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?
Exercising empathy as a health intervention
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?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
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!Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Are you asking if empathy is something to be practiced in order to keep the ability---use it or lose it?
I know it needs to be practiced, what I'm asking is if it can protect you
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
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.
This does not logically follow. Here are the reasons: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).
You should try some crystals to focus the positive energy, man.
Hang on, empathy has nothing to do with crystals
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
What do you have against people named Crystal?
A man named Crystal shot his brother in Vegas.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
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.
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
You meant empathy right, not sympathy?
The Rules
Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)
Kissing cousins.
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").
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote