Empathy @ MindSay

    Why do many of us have this fierce quest to be right all of the time? Why do people think that being right ups their personal value more than anything else? Well, maybe yes, or maybe no.

    ‘Does it matter? He is wrong and we are right.’ That’s what we would always say. Aww c'mon, is that what it is?! But life isn’t all about being right all of the time. Right doesn’t always make us the good guys. If we pursue and defend right in a manner that appears heartless, mean, ruthless, or demeaning then whatever our good intent that sense of being right would be lost in the pieces of a shattered heart --- a broken spirit.

We go to extra lengths to defend being right or prove a point which we believe is the correct one. But has it ever occurred to us just how this hard badgering and hammering is affecting the other person? That the words we speak although of good intent may not be the right things to say to that person? That being so entrenched in our fervor and righteousness we fail to see that the other person is hurting?

How about trying on his shoes for a change and see how that feels? Maybe then you will wish so hard that the world or people were a little bit kinder? That it’s not so much being right but being kind which truly matters? That people can be wrong, true, but are we always kind? Such thoughts run through the mind of a broken man.

Being right is okay in its proper time intent and place, but being kind is more important --- cause it’s being human and humane that makes the grade.

There are a multitude of causes around the worked each worthy in its own right.  Some are more in need than others.  Some are only causes in the name of a cause.  The word itself is speculative cause yet we find more allure in individual operations.  It is truly with great valor and honorability that we recognize the action of such causes, but with some hesitancy I would assert.  It seems that in a time of rapid technology and popular culture the increasing source of epistemological reckoning we fall prey to fetishism.  I have discussed in my talks about academic and intellectual fetishism.  Fetishism is referred to most often in sexual contexts.  The act of fetish is indulging in as a sense of “deviant” behavior that is an obsession produced by an egoic thirst (see Sigmund Freud).  Causes have become a fetish taken up by those with kind hearts and imaginations.  The more causes that are taken up the more causes that are produced to address those causes and thus and endless cycle of causes occur by an affective causation.  Ironic isn’t it.  So how do we navigate and negotiate causes in order to understand how we are attempting to bring about an end by our means rather than a continual supply of means with no end?  We must find meaning in ourselves that promotes us to stand for a cause that may encompass or willfully incorporate several causes under one distinct meaningful approach.  We must not take pleasure in causes but pain.  Sympathy is the oppressors understanding that his position is safe and distance from the oppressed.  Empathy attempts to provide a relational consciousness within the oppressed and victimized.  Charity is an oppressive tool that teases unknowingly.  Not all charitable negotiations are this way.  It should be understood that charity is not the empathetic consciousness but the sympathetic.  It leaves a noticeable distance form the charitable producer and the consumer of such charity.  In many cases the sympathy stimulates a brief moment of contentment that the charity has somehow participated in an active agency to better the situation.  It is nothing more in this case but a tithing of aberration for the charitable.  It is a cause which causes them to feel elated.  What dreams they rest with easily do not incorporate the stark and desperate realities of those whose charity they will receive.  At times I am cynical of the world and the cycle of charity.  Charity keeps alive the dead and the terminally oppressed.  At his point we can return to the original discussion of causes.  To take up a cause is to take up a life.  A life that is responsible not for the self, but for those that it aims to affect.  Education is a cause in its own right.  Though in understanding education as a cause it is not complete, absolute, nor terminable until death.  Time is irrelevant in understanding cause.  With a swift blow one movement is erased and another one takes its place.  We must caution ourselves in taking up causes.  It is not an easy task or one that promises great reward.  If anything there is certainty of consequence, pain, and relinquishing of what one enjoys in order to participate as an advocate and a possible constituent.  Great revolutionaries have understood that causes are devised by those who are often not constituents of them.  We feel sympathy for the suffering of a group but would refuse to trade places, to momentarily emancipate an individual.  When one refuses to give up his or her life even in an abstract hypothetical proposal then that person not only understands their position, they have strengthened it.  The strengthening of such positions continues to promote a cycle of dominance, unearned privilege, oppression, and willful neglect.  Charity becomes the financial penalty for refusing such hypothetical terms.  It is the opium needed to intoxicate the mind as it drifts into an abstract reality filled with sympathy and comfort.  Life is comfortable for those who are not within a cause.  Those who do not receive charity are comfortable in the leisure and ability to not be so.  We cannot condemn the charitable, sympathetic, and good intentioned.  We can, however, attempt to convey a consciousness and empathetic realization among those who are quick to give and take but not partake.  So much as we critically discuss these unknowing benevolents they are the advocacy and agents of transformation.  With clarity and willingness to be what they are objecting they become like the other which loses its rigid categorical form in place of self-affiliation.  So to the missionaries who give conditionally what has been taken away from you that heeds such condition for charity and cause.  Such understanding of support or “cause” must be negotiated diligently or we fall into a mindless fetish of causes for the sake of having a cause.

Antonio Garcia

Indiana University

it has been a puzzle to me why the most selfish, insensitive people i know are also the ones who claim a mastery of social graces and are most often experts in feigning concern, empathy and sensitivity.



http://clearblogs.com/theexposer

They don't have the normal empathy the rest of us take for granted. They don't feel affection. They don't care about others. But most of them are good observers, and they have learned how to mimic those feelings remarkably well.

http://www.narcissism.operationdoubles.com/

So that the narcissist can think he seems grand, he must make you seem insignificant by comparison. This is why malignant narcissists act as though it would kill them to compliment you, to thank you for anything, to tell you they love you, to listen to you, to say they're sorry for something, to give you credit for being right about anything, to put their arm around you, to take an interest in anything you do . . . and let's just cut to the chase: they act like it would kill them give you one bit of gratification. They won't even look at you: they pay more attention to a fly on the wall.

but they're not even grand....!

