Sailing the Aegean

[Mowk]

Miss obvious Otis.

[Mowk]

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.

[Aegean]

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

[Mowk]

You're fairly dull too, there was a back handed compliment in there somewhere.

[Aegean]

5 days 'till Christmas.

[Meno_]

As tension mounts!?! ?! ?!?

[Aegean]

Why tension?
Joy, for many.

[MagsJ]

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

[Aegean]

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.

[Arcturus Descending]

Aegean,

I am defining empathy so as to differentiate it from sympathy and antipathy.

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.

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.

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.

But that's not empathy.

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

We failed to truly know other, but only know self in their place.

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

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.

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

We are all alike, but this does not mean we are clones - not even teins are absolutely alike.

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

[Aegean]

Aegean,

I am defining empathy so as to differentiate it from sympathy and antipathy.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

[Arcturus Descending]

Aegean

One does not hate one’s enemies, in a way where the emotion overpowers him.

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?

One is thankful for them, for without disease, the pleasure of ease is impossible;

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

without death, life is impossible;

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.

without weakness, strength is impossible;

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.

without discontentment, contentment is impossible.

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

The balance of the yin and yang of life.

[Aegean]

One does not hate one’s enemies, in a way where the emotion overpowers him.

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.

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.

Do you not consume other life forms?

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.

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

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

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

The balance of the yin and yang of life.

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.

[Aegean]

Well, friends and fiends, the day is nigh and the cock shall call the faithful to their yearly routines.

I shall depart, as I promised - a last parting gift of absence.
But I shall return, on the 21st of every month, hoping to find something to comment on, departing on the 22nd.

Until next year.
May you all have a healthy and fortuitous a(n)nus.

[MagsJ]

Well, friends and fiends, the day is nigh and the cock shall call the faithful to their yearly routines.

I shall depart, as I promised - a last parting gift of absence.
But I shall return, on the 21st of every month, hoping to find something to comment on, departing on the 22nd.

Until next year.
May you all have a healthy and fortuitous annus.

Until next year, mon amie

[promethean75]

Wait... he's leaving? But...

Oh look, a penny!

[Aegean]

Ahhhh...how cute.
It used the 'penny thing'....adorable.

[Mowk]

But I shall return, on the 21st of every month

Not that it's not always such a pleasure to hear from you.

[promethean75]

This guy is not unlike an electric bill. You deal with the last one and look forward to a month without seeing another one... and then the goddamn thing shows up two weeks early.