Students Show a Dramatic Drop In Empathy 659
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by
kdawson
from the well-boo-hoo dept.
from the well-boo-hoo dept.
MotorMachineMercenar writes "Several news sources report that today's college students show a precipitous drop in empathy (here's MSNBC's take). The study of 14,000 students shows that students since the year 2000 had 40% less empathy than those 20 and 30 years before them. The article lays out a laundry list of culprits, from child-rearing practices and the self-help movement, to video games and social media, to a free-market economy and income inequality. There's also a link so you can test your very own level of narcissism. Let's hope the Slashdot crowd doesn't break the empathy counter on the downside."
Oh god.. (Score:5, Insightful)
.. the linked test reminds me of those "what job are you best suited for" tests we got in school. The ones which after answering at least 100 very transparent and subjective questions would recommend you become a garbage man, an astronaut, or maybe a carpenter.
And all the questions are the same.. they could have essentially made the whole thing two questions:
1) are you empathetic
2) are you _NOT_ empathetic
Personally I think people are just as self centered now as always and we've just gotten better (supposedly) at measuring it.
It's like how mental illness would appear to be on the rise. It could be legitimate change, or it could be that we've come up with fancy names for kids who back in the day would've just been called "a little slow" and/or ended up in a job where no one would notice.
Ghost of the time? (Score:1, Insightful)
what did you expect (Score:5, Insightful)
you (the west) hold up crack dealers and gangsters as heroes (50cent et al), corporate psychopaths are held up as examples of "successful business leaders" and have TV shows (the apprentice) where people are expected to emulate these leaders in "ruthless business decisions", where kids see a class of people rip off their savings and retirements (bankers) and have 0 consequences, where a celebrity class are held up as models of behaviour where you dont work but shop on your working husbands/wifes credit cards or your rich dads inheritance
and you are surprised there is less empathy ?
i'm surprised there are no fucking lynch mobs
If true, is this a good or a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd argue that one of the "poisons" of modern society is all the garbage where "nobody loses". We have contests in school these days where everyone wins a prize.... Instead of coming in "last" and "losing", you get a 4th. or 5th. place ribbon. Instead of letting people score poorly on tests, you've got people trying to change the scores around. And instead of "hurting someone's feelings" - there's this whole thing of labeling them as having some sort of "disorder", implying they can't help their actions and they need special consideration/treatment.
If this generation is lacking some of THAT empathy, that's a step in the right direction!
Re:Ghost of the time? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a great deal of irony in your post in that you are opining about lack of empathy in young people, yet you show a lack empathy for a great portion of (US) society for which it IS completely normal to own a firearm.
Re:Oh god.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Very true.
You forgot the corporate environment, where the best asshole gets the promotions.
Re:Ah Yes Evil Capitalism (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, the Puritans left to pray at the altar of Free Market Capitalism, and later settlers came to respect the Self-Determination of the indigenous peoples.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.
and humbly thought, "How can I possibly feel that way about everyone?" The study is biased.
Re:Ghost of the time? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice job sliding the anti-firearm propaganda in there, but don't forget that firearm ownership happens to be very common in "wholesome" parts of the country where crime is rare and weapons are treated with respect. The military participation thing is not only historically "normal", but considered to be self-sacrifice (the marketing of particular wars IS a separate issue!).
Kids today are understanding that it makes sense to cover your own ass. Being an empathetic emo doesn't do that, and never did. Some of us are ancient enough to remember times before universal emophilia (hey, I coined a word!) and aren't nostalgic FOR emophilia. In tough times, get tough.
Re:Ghost of the time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh god.. (Score:5, Insightful)
We're getting better at measuring it? With that kind of test? It's basically asking "are you a good/bad person?" in a number of different ways. Maybe people are more (or less) honest about how they answer that kind of questionaires now, maybe they have a less idealised views of themselves, maybe they just don't give a fuck about what an anonymous questionaire says about them. Then there are questions like "Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place" -- which, if you can't help but doing that anyway, makes you come across as a callous motherfucker if you correctly answer "Does not describe me well". It's a shit test, and measures nothing.
