cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/21933555
For me it was these.
“A focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius”
“Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter”
These two quotes really helped get my @** in gear.
As someone who lacks empathy this is something I don’t understand on an emotional level. Like I get it cognitively how one feels, but I don’t feel it myself. I’ve been doing my best to fake it since I’m a little kid, though back in those days i thought this is what empathy meant. IRL I’ve told no one about this. There may be one or another person I was close with who might suspect something since I literally asked what the appropriate response to something was.
I do have empathy for animals thought, which I find totally weird.
I’d say empathy is a social skill learned through experience or proper education.
It can still be distorted and applied selectively or even outright ignored.
And at its core, it can be both simple and complex. Whatever emotions you feel and why can be felt by anyone else in the same way, but perhaps for different things.
So the main thing empathy asks is to understand that, to accept that having their experience and knowledge from their life is what guides their decisions, just as your own guide yours.
We don’t know the same things and we should appreciate that difference, even though we might not agree with it.
Empathy for animals is easier to have because they are simpler to gauge and direct in their actions. Less of a headache to deal with the why’s.