২৪ সেপ্টেম্বর, ২০২২

"As what one might call a celebrity emotion, empathy is often simplified and caricatured. It’s hardly an entirely positive attribute."

"Being able to feel what another person is feeling can also allow someone to manipulate or injure another person. Sadists can be as empathetic as therapists. Iago is the most empathetic figure in literature—he feels every nuance and degree of Othello’s insecurity and plays on them to destroy him. Yet in a democratic society, where individual freedom abounds at historically unique levels, empathy is indispensable. In a dictatorship, it doesn’t matter if you’re aware of another person’s inner state; the regime regulates relations between people. In a democracy, however, the people themselves regulate the relations between them.... In a democracy, [Toqueville] writes, 'each [man] may judge in a moment of the sensations of all the others; he casts a rapid glance upon himself, and that is enough....' If it is true that the essence of a functioning democracy is the ability of its people to feel empathy for one another, then the widespread reliance on antidepressants.... is like some cruel joke. Add to the pharmacological cultivation of emotional blunting the emotionally blunting effect of lives lived increasingly online, and you have a democracy resting on a fundamentally anti-democratic way of life."

২৯টি মন্তব্য:

Achilles বলেছেন...

Most people lack true empathy.

That is why they think everyone will agree with them if they just think about it.

And empathy does not automatically lead to sympathy.

Most times sympathy that people have for others is because they misunderstand out of failed empathy.

Gusty Winds বলেছেন...

I'm not the perfect parent. I've made plenty of mistakes.

But they dosed my son with Ritalin starting at 7 years old. My daughter with cocktails of antidepressants at 11.

I was vocal about my objections, but my ex wanted to do whatever the teachers and 'doctors' said was needed. These people were just throwing sand at a barn.

When I was a kid we ran at school EVERYDAY. I think that was obviously a better approach.


Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves বলেছেন...

Democracy = depressing. But don't blame the precious celebrities.

Buckwheathikes বলেছেন...

No, that's not it. Largely the decline of America is down to every one of our government institutions failing to do its job properly:

* Military more worried about pronouns than killing people, which is why a nation creates a military.

* A President who literally doubled gas prices, only to somewhat lower them when threatened with an election.

* Judges leaking decisions beforehand in an attempt to manipulate courts, then completely unwilling to determine who did it.

* Prosecutors letting criminals run rampant on our streets, raping and murdering our wives and children.

* SEC literally helping Wall Street psychopaths steal our money.

* Media which spends billions protecting one political party.

* A federal government which traffics human beings in order to "fight the inflation" that it created.

* Colleges which milk children of their future by grossly indebting them.

* Presidents who reminisce about the 12 year olds they "befriended" when they were 30.

* Vice-President who cannot form a complete sentence.

* Supreme Court justices who cannot define simple words such as "woman."

* Regulators who shut down baby milk plants with no concept of how that market works.

* A Congress allowing a President to potentially get our nation nuked by Russia without even voting on the war.

I could go on an on.

But yeah, let's talk about Zoloft.

Carol বলেছেন...

I don't lack empathy. I just don't believe people's f*****g stories anymore.

gilbar বলেছেন...

Serious Question
Of ALL the kids with "gender dysphoria".. is there a single one; that isn't already on SSRIs?

Roger Sweeny বলেছেন...

A person who is depressed is often "emotionally blunted". If an anti-depressant works right, the person is LESS emotionally blunted.

gilbar বলেছেন...

The meds aren't the solution.. The meds ARE the problem

Fred Drinkwater বলেছেন...

Empathy is a delusion or mental illness. No one can have, or even share, the emotions of another.
Sympathy, otoh, is real and useful. But it's work, to think about another's situation instead of just feeling, so it's less popular.

rrsafety বলেছেন...

As the parent of a teen diagnosed with severe depression, we need more and better medication options, not fewer.

Sebastian বলেছেন...

"Add to the pharmacological cultivation of emotional blunting the emotionally blunting effect of lives lived increasingly online"

Siegel doesn't make the connection explicit, but this is how "the regime regulates relations between people."

The point of "our democracy," after all, is not to cultivate democracy, but to solidify prog power. BAMN.

One of the means is declaring the feelings and views of deplorable deviants irrelevant and illegitimate.