Worthless test (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect the majority of people scoring over 50 points are in fact egocentric narcissists who think they are very empathic.
Please. We might be
Yes. Really.
- Jesper
Re:what did you expect (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph, but apathy and lack of empathy go hand-in-hand in the United States. As you correctly pointed out, it's mostly about getting as much money doing as little work as possible. To participate in a lynch mob would mean having to crowbar oneself out of their La-Z-Boy chair.
Besides, we prefer to keep our government-sanctioned lynch mobs in others' countries. That way we can cheer 'em on from our sofas, as if our military were our favorite sports team at an away game.
What does gun ownership have to do with anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of lies...
People "check out" of their communities for a host of reasons, each as individual as the last. It is woefully short-sighted to believe that our generation has any more or less in the way of bad examples. Politicians have been lying for as long as there have been politicians. Regulating arms has been a hot political topic for as long as governments have been using arms regulation to suppress the dissatisfied underclass. Joining the military for an opportunity to kill or torture or pillage or rape with impunity has even inspired governments to recruit from the ranks of their criminal class. These are not new problems.
What is comparatively new (only a few hundred years old) is (small-l) liberalism, in which minority viewpoints race from vilified, to tolerated, to accepted, to embraced. There is a huge section of adult society that basically worships any cause that claims to be tearing down some other, more established cause--an attitude once expected only of adolescents and madmen. In our race to destroy the trappings of tradition and establishment in favor of something shiny and new, we've forgotten to build lasting replacements to those edifices we so gleefully destroy. Religion? Superstitious nonsense--screw "sense of community," it's a pointless side effect. Social clubs? The decadent excess of a dominant class looking for ways to ostracize others. Family? A convenient lie, used mostly to oppress women and marginalize homosexuals, easily entered into and easily dissolved by the courts.
You want to know why people don't care about anything? Most of them don't have anything to care about.
Now don't get me wrong, there are some good reasons to challenge certain established norms (including some I've mentioned). But there's so much more to "evolving" a culture than tearing down its past. We Westerners have become exceedingly adept at deconstructing what we've got--what we're struggling with now is building a future.
Re:Ghost of the time? (Score:4, Insightful)
What?
The lies about WMD
What in the world does alleged lying have to do with empathy? Poor performance of the intelligence community hardly seems relevant, but at least you're making your bias clear from the get go I suppose.
the lies about drugs
Which lies? That they often unhealthy (both legal and illegal ones), that they're unnecessary and even counter-productive to live a happy and productive life? Or some other lies?
people telling you that is perfectly normal to own a gun
What is abnormal about owning a gun? Of course, if you're hopped up on drugs you probably shouldn't own a weapon.
that it is normal to shoot at someone just for trespassing/burglary
I see, maybe we should punish them with love instead? Breaking into someone's home is akin to invading another country. All bets are off when it comes to protecting family and property. If you come into my home with violent intent, just how much violence is too much? Baseball bat? Knife? Gun? Should I just ask you to leave nicely and hand over my wallet if you won't?
That is cool to join the army and fuck up another sorry son of a bitch that you had absolutely no conflict with
That's kind of the definition of war. How many Nazis did WWII soldiers have personal conflicts with?
The people who are selfish are the people that drive the ferrari's around at wallstreet
Being wealthy and choosing how you want to spend your wealth is selfish?
They are being held up as icons by a complete generation
People on Wall Street are about as far from an "icon" for young people as is possible.
No I am not surprised. Just very worried.
No reason to be, I doubt humans are less empathetic in general now than ever before, only that people are more honest about it now. I imagine this might be from a certain amount of the GIFT [penny-arcade.com] extending from online communities into real-world interactions. We've gone from interacting only with a small local community to dealing with thousands/millions of people online plus our local community. It's harder to feel empathy with so many anonymous people communicating only with text so it isn't too surprising that some apathetic feelings creep in.
When you're actually dealing with somebody sitting in front of you, face-to-face, I think most people would exhibit a higher level of empathy.
