They gave themselves away in 2009 with the War on Empathy

[IDemo]

Remember the Conservative attacks on the very concept of empathy during the Sonia Sotomayor nomination? Obama had stated "I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions." You'd have thought he had just described a criminal quality in using the word 'empathy'. It's about walking in another's shoes, understanding that we do not exist in a bubble, and that the greater good of society is served by respecting and protecting all of the individuals it includes.

The concept of empathy appears alien to them, something polite Americans don't discuss, much less embrace. That should be chilling, but with every "let him die!" moment, it appears to be de rigueur for the modern(sic) Republican. And it has driven their politics into a zero-sum game of Us versus Them, even though the large number of Us here doesn't comprehend that they're being used by Them. Any legislation, action or speech which acknowledges the plight of the unemployed, ethnic minorities, LGBT, non-1%'ers in general, is anathema. And this utter lack of empathy is applauded wildly by the increasingly unbalanced Right.

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Apathy is an art form now.

[Kalidurga]

2. Yep

which is why I find myself moving farther and farther to the left. I won't even call myself progressive anymore cause that isn't really left enough. I am becoming a left left wing liberal. I wish that I could have come to the conclusions I have had, by other means. But, when the RW moon bats speak and make all these draconian laws, then it become quite clear that any position I held that was simpatico with them, was dead wrong. So, then I have to do some reexamining of the issue and eat my peas and live with the embarrassment of having been wrong.

[WingDinger]

3. Trust in the FREE MARKET, has saved them from judgment for their sociopathy.

They are just trying to make us all rich. Honest. When in reality, they care not about anyones success but their own. In fact, disparity on wealth, in relation to others, is how success is judged by them. The greater the disparity, the more advantages and opportunities they will have.

[bbgrunt]

4. exactly.....the "free market" absolves them of all guilt.

[patrice]

5. 1+++

[Odin2005]

9. Mammon is their god.

[patrice]

6. Some people want us to believe that what goes on in the pre-frontal cortex has NOTHING to do

with what goes on in the limbic system and vice versa.

"The domains of cognition and emotion are often treated as non-overlapping entities, and it is refreshing to see an account of how an impairment in one type of processing could affect the other."

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/122/5/994.full

[undergroundpanther]

7. empathy

between us the 99%,scares those people without empathy,because us having empathy for each other leads to solidarity,and the problem people,concepts and politicians that legislate our misery become exposed.A sociopath must hide what he is.And killing empathy is a surefire way to get people to not care about others,thus an atomized culture,fearful,stupid and without empathy.Empathy is the 'glue' holding people together.

[Scuba]

11. Good post, thanks.

[Odin2005]

8. Not suprising, they use "Bleeding-heart Liberal" as an insult.

Most of them are not sociopaths, though. They have empathy and sympathy and compassion, but they repress such feelings because a lot of them subscribe to the RW Libertarian view that seeks to rationalize their BS "economics" by deriding our side's arguments as based on emotion rather than reason. They see their BS as the "cold, hard, truths" and they see us as deluded by our emotions.

[SoCalDem]

10. The loss of empathy

SoCalDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Thu Nov-10-11 02:31 PM
Original message

The loss of empathy


This is at the heart of so many of our most vexing problems..

Too many people see things every day that they would never tolerate in their own lives, but feel no need to intervene.

It could be something major like watching a grown man sexually brutalize a child, and then looking away..but hey..that child was not HIS younger brother/nephew/child.. That child was not someone he knew, so it was no biggie.

It could be something quite minor, like picking up money that someone in front of you drops unknowingly, and not saying "Hey, you dropped this". It's not like you knew that person, or that the $20 they dropped might be grocery money. Finders-keepers.

Empathy-loss is all around us.

TV shows delight in humiliating people.

Everything is now a contest.

Cooking shows used to be about teaching people how to cook..Now they are "wars", where contestants hope for others to screw up, so they can "win"..

It's all about the cheap laugh, the public humiliation of people who don't "measure up"..people who are placed there for our amusement when they get "punked".

It extends into politics too.

How many times have we seen politicians routinely and callously vote against things that people need, UNTIL someone in their own family (or they themselves) suddenly, by fate, are placed in the same boat?

Familial empathy is easy. In most families we are taught to care for and about each other.

An evolved society cares about ALL people.

We care when others cannot afford food, and we feed them. We do not laugh at them and deride them for being too lazy to find work.

We care when others cannot find health care they can afford, and we try to see that they do get care.. We do not shrug our shoulders and say.. "Too bad about that..they should have taken better care of themselves".

Lack of empathy allows all kinds of terrible things to happen, because as people get more and more insulated, it gets easier and easier to go from ignoring bad things that happen to others, to helping those bad things happen..and enjoying the process.