Sailing the Aegean

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.

The opposite of a narcissist, is an empath.

A narcissist uses an inflated image of self to evaluate others.
A warped self-image produces a warped understanding of others, and the world, in general.
Low self-esteem is the opposite of narcissism, i.e., an under-estimation of self in relation to others.

Narcissism is more natural because natural selection works on the mechanism of trial and error, and over-estimating self produces choices with immediate consequences.

An empath uses self as a sounding board, a standard, but then methodically adjusts the levels of every perceptible trait, in relation to his/her won, to come to an more objective perception of other, as not self in a different circumstance, but a different self in circumstances.

You’ll never ‘know’ an other’s circumstance.

Not absolutely.

Did you red flag me?
Did I do a no-no?

Not even relatively.
The report feature is a red flag?
Just about every time you put fingers to keys, then click submit.

Keep it up, little daugy.
From thread to thread…heal.

Miss obvious Otis.

You’re so full of yourself.

Like You’re a nobody, “I have an IQ or 85”, “it’s not an identity that matters”. I’ll flag your ass for being a fuck up. You’re too smart an ass to play the game you’re playing. meme, gene, race, intellect, fuck you, fuck me.

Hypocrite. It’s a matter of record.

I’d hope shit’s like you hang around after the new year. Gives one pause to wonder about other.

Impressive.
Forum rules seem to be more flexible when you are dull and repeat popular beliefs.
Very selective.

You’re fairly dull too, there was a back handed compliment in there somewhere. =D>

5 days 'till Christmas.

As tension mounts!?! ?! ?!?

Why tension?
Joy, for many.

You ain’t pissed me off none… but that could be because I don’t have any Jewish ancestry, so not a target. :confusion-shrug: lol

My only “target” is to reveal, and to destroy that which conceals.
None of it satisfies and very little of it pleases me.
I place integrity and reality above all other interests. Others don’t. They aren’t philosophers but priests, or salesmen, or politicians. Hypocrites.

Aegean,

Empathy
the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner

That is also how I would interpret and experience empathy. How does your sentence: “Empathy is about cold, hard, objective, reasoning” relate to the above? I am not grasping it.

Empathy is, in a sense, experienced emotion. When I see the commercial on television about the poor polar bear and cubs losing their habitat and not knowing which way to turn, drifting along on a piece of ice with nothing but water surrounding because so much ice is melting, I cry over that (believe it or not) . That is empathy to me. I am not experiencing any cold, hard, objective, reasoning" in those moments. So, perhaps you can shed more light on what you mean by your definition of empathy as that.

I do not believe that in order to experience empathy for another we would have had to drink from the same cup of experience.

Sympathy
feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune.

Pity is kind of a negative word to me. So, what you wrote above, is that your idea of what sympathy defined here is all about?

How does “real” compassion and sympathy produce antipathy? Negative projection can of course.

No, it is not and I am not sure that it is S or C either.

That IS projection. But that is usually triggered by an unconscious negative feeling. What does that have to do with empathy, compassion or sympathy?

But one can have sudden empathy for a stranger, I believe. Any creature, human or otherwise.

Oh, in what way?
Words really are such hidden things, are they not?

Because you are trapped in projections.
Do understand other one takes self, or one’s understanding of self - which is rarely accurate - and projects it into the circumstances of another.
This mistakenly presumes that other is exactly like self, and you simply replace other with self and imagine how he or she feels, ro what they think, because you are using yourself, or what you know of yourself, as a standard.

This is but a start. You stay there and are happy.
Empathy goes further. It gradually erases self from the other, ni degree, leaving other as they are - similar but not the same as yourself.
It does not let emotion corrupt his judgment. He feels the others emotions without being involved in them.

Yes, but not all who drink the same water are the same. Divergence is what separates one from another - it is what is different that distinguishes one from another.

It all depends on whether you pity yourself or hate yourself for being as you are.
The projection produces sympathy - pity of one’s self - or antipathy - hatred of self.
This is not empathy…which I understand how it is conventionally used but it is incorrect. Empathy is akin to objectivity about other. Your understanding is about subjectivity. You understand other to the degree you understand self, and this is always prejudiced because you have not eliminated ego and emotion from your analysis.

Empathy is to objectivity what sympathy/antipathy are to subjectivity.

words - semiotics - either connects us to reality or they connect us to our own emotions and reactions towards reality.
Exoteric/Esoteric.
Most use words as inter-subjective connectors to a communal mind - hive mind - and to their own emotional reactions.

Aegean

Hmm… define what you mean by “enemies” here. People certainly have been know to hate in a way which overpowers them emotionally. This I know. Are you Francis of Assissi?

I think that one would prefer the pleasure of ease without having to experience disease first. This sounds kind of masochistic to me.

I imagine that you are speaking of all of the little ways in which our bodies die everyday even without our being aware of it to keep us healthy. If you are not speaking of that, then you are putting the cart before the horses.

Not necessarily. But something would have to go hand in hand with weakness in order to make strength possible. On its own, weakness gets nowhere.

The further down one can fall, the greater the capacity for transcendence.

The balance of the yin and yang of life.

Hmm… define what you mean by “enemies” here. People certainly have been know to hate in a way which overpowers them emotionally. This I know. Are you Francis of Assissi?
[/quote]
Enemy: those or that which threatens to deny me what I hold as precious and I cannot live without.
[/quote]
I think that one would prefer the pleasure of ease without having to experience disease first. This sounds kind of masochistic to me.
[/quote]
What you call comfortable is a state when your aggregate energies suffice to meat your ongoing needs, preventing them from rising into a feeling of unease, or suffering.

Do you not consume other life forms?

Strength = measure of weakness.
Gnosis = measure of ignorance.
No omnipotence; no omniscience. No absolute.
Objectivity = measure of subjectivity, in relation to reality.

Yes…you must break what you may overcome, or die.
Trauma is required to truly change yourself.
Comfort prevents this from occuring.

Yes…only modern thinking is unbalanced. More positivity overcompensating for the negativity they can no longer endure.

When they come in contact with it they react defensively accusing it of what they are most guilty of - fear.