The overall sentiment is true, and important. "Sparing the wolf is shallow, not deep empathy." But as we have covered here, and Grim covered in some detail, empathy is not the word Musk is looking for. The simple word "kindness" would have been better, and in line with the advice to use a simple word rather than a complicated one. That someone as smart as Musk uses "empathy" in that manner tells me that it is already well on its way to being a mere mild synonym for kindness, fellow-feeling, goodness. It's a shame when a useful word with distinct meaning gets watered down to a vague approval. We have plenty of those already.
Other words will rise to take the place of the weak ones.
1 comment:
Yes, the problem with empathy is that you are inserting your own ego into a thing you are observing at a distance. Not understanding more than you do about the actual situation, you think you understand everything because you feel however you do about your own observations.
So if you are observing the suffering of the wolf, and empathizing with the wolf you are observing, that's what you are doing. The fact that an artist has arranged a display of the wolf's suffering for you often escapes the observer; the fact that this leads them to their entire conclusion about the right and wrong of the matter, a conclusion made in ignorance of the real facts and relations, is entirely overwritten by the strength of the empathic emotions felt.
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