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comment by kingmudsy
kingmudsy  ·  1613 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Thoughts on sympathy and empathy

What's the point of the anecdote with your daughter? To compare me and mk to a seven year old? "Words have meaning" would have sufficed. The same anecdote without "Of course, she's not yet seven" would have served your rhetorical purpose. So why include that line? To belittle?

My sole contribution to this conversation is to try and open the fucking dialogue up past, "Your idea is stupid, and you're dumb for saying things that are already a foregone conclusion in my mind," because ilex just made your exact point in a way that doesn't treat mk like an idiot for posting something. Nobody was compared to a seven year old, an overly sensitive liberal, or a white nationalist.





kleinbl00  ·  1613 days ago  ·  link  ·  

All the arguments you say I could have made simply I've made:

    An attempt at empathy is a necessity for understanding and empathy for the imperfection of the attempt is essential to bridge the misunderstandings inherent in any diverse society.

You either did not see them, did not understand them or did not acknowledge them until I brought up my six-year-old daughter. Why did I include it? To either aid, encourage or force you to acknowledge my point.

Your argument before is that I'm a meanie and I have no point. Your argument after is that I'm a meanie.

Fine.

The point stands that definitions proscribe behavior and whether or not mk wants to proscribe my behavior, his attempt at redefining words has that effect. More than that, I'm the only one arguing that empathy is not an inherently limited commodity despite the fact that mk offers no evidence or discussion to back up his assertion.

mk's core argument is that we must use emotions other than empathy to shape our behavior because there isn't enough empathy to go around. ilex is arguing that we should be nice to people, veen is arguing that other definitions are more important and katakowsj is bringing up a book on the Dalai Lama. I'm the only one making a counter-argument of mk's core point and now, in addition to attacking me for disputing his right to shape my behavior through definition, you're attacking me for not responding to your obscenities kindly enough.