Bob Boyd বলেছেন...

@ rrsafety

Interesting what's going on with psychedelics these days. Obviously, it's very early days.

MikeD বলেছেন...

Australian researchers note a link between rising antidepressant usage and rising suicide rates in youth. Their research pushes back on psychiatry talking points that SSRIs decrease suicide risk. The top method for self-harm and suicide in younger age groups is overdosing antidepressants.

Carol বলেছেন...

Ha, that was good. Not only antidepressants but antipsychotics, opioids, any kind of speed, steroids, testosterone...the all mess with your brain chemistry.

But if ya need it to get ahead and everyone else is doing it, whaddya gonna do.

BTW there's a big shortage of Adderall since school started up...

Carol বলেছেন...

What are YOU on, Buckwheat?

Tom T. বলেছেন...

Antidepressants and ADHD medications have nothing to do with empathy. Siegel is ignorant and just ranting generically against new things because he doesn't understand them. Previous generations of angry cranks probably went off in similar ways against innovations like the telephone and eyeglasses.

"We used to just squint at the blackboard and it made our eyes tougher!"

Yancey Ward বলেছেন...

People have long confused the meanings of sympathy and empathy. What else is new?

n.n বলেছেন...

Em-pathetic.

ALP বলেছেন...

Freedom is messy. I don't understand why people can't accept/grasp this. Messiness makes some people depressed and anxious. I would normally discount such worries that this is a 'threat to America' or some such nonsense. But so many people can't handle the messiness of freedom and choice. So maybe there is something to these worries. Who knows?

mccullough বলেছেন...

Yancey is right.

Widespread empathy for others would lead to mental illness.

The world has more than 6 billion people. Right now, someone is being born, someone is dying, someone is starving, someone is being raped or murdered, some is in excruciating pain, someone is having sex, someone is enjoying nice weather.

Identifying emotionally with strangers difficulties would lead to suicide.

Will Cate বলেছেন...

This is the problem I've always had with empathy, conceptually: it is performative, demonstrative. Otherwise, it doesn't work, right? Gotta put the big show on. Otherwise, how would anybody know how empathetic you are? So if you're a good actor, it's easy to fake empathy.

n.n বলেছেন...

Em-pathy in lieu of principles.

JaimeRoberto বলেছেন...

Empathy leads to bad decisions. I'm against empathy, or at least the manipulative use of empathy by the media and politicians.

Kate বলেছেন...

City Journal can be very one-track. Anything new is bad.

I'm with the commenters who've had experience with severely depressed family members. Meds saved their life. And made them more open to understanding other people. Clinical Depression is isolating.

Meade বলেছেন...

I always walk a mile in another man's moccasins before i criticize him for accusing me of stealing his moccasins.

Mike (MJB Wolf) বলেছেন...

2022 is the year science realized that the whole rationale for anti-depressants was wrong, incorrect, has nothing to do with seratonin levels. Whoever wrote up thread that we need more and BETTER options is fucking right!

Jupiter বলেছেন...

When I was 13, my parents took me to a psychiatrist, because I didn't want to go to school. He asked me a bunch of probing questions, to which I gave terse and entirely uninformative answers. After about 40 minutes of that, he prescribed antidepressants. I took them home and flushed them down the toilet, and the next week, I hid just inside his office entrance 'til my Mom drove away, then got the Hell out of there. Of course, the reason I didn't want to go to school was because Jim Boer and John Angvick beat me up all the time, and the adults did nothing about it. The public schools were shitholes then, and they've gotten a lot worse. The psychiatric profession was a collection of quacks then, and they've gotten a lot worse.

I'm not sure how I knew it, but I knew that telling the quack, or my parents, about the real reason I hated school was not a good idea. They didn't want to change the school. They wanted to change me, and any information I gave them could and would be used against me.

Jupiter বলেছেন...

"As the parent of a teen diagnosed with severe depression, we need more and better medication options, not fewer."

You may get more. You aren't likely to get better from Big Quack.

Howard বলেছেন...

I'm a firm believer in empathy. It's a great way to feel so much better about yourself because you realize how crappy most people have it. I have a shit ton of empathy for you people and it helps me feel Superior.