of intolerance states "if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant." I fear this may come to pass.
Whenever the opposing group specifically wants to eliminate you as a group and is using the levers of power to do so, well, at that point you are no longer required to tolerate them, and should do whatever is necessary to stop them. Though, acting out of emotions that were developed for ancient tribal warfare are not likely to yield the desired results, so this should be done in a more intelligent way. Which unfortunately just isn't what's happening.
A lot of those questions and comments can’t be serious, right? A lot of it seems like trolling
Open minds, do in fact, Open Doors and give us a better picture of the world we live in. My only regret is that neither I, nor the person I was invested in, knew about psychopathy. Both of us would have benefitted (each other) greatly had we known.
It sort of comes to the Machiavellian question of whether stability is more important that morality in a leader. I think some people would be concerned about the risk of corruption. Assuming a psychopath’s goal was to stay in power, it would theoretically be in their interests to set up a very authoritarian system, because that would help them maintain power.
I suppose that this applies to NTs, too, but I feel like they might be more likely to play by the rules. Is that accurate?
I can’t see any reason a psychopath would want to be a leader, though.
Proper empathy is not a favoured trait in the current social environment. If you try to stay in the middle of debates, and listen to both sides, they both end up hating you. That probably doesn’t bother psychopaths, but it can be quite distressing for NTs.
It baffles how the user somehow assumes they know what other people feel.
My expressions often don't match my feelings. I have dealt with empathetic friends who in problematic situations would side with the person who would show more emotion. In some of those cases, the person who I was having trouble with grew up and admired they were behaving like toxic self-entitled brats. They would put so much pressure on me, because I was trying to express myself rationally and figure out solutions that would work best for both or deny some entitlement of them over my life.
I could be anxious or distressed, I could be sad or emotionally wounded. A lot of times it wasn't until I started to feel tears streaming down my face that they would realise that maybe their emotional empathy wasn't going both sides.
With that input as a kid, I tried to emulate what others were doing and how they expressed emotions, I would read descriptions of which muscles twitched, how their voices changed (try to keep the speech slow when I was trying to express I was sad, giving it some more impulsity to seem more lively when I was somewhat happy). In the moments I knew my expressions didn't communicate my emotions and it was getting me trouble, the "acting" kicked right in. You might imagine it often didn't go as well as I might making it sound because from the moment I would also use my features to communicate the emotion, some would call that move manipulative and deceiving. I attempted really hard to also explain the reason for those types of behaviour but those some would not seem to care.
I am glad I am an adult and have more chances of looking for people who actually take me seriously and I don't fall in the pitfall of despair that was the gap between NTs and I.
A psychologist diagnosed me with high functioning autism when I turned 19. There is probably more to me. I have a lot of maladaptations to undo.
Another thing that is interesting and seldomly mentioned is how having the mechanisms for emotional empathy is a recquirement for sadism or how some helpers prolong the suffering of the victims needlessly so they might feel good about themselves. The book "the dark sides of empathy" is an interesting read for those who might be interested in more. I think Athena has mentioned it a couple of times.
*its
You are completely right in your replies and I agree with every word you said (and it comes from a hyper-empath - or at least a guy who once was an empath).
The thing is, empathy, like cognition, is made up of 3 distinct parts:
1) Affective (emotional) empathy
2) Cognitive (perspective taking) empathy
3) Egocentric empathy/empirical empathy.
Naturally, the if you're a psychopath, you're lacking in the emotional subset, thus, in affective empathy by default.
However, people only need 2 types of empathy in order for the 3rd one to emerge itself, so even a psychopath (with you being an obvious example) can be more empathetic than a hyper-empathetical person who wields only 1 type of empathy (most often it's egocentrical when Neurotypicals and Autism are concerned, but if it's cognitive only, in that case I believe the diagnosis gets a name - narcissistic personality disorder :) I think it's pretty logical because narcissists do not rely on their personal experiences, because their self-esteem is low and they would much rather compare themselves to others, thus, relying on the cognitive empathy instead).
The egocentrical empathy is a given - everyone has that one built in (except the NPD patients who don't rely on it) - It's basically a system of projections based on personal experience. It's the first empathy we develop while growing up.
Next comes the affective - provided that you have neurological circuits for that available - which is basically "feeling" what others feel, and letting that influence how YOU feel. And that is what most of these cases you end up arguing with have developed highly, naively thinking that it is sufficient to be "good"; "empathetic"; or any other BS thrown around in their environments.
And finally, cognitive empathy (it took me 25 years or so to develop this one, even though I've wielded the affective and egocentrical ones pretty much whole life - so I guess it's not that quick to emerge, but emergence is what it eventually does, sooner or later) which enables us to view things from OTHER's perspective (or if you wanna simpligy things, cognitive empathy in theory would be equal to tuning into other person's egocentric empathy, but in practise, we just come nearer and nearer to doing that based on our knowledge of that other person).
And IMO that pretty much covers it all. In the hands of someone like you, I have no doubts, many other things can be inferred from such a point of view.
I'm trying to give you a compliment while at the same time pointing you to the existence of a 3rd variable (just like I did yesterday in a reply about emotions vs logic dichotomy, adding experience to the equation). It's always 3 (when it's not 4 xD) - Tesla wasn't obsessed with that number for no reason.
If you find these replies useful in your thinking, as much as I found your posts useful in mine, we might do well to research into things together sometimes :)