When we feel shit, our capacity for empathy suffers.
I ask the brain-trust: can exercising empathy help save us from feeling shit? Or would that just increase our suffering?
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When we feel shit, our capacity for empathy suffers.
I ask the brain-trust: can exercising empathy help save us from feeling shit? Or would that just increase our suffering?
I don't think so. The reality is it's normal to feel like crap sometimes. Transferring sympathy from yourself to others (which is sorta what empathy is, amirite?) doesn't seem like a psychologically healthy salve.
Which isn't to say that empathy isn't good. It's just not a solution to being happy all the time.
Hmm I'm not at all sure what you mean with this!Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Are you asking if empathy is something to be practiced in order to keep the ability---use it or lose it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
I know it needs to be practiced, what I'm asking is if it can protect you
uhm, Practicing empathy probably keeps us from becoming shallow, self-centered, vapid, emotional Teflon. Not sure what you mean about empathy increasing suffering, though.
Yes, because we ourselves are emotionally exhausted, hence feeling like shit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
This does not logically follow. Here are the reasons:Quote:
I ask the brain-trust: can exercising empathy help save us from feeling shit?
1) Empathy for someone suffering isn't going to make you feel better.
2) Empathy for someone who is happy is not likely to remove the reasons for you feeling bad.
3) Empathy in general is not going to remove the reasons why you and others you interact with feel bad.
I took "feel shit" to mean....feel nothing.
And asking if "feeling for others" might make us feel shitty ourselves (suffer pain).
:confused:
You should try some crystals to focus the positive energy, man.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Hang on, empathy has nothing to do with crystals
What do you have against people named Crystal?
A man named Crystal shot his brother in Vegas.
Well, to hell with all Crystals then.
I think real empathy for the vast number of people suffering terribly around the world would be a staggering, paralyzing burden.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
You meant empathy right, not sympathy?Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Kissing cousins.Quote:
Originally Posted by EyeKhan
sympathy
1570s, "affinity between certain things," from M.Fr. sympathie ,from L.L. sympathia "community of feeling, sympathy," from Gk.sympatheia , from sympathes "having a fellow feeling, affectedby like feelings," from syn- "together" + pathos "feeling" (see pathos). In English, almost a magical notion at first; e.g. in reference to medicines that heal wounds when applied to a clothstained with blood from the wound. Meaning "conformity of feelings" is from 1590s; sense of "fellow feeling" is first attested 1660s.
empathy
1903, translation of Ger. Einfühlung (from ein "in" + Fühlung "feeling"), coined 1858 by Ger. philosopher Rudolf Lotze (1817-81) from Gk. empatheia "passion," from en- "in" + pathos "feeling" (see pathos). A term from a theory of art appreciation.
pathos
"quality that arouses pity or sorrow," 1668, from Gk. pathos "suffering, feeling, emotion," lit. "what befalls one," related topaskhein "to suffer," and penthos "grief, sorrow;" from PIE base*kwenth- "to suffer, endure" (cf. O.Ir. cessaim , Lith. kenciu "suffer").