compost_funeralThis might be a silly question, but did the term "empath" exist at all before Star Trek: TNG aired? I do not recall ever seeing it in pre-1980s text but obviously I am limited by my perspective here. If the term was invented to describe Troi then that feels extremely appropriate for how it's used now actually (given it was probably popularised from this point, it probably still is, even if the paranormal crowd were using it earlier)
thinking about this because someone who knows they're not meant to come to my house, and who has previously told me "i'm an empath", has turned up 3 times since i mentioned to their partner that i'm too sick to leave the house all week and therefore cannot go anywhere to avoid them. classic empath behaviour, and i'm not being sarcastic because nearly every self proclaimed empath is like this lmao
honestly like. I think I am a bit of a dickhead, I talk too much and I take up space that others might need more than I do, more often than I consciously want to, but at least I don't make the mistake of thinking "my empathy is often strong enough to be inconvenient to me" is some kind of trait that makes me morally good no matter what I do.
I'm just fucking autistic, and one of the symptoms of autism is sometimes you get so fixated on the wave of empathy you got for a worm dying on the road that you totally miss obvious signals that your friend needs to talk more about what they're going through before they hear from you, or something.
it feels so dangerous to forget that neurodivergent empathy is just, well, chaotic sometimes, and that empathy is just as easily a tool of oppression as it is of liberation. it's just a thing created by the mirror neurons in our brains, and the fact most people feel it more strongly towards those they share a lot of context or similarity of experience with (or think they do!) enables a lot of evil - I've seen it so many times that someone is so blinkered by their empathy for the person more similar to them, so sympathetic towards their feeling of "but I want to do xyz so badly" or "I find xyz person/group scary" that they cannot see the humanity of that person's victims.
I really do believe cases like that are as real and genuine as my own experiences with empathy, things like not being able to process my "oh god, I remembered the meat industry exists" wave of empathy-pain and intrusive mental images at the same time as remembering how to speak sympathetically to other humans. not least because I also notice that my empathy response leads me down thought paths I can immediately identify as wrong - I read a letter from some child in a detention facility and I immediately recoil from the pain of that empathy by trying to tell myself "surely there's some reason it's not as bad as it sounds, maybe they are used to it somehow-" before I catch myself and go "of course there is nothing that makes this easier for them than it would be for me". but it's empathy that produces that temptation! it's such a double-edged sword and people who say "empathy" like it's only ever a thing that makes you better to other people freak me out.
aura s@compost_funeral i've for a long time been uncomfortable with equating whichever emotion with moral goodness. affective empathy is often conducive to it, but as you make clear there are many ways of acting in response to that emotion. similarly an overwhelming feeling of affection, protectiveness, etc. doesn't necessarily mean that you love or respect someone as a person, see eg. many abusive parents
@compost_funeral what to me seems like a better predictor of 'goodness' is a certain openness and curiosity about others, an understanding that they truly exist as separate beings and that you might have to greatly exert yourself to understand them
@compost_funeral this relates to how i don't think the big common factor of right wingers is 'heartlessness' or not feeling empathy, but an entitled intellectual laziness that wants to make the world such that everything is exactly like it seems at first glance
@angstonautti honestly yeah, and I think to deny right-wingers their empathy is basically committing the exact same sin one is accusing them of, which never ends well. i don't think there's such a thing as "the" big common factor but certainly all the most common ones i think i've idenfitied have that entitled intellectual laziness in common