Re:Bigger problems? (Score:4, Insightful)
When you haven't ruthlessly focused your education on acquiring a variety of JOB skills that, along with hobbies that help make you employable, expect not to be employed. Your elders made the mistake of telling you is "do your own thing" without warning you that choices have consequences. Your school, like many, may have been more focused on SELLING a degree than fitting clients for work.
What did you study?
I took my lessons from MY elders, the Depression babies who had to scrabble. Life is a shit sandwich, and the more bread you have the less shit you taste. Education is for making MONEY, because without MONEY, you have fewer choices. Hobbies and recreational education are for fun, but don't typically pay the rent. If you can't get a job that fits your education, do any damn thing you have to. Consider skilled trades (I've never met a mechanic who couldn't make a living) instead of pushing paper. (Come to think of it, that's one area where some of your elders screwed you by discouraging manual labor. Mechanics and weldors, for example, can make serious money and are highly mobile.)
Unique and special snowflakes may disregard the above advice, but they are either employed or don't need to be.
Re:Ghost of the time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Santax: "(The lies about WMD, the lies about drugs), (people telling you that is perfectly normal to own a gun, that it is normal to shoot at someone just for trespassing/burglary)"
The two categroies of events have nothing to do with one another. I'm not sure what environment you live in. Perhaps you're in an urban area where, if something is going wrong, you are pefectly able to dial 911 with 99% certainty and a police officer is just two minutes away. But not all of us live in those areas.
Here's the thought process behind many of those law-abiding citizens who legally carry firearms.
Any time you have to use any implement in a life-threatening emergency, whether it be a fire extinguisher to put out a fire or an implement to make a human threat to your life stop being a threat, it is a life-changing event for you and should be avoided at all costs.
But here’s the reality. Out where we live, at any one time there may be between 1 and 4 Sheriff deputies covering the entire 527 square miles of the county. In the neighboring county, if you call 911 at 3AM on a Tuesday morning, you will get the CELL PHONE of the on-call Deputy. Maybe he’s awake, maybe not.
There have been a high number of burglaries in this area – two involving a homeowner being shot, one of those a deadly shooting.
If you hear a knock at your door and see a guy with a 12-gauge and ski mask on your porch, the cops may be 20 minutes away. You need a way to make this person stop being a threat immediately. If he sees that you have a certain implement of minor destruction (IMD) and runs away, great! Your goal of making the person stop being a threat has succeeded. It is a gravely unfortunate circumstance, however, that in some cases merely displaying IMD’s does not work – the person is too intent on getting your possessions and won’t hesitate to use whatever force is needed. In these cases the only way to stop the threat is to use equal force and hope for the best... knowing full well that there are heavy legal and psychological burdens to deal with after the fact. You’ll (hopefully) still be alive afterward, but as I said, these situations should be avoided at all costs.
It's a very heavy decision to make, possibly having to take the life of another to preserve my own life... but at least with a weapon I am able to make that decision.
Santax, around here there aren't many residents who *do not* own a gun; thus the "normal" mode of living is to own a gun. And if someone is intent on breaking in to your house, you do not have the luxury of a full psychological profile to determine if that person is going to kill you or not - you have to neutralize the threat or accept a very high risk of being killed. Whether "neutralize" means the guy is scared away when you pull your gun, or "neutralize" means you have to shoot until the threat stops, that's up to the burglar.
This has nothing to do with empathy, nor the lies that were told about WMD or are told about drugs. I'll put it this way... I don't eat meat because I'm empathetic towards the plight of factory-farmed animals. However, since I don't burglarize, my empathy towards those who may be intent upon breaking into my house and killing me is non-existent. I have two friends who feel the same way.
Re:Oh god.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think, as a contrary point of view, it might be that people's perception of human nature reflects their perception of themselves or their own place in humanity.
It's not controversial to say that humans have a competitive nature (and by extension, can exhibit greed even at the needless expense of others), but it's no more controversial to say that humans have a cooperative nature (and by extension, can exhibit empathy and altruism even at the needless expense of themselves). It's probably also not controversial to say that both characteristics can coexist, even in the same conditions, and that both characteristics can be beneficial for individuals and groups alike.
