“Is this to be an empathy test?” – Blade Runner
An MS-13 sociopath that was incapable of understanding the feeling of others was diagnosed with empanada.
Empathy.
I first heard that word when I was five. I asked Grandma McWilder what empathy was, and was told that “Empathy is what bleeding heart GloboLeftist women do while their men do the dishes. Now get to work resizing that brass – this ammunition won’t reload itself.”
That’s supposed to be good, right? We’re supposed to feel good about ourselves when we care about others enough to mentally put ourselves in the position of another to share what they’re feeling.
Empathy really is part of what makes us human. Empathy allows us to model other humans and understand how they’re feeling. And, in some cases, anticipate how they’re going to feel. Like asleep. Or perspiring. Or sticky. You know, emotions.
Empathy is important.
If he sold weed from Ireland, would he be Ma’am O’gram?
But the problem starts to occur when empathy becomes our sole guide for how we conduct our world. One example are the transgender people. I still recall when the blonde gentleman with longish hair who was larping as a woman in a store back in 2019. He got famously irate because a flustered clerk couldn’t process that Macho Ma’am Trandy Savage was pretending to be a woman.
Because he was in this very weird place, his brain short circuited. He had been taught at a very young age that it was polite to call an older man sir. Confronted with the cognitive dissonance of what was obviously a man in makeup, his synapses fried by adrenaline, he did what he had learned as a babe. He called the dude, “sir.”
I doubt Trandy Savage would like this song.
While demanding empathy, the dude showed none himself. Empathy on the part of this brittle freakshow would have solved the situation, but the reason that it felt itself privileged enough with his lipstick and five o’clock shadow is because society has shown far too much empathy for people like him for far too long. Misplaced empathy has turned him into a sociopath.
You want to play pretend? Fine. Keep away from children, and don’t expect me to participate in the charade. And don’t yell at some minimum wage clerk who is really just trying to help.
We also show empathy for the wrong things. Who was the worst person in the movie Titanic?
You know, if you think the sinking of the Titanic was a tragedy, remember about the lobsters in the kitchen.
Rose. She was the villain. She’s married, but cheats on her fiancé with a random Chad urchin and then spends the next 84 years pining for Chad, all while being married to someone she didn’t love nearly as much and then drops a necklace worth (according to the Internets – it’s fictional) $3.5 million dollars into the ocean. This could have been a life-changing inheritance for her great-grandchildren. But no.
Everything is about her.
The audience is supposed to feel empathy for her? Hell, she could have jumped in and let Chad live, or died with him. No. She’s awful. But she’s not alone. Hollywood loves trying to make people feel empathy for the bad guy.
And don’t get me started on Dead Poets Society where the teacher played by Robin Williams (who is the walking, talking essence of the French Revolution) removes all the value systems from his students while giving them nothing to take their place.
The real bad guy in this movie is the teacher. But you’re supposed to feel bad for him because he got fired, but not bad because his removal of a belief systems without replacement caused a kid to commit suicide.
Because the teacher convinced the kid to throw everything away and become an actor.
Kirk couldn’t sing, though. He had trouble with trebles.
You don’t hate Hollywood enough, but let’s move to hospital beds.
And don’t get me started on the misplaced empathy in health care, where literal titanic efforts (no necklace) and tons of treasure go into the last, miserable year of the lives of most people.
We also have addled ourselves with empathy via the Internet.
There are those that share so much online, that I honestly believe that they cease to exist if they’re not posting. Who cares what other people think of your lunch? Who cares what other people that you’ve never met think about you?
As found.
This weird, parasitical empathy where people feel good about themselves only because others think well of them is the sympathy of a society where values and laws are being replaced by the feels. Look at the way the GloboLeft work to keep a criminal illegal in this country, and whine and cry to keep him from being returned to his own country.
It’s misplaced empathy.
This also has implications with race. People felt badly for black people, having empathy for discrimination. Now? Black entitlement is so strong that they feel that a killer is the actual victim, rather than the person he stabbed, and expect people to feel their pain.
This is at least in part because of the way misplaced empathy has let blacks act in violent fashion and subsidized their lifestyle through welfare. Misplaced empathy tells people they don’t have to conform to societal norms. The GloboLeft can’t wait to knit them sweaters and sacrifice their children to them.
Enough is enough. Empathy is not a blank check.
The good news is that people are finally waking up, and realizing that it is far past the time when we as a society need to end our misplaced empathy.
That’s good. After all, that ammunition won’t reload itself.