They gotta have it all, you see. Nobody ever taught them to share.

uh?

Find out what narcissists don't want you to know. Get What Makes Narcissists Tick.

But treating you like you're nothing is just one of many ways they act out their fantasy that they are so grand that you are dirt under their feet. So, look out. Delusions of grandeur are hard to maintain and are constantly challenged by reality.

For example, do you have a fine reputation? Look out, that threatens the narcissist's delusion that he is the greatest, so he'll have to fix that fine reputation of yours.

Do you excel at something? Look out, that threatens the narcissist's delusion that he is the greatest, so he'll have to sabotage your work.

Do you have an outstanding personal virtue? Look out, that threatens the narcissist's delusion that he is the greatest, so he'll have to drag your virtue through the mud, attributing it to himself while he portrays it in you as a vice.

Yes, Pathological Envy is one of his middle names.  I soooo agree!!!

But treating others like nothing and destroying them aren't the only ways narcissists act out their fantasy and maintain their delusions of grandeur. Those delusions evaporate without constant reinforcement, so a malignant narcissist needs to prove he's God Almighty by trampling someone about as frequently as most other predators need to make a kill. It's just more of the same. So that the narcissist can think he seems grand, he must crush you like a bug underfoot.

Therefore, if you are down and out, look out, you're going to get kicked.

Can he get away with abusing you behind closed doors? Look out. And if you try to complain, you'll be sorry, because he'll have the whole world conned ahead of time into viewing you as the malicious one who's imagining things.  

Yes, Diabolo is another one of his middle names.

 So right!

what's boggling though is why  people believe these narcissists.

they are but self-proclaimed lords and queens of the underworld , they just thrive on delusions (yet have the gall to claim that those who have actual claims to accomplishments are the ones living in illusion).

why don't people see that without the connections and fanatics they were able to lure, they really lack the things that they so envy in other people?

is this because they have the knowledge of human emotions but they just don't have the moral boundaries to stop them from taking control of others' spheres?

are we prone to them because we have the capacity to feel guilty and they don't - and they know this so they can go at all costs without bounds, while we, we can't play the game they set before us because our conscience stops us from doing so?

how then do we stop such people from harassing us?

what if we already made sure we stay out of their way so our relationships,  accomplishments, or our mere existence will not irk them (although obviously, we don't even have to do anything to annoy them)? 

What if they're too afraid of the shadows they made that they continually have their loyal narcissist-wannabes haunt us and taunt us just to make us feel we're nobodies, losers ? (by their definition)

How do we even pound some sense into these people?

how can we even send the message across that we don't give a hoot whether they brand us a loser, a wino, a weirdo, a whatever?... that we just wanna be left alone. (well, if they're the benchmark of what being winners are, of what being sensible and sane is, i don't know about you but i, i'd surely wanna be on the opposite side of that spectrum.)

why are they so hell-bent in proving that we're nobodies when we don't even spend time thinking whether others consider us as "somebody".  

truth be told, the tags only gain traction because of their constant reference to these boxed perceptions:  "she's not somebody, she's not the person  you think she is,  you're the only ones who think she's somebody, blah- blah.."

somebody. nobody. anybody.

blech.
 
call me nobody anytime.

just leave me alone.



 

I Just Want to Impress You with my Vast Arsenal of Yesterday's Knowledge.

 

This title just would have been too long.

 

INTELLECTUALIZATION - an ego defense mechanism used to distance one's self from an emotionally charged situation by focusing on facts and logic. It is also known as a "flight into reason".  The use of jargon is also common when one is intellectualizing a situation.

Example:   A person told they have cancer asks for details on the probability of survival and the success rates of various drugs. The doctor may join in, using 'carcinoma' instead of 'cancer' and 'terminal' instead of 'fatal'.

 

Other reasons people may take an emotionally charged event and take "flight into reason" is because they are extremely uncomfortable dealing with the emotions of others.  In the phrase "flight into reason", "flight" means to run away from as in the more common phrase of "fight or flight". Let's face it, when someone tells us horrible news about their lives it can leave us speechless and unsure of what to say.  We certainly don't want to say the wrong thing. 

 

Some people have a lot of difficulty relating to others, so in situations where "people skills" are required they cope in the only way they know how. Some people may revert to AVOIDANCE meaning they avoid people or social situations altogether. Others revert to "safer" objects like books or even animals. When the person reverts to books and academia in order to feel more comfortable dealing with people, they have about a fifty / fifty shot of succeeding. On the one hand, it always gives them something to talk about in a group setting, on the other hand they can come off like an ass if the situation calls for empathy.  For example:  A friend tells you that their parents are going through a divorce and you respond by quoting statistics that prove that it was bound to happen to some family sooner or later. As you can see this can be a poor way to relate to a person even if the statistics are rock solid.

 

The irony does not escape me that I am intellectualizing by writing this post. Somebody pissed me off big time today, so I had to step back and review the situation.  I had to rely on my own knowledge base to distance myself from that anger, otherwise this would have been an entirely different post, loaded with ranting and raving. I'll save that for another time.  (That was AVOIDANCE by the way! :P)

itsumademo ai shiteru...

who?, that's for me to know and you to hopelessly guess at. :)