“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! 🙂

  • dotslashme
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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