They take my words as pearls, adjusting them to their own adorning jewels, not once showing gratitude for a gift of such enormous magnitude.
Silently I watch knowing that if I speak they will fall silent, and I do not wish to startle their flowing impulses dry; in the breadcrumbs I taste the rye.
I failed, as a son.
When I heard my father weep, I did not rush to embrace him, comforting myself through his lament.
Instead, I stood back, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot, wondering what I should do; what I possibly could do.
The moment passed, in procrastinating uncertainty, the silence, that came, more heart-wrenching than the sounds of his tears.
The greatest of all struggles.
To make yourself the kind of parent you wished you had.
No, not automatically. It is the ability to be able to put one’s self or core within the emotions of another, to imagine and experience what the other is experiencing. I see it as a positive awareness, not a negative one. I do not see any pre-judgment there - it just comes as a - well, let us say as a gentle wave washing over us. lol
As for your second line, I do not agree with this. You seem to be speaking about projection here where we attribute to others our own unconscious negative thoughts and emotions.
Empathy is an advancement away from sympathy/antipathy, which si easier.
The ego projects itself into the circumstances of another and sympathizes with how it imagines the other is feeling.
This is not empathy, which eliminates the ego and the self, form the projection, to leave the pure other, as he/she is, feeling neither antipathy nor sympathy.
Objective understanding of another subjective mind.
Sympathy is a form of self-pity, using another as a mirror.
Empathy is to Objectivity what Sympathy/Antipathy is to subjectivity - binary dualities expressing a relationship.
Moderns are obsessed with the positive, the attraction part, due to the state of the cosmos, tending towards chaos.
It expresses a nostalgia for a return to the near-absolute state of Yin/Yang, or the state preceding the Big Bang, i.e., the duality of order/chaos in a state of near-perfect balance.
lol You really know how to give some words a bad name. “Real” sympathy is a “sharing” of someone’s grief or pain. Like drinking from the same cup.
There is no self-pity there - only a compassion and understanding for.
Of course, you may have a point here. There may be some individuals who are experiencing self-pity rather than sympathy - more projection going on. That could probably be seen by their maudlin words and behavior.
No, not “some”. All.
We relate to the other’s pain because we share it. He share the existential needs and suffering we appreciate in others. We project, and projection si the easiest form of understanding the alien other.
It produces errors.
The other may be like us, but not absolutely so.
When you sympathize or antipathize you cloud your judgments with emotions.
Empathy is about cold, hard, objective, reasoning.
Not some ALL. :LOL: Who died and made you the language police of meaning?
Give me a ‘real’ dictionary any time.
The naughty word monitor is present.
Red flag in hand…proud as a pea-cock. The only way anyone notices.
Like I said give me a dictionary any time. Heave too on the mainsheet mate, you’re stuck in irons. Rudder hard off the wind.
Thanks for contributing to my thread…ossifer.
I can look forward to similar deep insightful commentary.
And thanks for maintaining this forum at high intellectual standards.
You’ve done an excellent job…for your master.
Liberals are so nice.
In the dark the tiniest spark seems like a roaring flame.
In the twilight, shadows merge and divergence seems indistinguishable; contradictions merge and synthesize.
In the light, the tiniest difference, the smallest flaw, is distinct and clear.
Liars prefer the twilight.
Must be mid day somewhere. Thought I’d introduce a bit a sailing speak to keep er in theme. Let out the jib, you’re falling off the wind. Geez it’s like you’ve never sailed before? I like to sail, I think I’ll stick around and keep your ship in shape.
A talentless mind wants to take credit for another’s talent, by becoming his proof reader.
This is how the chosen, chose themselves as worm-tongues; whispering in the ears of ancient royalty.
And yet you still know nothing of sailing.
Aegean
I would not quite word it that way but if you are saying that when we empathize and feel compassion toward someone we must be careful not to allow our emotions to become our masters but to rather be guided by our awareness, intelligence and firmness in helping someone then I can agree with you.
I think that it was Carl Jung who said that “Sentimentality is the superstructure erected upon brutality”. Sentimentality has nothing to do with empathy and compassion and can really only lead to abuse for both parties involved.
So I can agree with your wording up to a point but it does sound almost apathetic to me and devoid of caring. There is a balance that needs to be met between empathy and doing the right thing for the other party.
I maybe misunderstanding you here perhaps because there seems to be something missing from your equation.
I am defining empathy so as to differentiate it from sympathy and antipathy.
If we use the simpler method of projecting how we know ourselves - also prone to emotional and egotistical hyperbole - then we are simply and easily understanding other in relation to his circumstances; placing ourselves as we know ourselves, in their place.
This is indeed compassion and sympathy, and in rare cases, if we hate ourselves or what we were, then it may produce antipathy.
But that’s not empathy.
We failed to truly know other, but only know self in their place.
Empathy is difficult because it is a matter of degree. We gradually adjust our projection to the other’s essence, as we’ve understood it over long periods of observation, to see them, and not ourselves in their place.
We are all alike, but this does not mean we are clones - not even teins are absolutely alike.
So there can be serious… I’ll take it as interest beyond the absurd and a discussion of a more philosophical bent. Feel free to end any response with ‘tit wad’ or anything appropriate.
Empathy does fit a range with sympathy at it’s least end scale. But sympathy can lead to empathic feelings. Or grow into it. But at it’s extreme can we know an other’s feelings, thoughts, empathically? That would suggests telepathy which seems a stretch. So I’m thinking empathy exists somewhere between sympathy and telepathy in reason. Tough to do without being telepathic but not impossible if you’re sensitive and have had a broad range of experiences and emotional breadth yourself.