Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Responsible Empathy

When Churchill spoke of blood, toil, tears, and sweat, he was empathetic of what was most needed. Since then, however, the important word, "empathy," seems to have been cheapened. Khen Lampert (2005): "[Empathy] is what happens to us when we leave our own bodies...and find ourselves either momentarily or for a longer period of time in the mind of the other. We observe reality through her eyes, feel her emotions, share in her pain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy. Empathy ought to relate more to appreciating the situation of another, rather than to justifying it.


We need a word to describe a kind of intuitive feeling or insight that ought not to be considered equivalent to automatic or unearned sympathy or feelings of sorrow for every low life. We may endeavor to understand what another person feels without necessarily approving or feeling obliged to provide relief. In that respect, “responsible empathy” ought to apply more in the vein of “tough love.” It ought to pertain to sharing the feelings and emotions of another person for the purpose of helping the other to become a better person. It ought to pertain to sensing, intuiting, and respecting one’s own “I-ness” in others – not to give the other person what he wants, but to not, without good reason, deny him what he most needs -- which is opportunity to learn to pursue self reliance, self respect, social responsibility, and civilizing decency.

Spiritual empathy ought to relate more to how to facilitate paths for others to pursue becoming better adjusted beings. Empathy ought not be considered an excuse to water down the checks and balances in our Constitution. Instead, empathy ought to relate to helping the I-ness in others to express more responsibility and less beggarliness as citizens. Thus, a military DI may easily be more responsibly empathetic than a social-justice community-organizer of entitlement-minded, grievance-mongering, sympathy-sucking demolishers of our Constitution.

In short, there is a world of difference between responsible empathy and adolescent sympathy.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Candycorn said, "I am going to scream if I hear one more time how well Obama speaks!! He DOES NOT speak well...."

I'm with you! Obama has this clipped tongue thing going for him. For whatever reason, that's a fad that presently plays well to American ears. Sort of like a British accent plays well. But familiarity breeds contempt. And as Americans see that there is no other there, there, they will come to loathe Obama's clipped style of speech. They will see that his speech is a phony facade for nothing but Marxist hot air.

Problem is, Obama does not need Congress to continue his jihad to reduce America, especially America's military capacity for self defense. This man is a distrubed, vacuous menace whose only education is way beyond his intellectual capacity to assimilate into anything decent or constructive.

I would feel sorry for Obama, were his stubborn course not so destructive of Western Civilization. This fraud-in-chief needs to be impeached. We need to elect enough Conservatives to Congress to see to it. Asap. Human freedom, dignity, and decency are in the balance.

Anonymous said...

Regarding sensitive, empathetic, multi-culti security: Does the Obama team inspire confidence, regarding our national health and security? I don’t know. Have the following people been strong, competent, and focused on defending American Security ( as opposed to being focused on N.W.O. security for corporatist owners):
Homeland Security – Janet Napolitano; Director of CIA – Leon Panetta; Director NSA – Keith Alexander; Secretary of Defense – Robert Gates; Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff – Mike Mullen; Homeland Security Czar – John Brennan; Cyber Security Czar – Melissa Hathaway.
See http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2010/0527/National-Security-Strategy-Derailed-by-debt. “The Obama strategy may … end up reduced to the essence of one of its pillars: multilateralism, or perhaps burden sharing.”
Are Obamaleaders the defenders of America, or are they the promoters of a corporatist world that is bent on ruling peons with banking and courts, but without national borders?
Sure, in our volunteer Army, we have rugged men. (Not so sure what we would have were we to adopt a draft, as Ted Kennedy wanted.) But what is the level of “ruggedness” (or American-ness) in those who now lead our military and security agencies? In their values, are they (1) Americans, or are they (2) N.W.O. corporatist-collectivizing, elite sissie-fests?
What American border did Napolitano ever enforce? What military recruiting did Elena Kagan allow at Harvard? If Obama can’t build a fence, why believe he can plug a hole? When the bad boys come, who will have confidence in the sissified paperhangers of the Obama regime? If the effete feminization of our national leadership is not cause for concern, I don’t know what is.
Does no one notice the Progs maneuvering to enhance Hillary’s stock? Given the oligarchy’s control over media, and given the incredible investment in identity politics, does anyone doubt that nearly as many women will vote for Prog Hillary as voted for Prog Obama? If this kind of identity feminization of politics is not dangerous to human freedom, I don’t know what is.