“my, my! humans! so aggressive.”
rape, murder, nukes, war, torture, power, seemingly unlimited greed…
why don’t i have that insatiable drive?
can’t all be how i was raised, can it?
do you know of any studies or philosophical insights?
thx! 🙂
“my, my! humans! so aggressive.”
rape, murder, nukes, war, torture, power, seemingly unlimited greed…
why don’t i have that insatiable drive?
can’t all be how i was raised, can it?
do you know of any studies or philosophical insights?
thx! 🙂
I think it’s most to do with exactly how much wealth a person was born into.
Someone who is constantly on the verge of being homeless, possibly even starving, will very soon get desperate enough to do things they aren’t proud of to survive.
On the other hand, someone born into immense wealth will have very little understanding of people who are struggling. That’ll make it very hard for them to empathize. And with all that power, their sheer indifference will have them crushing the poor under their boots like ants. This is highly exacerbated by the fact that it is in their best interest to support policy that transfers wealth upwards.
Not sure if I fully agree. I’ve seen many people who grew up in luxury and safety who care a lot about the less fortunate in society. There’s also been many instances of 2 siblings growing up in a very similar environment, yet one is very empathic and altruistic and the other one turns out to be a selfish greedy person.
Not that I think you’re completely wrong though. What life you’re born into has a huge effect on who you become. Yet people seem to deal differently with the cards they’ve been handed.
If I look at me personally, I feel like it’s partially genetic, partially in what kind of household you grow up, and also partially your experiences while growing up. I was, for instance, quite “soft” for a guy which meant I got bullied by the more dominant and selfish people. I just wanted everyone to get along and didn’t want to hurt anyone, and because of that I constantly got kicked down. For me it’s turned me into someone who still wants everyone to get along, for everyone to get a chance. Yet it could’ve easily have fallen the other way, where I would’ve let the hate and resentment for other people get to me and turn me into a more self-centered and distrustful person. I feel like this often happens when people fall into the incel or alt-right movements. I think it’s mostly just a combination of how my brain works (genetic) and the support I had at home that kept me away from that. Had I gown up in an environment where my parents would’ve been more “rough” themselves, I’m not sure it’d have gone in the same direction.
My thoughts are similar, but I would consider the cause to be the lack of adversity and challenges. If you are brought up in a sheltered environment where every problem is handled by someone else, you don’t develop proper empathy or problem solving skills.
I feel like the ability to experience empathy to whatever degree is biological, but whether one actually sympathizes and acts compassionately is due to knowledge and experience.
An empathetic person could learn about something, sympathize, and decide to act compassionately. Or that same person could understand another’s plight and not sympathize for some reason, such as propaganda telling them that person deserves what they got. Or they might sympathize and not act compassionately due to negative consequences, socially, legally, or otherwise.
If effect, they’d act as a “bad person” but would not be a “bad” person deep down. Which would different from someone who cannot empathize (a psychopath) or someone who can empathize (understand), sympathize (feel the other’s pain), and decide not to be compassionate, which I’d categorize as sadistic.
For example, I have a feeling that some not insignificant number of people who might be called “transphobic” simply have no experience with or knowledege of actual trans people. Those with the ability to experience empathy to any significant degree would understand the plight