The meek will not inherit the Earth, but perhaps the unyieldingly principled and ethical will. Justice doesn't demand submissiveness of those who seek it—in fact, it demands forcefulness. We can live in the world as it exists and continue to make the world we want to live in. But not if we take the attitude that the best thing you can do is just get yours.
Re:Ghost of the time? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see the youngsters around me (and not only the youngsters, people of all ages seem to be affected) just don't care about anything or anyone anymore.
Well, not anything. There seems to be a lot of caring about things. Apple products in particular ;)
As for anyone, I suspect a lot of them still love their moms. Beyond that, the circle does seem to be shrinking.
It's not sad just from an ethical perspective, but perception of social realities depends on it to a large degree. How can one look at the news and get a balanced picture of conflicts if you can't put yourself in the shoes of both parties? The exercise may reveal that one set of shoes doesn't fit terribly well, but even attempting to wrestle with those shoes will provide greater insight into the original wearer.
That's why the "They hate our freedom" argument had some traction after 9/11, and still does to some extent. It takes a deeper look into the people themselves to discern real motivations like these people have hard lives, blame us for it, find meaning in a cause without which their lives would have no meaning.
That's just one portrait empathy might come up with, and no doubt doesn't apply to all militant Islamists. There might even be some grey bearded old mullah who genuinely does hate American 'freedom', though he would be more likely to term it 'self centered licentiousness'. Even there, though, with a little empathy you might have to concede that he isn't entirely wrong, and echoes something of the parent's point.
When it comes right down to it, lack of empathy is a form of retardation, something which seriously impairs one's ability to perceive social realities. And social animal who believes social realities aren't as important as material realities has its head up its ass.
Re:Ghost of the time? (Score:3, Insightful)
Empathetic emo? I thought emos were mostly concerned with themselves.
Re:Oh god.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do we laugh when Wile. E. Coyote has an anvil dropped on his head or when Dick Van Dyke trips over the ottoman? Simple: more resources are available to us when others are taken outta the game.
We laugh as our brains try and reconcile seemingly incompatible aspects of a situation, this mechanism and good feelings associated with laughter enable us to understand the world around us.
Re:what did you expect (Score:5, Insightful)
you (the west) hold up crack dealers and gangsters as heroes (50cent et al),
Not really. Or rather, it's nothing new. They are not being held up as "heroes" but rather are a way of marketing to the youth. The youth always want to differentiate themselves and thus need "shocking" idols/icons to rally around. In previous generations swinging hips were plenty shocking (Elvis, etc.), then suggestion of sexuality (Madonna, etc.), and nowadays kids latch onto things like "gangsters" in order to paint a "shocking" line in the sand and differentiate themselves from their parents.
However, in all cases those kids seem to grow up to be reasonably intelligent and responsible adults. You could argue that the fact that the icons have to get progressively more "intense" is a testament to our eroding values. Or, it could just be that society is becoming more liberal and interconnected, so that the "shocking bar" keeps being raised. Regardless, the vast majority of kids don't actually want to become gangsters (nor did the vast majority want to be sluts or whatever in previous generations...).
corporate psychopaths are held up as examples of "successful business leaders"
Again, nothing new. Ruthless leaders have existed for millennia. Successful ruthless leaders have always been admired for what they accomplish, though they've almost always been simultaneously despised for their tactics. In fact this is just a manifestation of the human animal's internally conflicting drives: we have an intense drive to win/compete alongside an intense drive to collaborate/socialize.
where kids see a class of people rip off their savings and retirements (bankers) and have 0 consequences
A bad example to our children, to be sure. But again nothing new. That the rich and powerful collude to protect themselves (and do so successfully) is not a modern trend.
where a celebrity class are held up as models of behaviour where you dont work but shop on your working husbands/wifes credit cards or your rich dads inheritance
There have been aristocracies of sorts (whether royal families, or the "old money" super-rich, or celebrities) across history. They are idolized largely because people dream of their power/riches, and also because the gossip they enable taps into our innate socializing behaviors.
and you are surprised there is less empathy ?
You've identified many idiosyncratic ills in our society. However I question whether there is anything novel about them. It seems to me that these arguably counter-productive human behaviors are as old as history itself.
