WOW that is one insightful post! I used to think it made me a very good person to be so sad when I saw starving children on tv! Then I had to realize when I tried to eliminate poverty, oh yes, all poverty! You are so wise and so much fun! Thank you for the enlightening! It may help someone do some good!
What percentage of empathy is performative virtue signaling?
How much empathy is simply meeting the goal of being empathetic?
Most people are lucky if they can chew their cud and walk simultaneously, much less be empathetic to all the people being shit on by this or that injustice.
Pretty much the same can be said about people who make a deal of their lack of empathy.
Does everydamnthing have to be a public display?
In the current social-media state of our so-called culture, it seems so.
Meh...I'm going to watch George Carlin talk about groups of people who deserve to die...
😂 Celebrating “Liberation Day” with Carlin sounds like a humdinger of an idea!
🫤 Do you think this emoji represents the right amount of empathy? I’m going for “supportive, but not overbearing.” Cause let’s face it, I use too many words. I know it. (I’m blaming it on my mother for raising me in a Southern Baptist home, where no opinions were allowed except her Godly ones. Now that I’ve escaped, I can’t shut up.)😬
I agree for the most part, but it's a hard pill to swallow ("Try applesauce!" says the smart-aleck voice in my head. 🙄), because I sometimes find myself overwhelmed with empathy. My intentions are sincere, but as the saying goes, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." So possibly I'm fucked. ("See y'all on the road to hell! Let's meet up early, empaths & highly sensitive people, & get a healthy head start, so we don't wind up devoured by a pack of malignant narcissists!) Yes, at some point, too much of a positive human trait simply becomes TOO MUCH & ceases to be helpful. Our attributes become liabilities, when taken to the extreme. As with most things, there has to be a balance. When we live in a world of extremes, not much is accomplished for the greater good.
One positive, & conversely, negative of having nearly instant access to the whole of humanity via our screens, is the connectivity & interaction with people across the globe. It can be a benefit (I hate the word "blessing.") or a curse. As exasperating as "the internet" can be, even as a bibliophile, I am thankful that I no longer have to subject myself to squinting over The Reader's Guide To Periodical Literature ever again. (This is an impossible concept to explain to Gen Z. The hours! The hours I've spent looking for outdated, unattainable articles to cite as a source!)
During my Beach Boys phase, I used to visit sites where fans of The Beach Boys analyzed every song they ever released & every word they ever spoke in an interview. At first it was informative & interesting, because most of the information was new to me & I dove in head first into the deep end. But then I started getting consumed with everything that ever happened to them, slowly becoming outraged on Brian Wilson's behalf. Soon I started info dumping all my newly acquired controversies at the dinner table. After weeks (possibly months) of listening my husband said, "I don't know why you're getting so upset over things that happened over 40 years ago, to someone you don't know & will never meet, that you can't do anything about. He was right. What started out as empathy & sadness for how someone was treated, morphed into outrage that I completely manufactured myself. I sheepishly dialed back my "feelings," & focused on the music again. (But I do find myself wondering how he is, sometimes. It's difficult to turn the spigot off completely.)
Misplaced or mass-produced empathy even for "a good cause" quickly manifests into collective outrage that seeks a target to release upon. BTS has a song about this phenomenon. To paraphrase the translation, when the emotion of anger is wasted on nonsensical, trivial things, it becomes waste (shit). Then when we truly need anger to change the world, it no longer has any impact & it all becomes meaningless shit.
We now live in an era with a constant influx of information, disinformation, & mostly everyone's opinions on every fucking thing from recipes to reflux. (We're doing it right now! 😏) Suga from BTS, has a song lyric that translates to
Don't get swept away by this tsunami of info
Cause we all differentiate freedom from self-indulgence
We are a self-indulgent fucked up species. We can't even do empathy right. We are truly the "reality" tv series planet. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if somewhere across the galaxy, some brilliant species is munching their favorite flavor of seed pods, watching our season finale with mouth (or some other sort of nutrition intake hole) agape, waiting to see if our human colony is actually going to self-destruct at the behest of our self-proclaimed royal highness Jabba the Trump & somewhere Mark Burnett is counting his galactic bitcoins, courtesy of an Elon financed Space Force Flying Tesla X.
Happy Liberation Day! I'm guessing someone (Jabba) will not realize that liberation & libation are two different words, & soon we'll hear screeching from the White House press secretary (Unsweet Karoline), that it was always supposed to be libation, because Jabba drinks a lot of Diet Coke & wants everyone to raise a can in his honor on command.
WOW that is one insightful post! I used to think it made me a very good person to be so sad when I saw starving children on tv! Then I had to realize when I tried to eliminate poverty, oh yes, all poverty! You are so wise and so much fun! Thank you for the enlightening! It may help someone do some good!
