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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Marcus Daniels wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Once one practices modulating a class of
these feelings it changes how or even if one experiences them.
Having empathy can just be another form of being reactive
which is not a good way for adults to be IMO. It is equally
reactive to be enraged every time Trump or Trumpers are on
TV. They dehumanized themselves.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p>I believe that suppressing one's pity/sympathy/empathy/compassion
entirely is the "reactive" mode... I suspect our friend Donald
started down that path at a very young age and has only the barest
echoes or ghosts of those feelings remaining. I knew too many
"western men" as a child who seemed to have done the same with
their relationship to nature and animals... being brutal with
predators/varmints leading to a certain brutality to prey (game
animals) to their own working stock (cattle, sheep, rabbits,
horses, dogs) and then ultimately their families (wives, children)
and could-have-been friends. They were not devoid of this, but
there was something about the lifestyle and circumstance (and
social context) that seemed to strongly encourage, if not require,
that suppression of empathy.</p>
<p>As a teen I was faced with a looming conscription to go to
Vietnam and "kill some gooks" (sorry for the patently non-PC
framing, but it captures at least half of the image of the time)
as well as being faced with letting that happen and returning to
the other half of the country shouting "baby killer" in my face.
I *knew* that these were not my only two choices, but it forced
(opportuned?) me to consider what I had to lose if I let my own
country (and most of it's citizens) inject me (like a pinball)
into that pinball game of "no good choices". What I had to lose
was my empathy, as underformed and possibly even maladapted as it
was at 14 or 16 or 18 years old. <br>
</p>
<p>I am not willing to treat empathy as nothing more than an
"emotional reaction", though I acknowledge that it is informed
(sorry Nick, I can't help using that idiom) by a deep emotional
experience. Perhaps Empathy is to Pity as Justice is to
Revenge... most of the Right might think this is splitting
hairs, and perhaps they have swayed the Left into the same
perspective? Everyone's loss.<br>
</p>
<p>- Steve<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b>From:</b> Friam
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"><friam-bounces@redfish.com></a> <b>On Behalf Of
</b><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, October 7, 2020 9:07 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group' <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com"><friam@redfish.com></a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] Trump as a victim<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Glen, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">I don't think of empathy as something
that you gin up; it either happens to you, or it doesn't. And
then you decide what you want to do with your empathy. As a
child, perhaps,, did you ever read any of Ernest Thompson
Seton's (no relative)
<b><i>Lives of the Hunted</i></b>? The wolf, terror of the
Corrumpaw (?), wily killer of sheep, evader of traps, lies
before you in a cage, wounded and helpless. You feel
empathy. And so you kill it. Anybody who tells you that you
<i>should</i> feel empathy lacks empathy for your lack of
empathy. I WILL feel empathy for Trump when he's tried. I
dread those trials. In fact, even watching him twist and lie
and twist and lie, watching him contort, makes me queasy
inside, like watching a man tortured. But empathy, like
rage, is just another emotion, and needs, like all emotions,
to be tempered with reason.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Nick<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Nicholas Thompson<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Emeritus Professor of Ethology and
Psychology<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Clark University<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><a
href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Friam <<a href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">friam-bounces@redfish.com</a>> On
Behalf Of u?l? ???<br>
Sent: Wednesday, October 7, 2020 6:54 AM<br>
To: FriAM <<a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">friam@redfish.com</a>><br>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Trump as a victim<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">A collection of people, who shall remain
nameless, recently tried to shame me for objecting to their
waste of empathy for poor lil ol Trump, in light of his
infection. One argument went something like "His father was
horrible." One primary argument went something like "empathy
begets empathy". Empathy is not zero-sum. Etc.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">I started my objection to all this
Trump-as-a-victim talk by listing several aspects of his
CHARMED LIFE, like the fact that he's lucky enough to have
lived to a ripe old age (when so many of us die young), he was
born wealthy (when so many of us live our entire lives dirt
poor), his stupid TV show was wildly successful (when so many
of us are serial failures), his weaponized litigousness has
benefited him throughout his life (when so many of us can't
even afford a lawyer). Etc.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">All that *privilege* has been bestowed
upon him. And it seems, to me, he's squandered it all. He
reminds me of those pitiful pictures of Saddam Hussein in
court and then prison and then dead. Oh boo-hoo, poor little
dictator being mistreated. Such sentiments are not merely
weird to me. If game theory and the success of simplistic
tit-for-tat has taught us anything, it is that the algorithmic
*depth* required to beat straightforward (poetic) "justice" is
academically interesting, but pragmatically degenerate.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">So, no. I will not waste any of my
finite lifetime feeling sorry for poor lil ol Trump, our
Privilege Squanderer in Chief. If that magically limits my
ability to empathize in some other context, so be it. If it
implies that when I die pathetically, under some bridge,
eating partial hamburgers from the Wendy's dumpster, my
colleagues *rightly* avoid wasting their finite lifetimes
feeling sorry for me, then I'm ready for that day. Like it or
not, tu quoque is a fallacy.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">--<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">↙↙↙ uǝlƃ<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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