It's not "pedantic nonsense", the word "narcissist" isn't just a random word people throw around, the "narcisphere" is a whole detailed pop-psychological theory that people on the Internet are really into that generates a lot of what I think of as very harmful ideas
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There are a lot of people -- often people who present themselves as authorities on the concept of abuse -- who outright say shit about how "The human population is divided in a 1:10 ratio between 'narcissists' and 'empaths' the way animals are divided between predators and prey"
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I have a lot of ambivalent feelings about the word 'empathy' and the way it's used Because the more someone valorises it, the more likely they are to demand it for themselves and/or use it as a stick to beat dissidents and neurodivergents with But it's also an important skill
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Replying to @Hi_Mike_Gorrie @arthur_affect and
I'm always leery of people who are convinced of their tremendous empathy because in my experience they're often so certain they know how others feel that they dispense with the unnecessary bother of actually listening to them.
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Replying to @SusieusMaximus @Hi_Mike_Gorrie and
If you believe that "empathy" is a quality rather than an action you're already on very dangerous ground I mean that's true of any word for a positive quality -- saying that you ARE honest or you ARE smart or you ARE humble or whatever
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Replying to @arthur_affect @SusieusMaximus and
But "empathy" in particular because people think it's actually a magical superpower of some kind -- the "empathy" so many people on the Internet talk about is clearly something that simply does not exist
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Replying to @arthur_affect @SusieusMaximus and
There is no amount of emotion someone can feel, however intense, however justified, that will *actually cause someone else to feel that same emotion* I cannot feel sad *because* you are sad I can see that you are making a sad face, and I can react to that in my own way
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Replying to @arthur_affect @SusieusMaximus and
But how specifically I react to that is a result of the combination of all the circumstances of your reaction -- the face you were making, the mood I was in when I saw it, the relationship between you and me
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Replying to @arthur_affect @SusieusMaximus and
And it's not an actual magical thing where the sadness I'm feeling is *your sadness* It's *my sadness*, caused by your face (or your voice, or your posture, or the poem you wrote on your LiveJournal)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @SusieusMaximus and
The way people talk about "empathy" is collapsing something that's actually very complicated into something magical and simplistic, because it's comforting All these physical metaphors -- by feeling your sadness I draw it out of you and take it into myself, I lighten your burden
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(This is not actually possible in any sense whatsoever When you feel better by seeing that your sadness has made another person sad, this is actually a very complicated process contingent on many different factors Which is why it often, despite people's best intentions, fails)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @SusieusMaximus and
There's a lot of really fraught shit all tied up in this kind of pat term "empathy" When we attack someone for "lack of empathy" making them a monster it's, by definition, policing another person's emotions, and that's a dangerous thing to do
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Replying to @arthur_affect @SusieusMaximus and
"Lack of empathy" is not a failure of one person to literally feel another person's emotions, because *that is impossible* It is saying that the emotional reaction they had to another person's expressed emotional communication was incorrect/inappropriate
2 replies 3 retweets 12 likes - Show replies
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