Sounds like you need a hug (Snark).
Always!
Too much of just about anydamnthing is bad.
What percentage of empathy is performative virtue signaling?
How much empathy is simply meeting the goal of being empathetic?
Most people are lucky if they can chew their cud and walk simultaneously, much less be empathetic to all the people being shit on by this or that injustice.
Pretty much the same can be said about people who make a deal of their lack of empathy.
Does everydamnthing have to be a public display?
In the current social-media state of our so-called culture, it seems so.
Meh...I'm going to watch George Carlin talk about groups of people who deserve to die...
😂 Celebrating “Liberation Day” with Carlin sounds like a humdinger of an idea!
🫤 Do you think this emoji represents the right amount of empathy? I’m going for “supportive, but not overbearing.” Cause let’s face it, I use too many words. I know it. (I’m blaming it on my mother for raising me in a Southern Baptist home, where no opinions were allowed except her Godly ones. Now that I’ve escaped, I can’t shut up.)😬
Massive LOL here...as for correct emojis, I'm in the absolute dark because they're not...
I agree for the most part, but it's a hard pill to swallow ("Try applesauce!" says the smart-aleck voice in my head. 🙄), because I sometimes find myself overwhelmed with empathy. My intentions are sincere, but as the saying goes, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." So possibly I'm fucked. ("See y'all on the road to hell! Let's meet up early, empaths & highly sensitive people, & get a healthy head start, so we don't wind up devoured by a pack of malignant narcissists!) Yes, at some point, too much of a positive human trait simply becomes TOO MUCH & ceases to be helpful. Our attributes become liabilities, when taken to the extreme. As with most things, there has to be a balance. When we live in a world of extremes, not much is accomplished for the greater good.
One positive, & conversely, negative of having nearly instant access to the whole of humanity via our screens, is the connectivity & interaction with people across the globe. It can be a benefit (I hate the word "blessing.") or a curse. As exasperating as "the internet" can be, even as a bibliophile, I am thankful that I no longer have to subject myself to squinting over The Reader's Guide To Periodical Literature ever again. (This is an impossible concept to explain to Gen Z. The hours! The hours I've spent looking for outdated, unattainable articles to cite as a source!)
During my Beach Boys phase, I used to visit sites where fans of The Beach Boys analyzed every song they ever released & every word they ever spoke in an interview. At first it was informative & interesting, because most of the information was new to me & I dove in head first into the deep end. But then I started getting consumed with everything that ever happened to them, slowly becoming outraged on Brian Wilson's behalf. Soon I started info dumping all my newly acquired controversies at the dinner table. After weeks (possibly months) of listening my husband said, "I don't know why you're getting so upset over things that happened over 40 years ago, to someone you don't know & will never meet, that you can't do anything about. He was right. What started out as empathy & sadness for how someone was treated, morphed into outrage that I completely manufactured myself. I sheepishly dialed back my "feelings," & focused on the music again. (But I do find myself wondering how he is, sometimes. It's difficult to turn the spigot off completely.)
Misplaced or mass-produced empathy even for "a good cause" quickly manifests into collective outrage that seeks a target to release upon. BTS has a song about this phenomenon. To paraphrase the translation, when the emotion of anger is wasted on nonsensical, trivial things, it becomes waste (shit). Then when we truly need anger to change the world, it no longer has any impact & it all becomes meaningless shit.
We now live in an era with a constant influx of information, disinformation, & mostly everyone's opinions on every fucking thing from recipes to reflux. (We're doing it right now! 😏) Suga from BTS, has a song lyric that translates to
Don't get swept away by this tsunami of info
Cause we all differentiate freedom from self-indulgence
We are a self-indulgent fucked up species. We can't even do empathy right. We are truly the "reality" tv series planet. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if somewhere across the galaxy, some brilliant species is munching their favorite flavor of seed pods, watching our season finale with mouth (or some other sort of nutrition intake hole) agape, waiting to see if our human colony is actually going to self-destruct at the behest of our self-proclaimed royal highness Jabba the Trump & somewhere Mark Burnett is counting his galactic bitcoins, courtesy of an Elon financed Space Force Flying Tesla X.
Happy Liberation Day! I'm guessing someone (Jabba) will not realize that liberation & libation are two different words, & soon we'll hear screeching from the White House press secretary (Unsweet Karoline), that it was always supposed to be libation, because Jabba drinks a lot of Diet Coke & wants everyone to raise a can in his honor on command.
Malignant is too easily morphed into malignorant by pr/marketing/political types.
And too many people don't know the difference between their opinion and "facts".
Maybe 'social' has gotten too easy/convenient as well as less trustworthy...contact without touch isn't worth all that much...imo
Well said. Refreshing to hear the other side of empathy from someone else.