I question the research from TFA, and I question your attempt to explain the purported trend. Every generation seems to decry the previous generation, believing that people used to be hard-working and moral, whereas the up-and-coming generation is lazy and corrupt and will ruin society. Yet every time, the new generation becomes rather similar to the old (which is both good and bad: they are just as hard-working, but they also lose their youthful idealism and never realize the reform they used to profess).
The problem is that every generation has only two points of reference: their childhood (which their faulty memories paint as being pleasant, etc.) and the current state (where kids get on their nerves). They can't accurately compare to past generations so they assume that the perceived local 'decay' is real rather than illusory. If every generation were right about how kids are worse (lazier, dumber, less moral, etc.), then how does society keep on ticking?
Re:Broken test (Score:4, Insightful)
But then they could not measure your annoyance over trivial crap.
Re:Ghost of the time? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've often heard the lack of forced military or civil service (a draft or something similar) as having been a detriment on society and empathy. After going through a war trying to save other people, or having to defend the guy next to you even if you think he's a jerk. How many people do you think would go around pointing guns at people and playing thug if they had spent some time shooting and defending people, understanding just how powerful a tool the thing is.
But you can easily grow up in a suburban house, without any real violence. And you can go through school without really interacting with poorer people or having to be humanitarian. You know what your comfy life is, and your friends comfy life. And you can go straight to college, and learn about how America has dominated many people and the military can be evil. Your parents can give you a car at 16, and keep you from having to face a touch teacher by yelling at them and making sure you're treated "fairly".
It's really easy for people to be isolated from sorrier conditions and situations where they would have go out of themselves and show empathy.
Instead, you can sit in your room with your own personal 32" TV and My Super Sexy Sweet 16 on MTV, and become a better person.
Personally, I have a hard time showing many of those people empathy. When a girl I went to high school with recked her 3rd car and her parents wouldn't buy her a new one, why would I empathize with that. She didn't deserve the first. She certainly didn't deserve the 2nd. Why should she get a 4th?
And when I'm being told I should empathize with someone who lost their license for drunk driving the 4th time and can't go to their job, or can't pay their bills because they can't afford that 8th kid they had because they wanted it with no thought to what that meant for the kid, I'm not terribly inclined to empathize with them.
I wonder. How much of this is people who can't empathize, and how much of this is people scoring lower because people aren't empathizing with people who probably don't deserver it?
Re:Ghost of the time? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most likely there isn't time for a reaction to be in proportion.
If an intruder is in my home, my life is in jeopardy. The opportunity to ask the intruder whether or not he's armed, and then frisk him, just may not present itself.
I suppose if you could somehow guarantee (which you can't) that all home invaders are unarmed, then you could get away with playing your game of tag with them.
I'll guarantee that with my method, you'll have a lot fewer home invaders in the first place. And that's better for everyone.
Re:Dumb question (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a dumb question
The question asks how do you feel. It does not ask about your actions.
To use your example. Two people can see someone is in distress, both look by casually and continue walking.
But the first did it due to lack of strong feelings to the situation or apathy. The second did it because they did feel the person's pain, but came to the conclusion that the best way to help would be to let that person deal with the issue themselves ( aka tough love ).
Although their actions are the same, they should answer the original question differently.
Re:Oh god.. (Score:2, Insightful)
The meek will not inherit the Earth.
I hate it when people say this.
Jesus's point was that the kingdom of God was different from the kingdoms of earth. Not that this was somehow true in the physical world. But no one ever seems to know that. They point out that wealthy, powerful assholes rule the earth, and not poor, meek, broken beggars. It's as if Jesus was trying to convey some sort of higher morality or something. Maybe some people could build a religion around ideas like that.
But instead, everyone always points out that the meek do not, in fact, inherit the earth as if it is some sort of freaking revelation. We know. We all live on earth. We don't live in heaven.
Re:Ghost of the time? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow. Just... wow. This illustrates the OP's view about empathy perfectly... it is a logical fallacy to assume that all, or even most, or even any small percentage of folks who own guns automatically want to "shoot you if you step foot on my property again". You are absolutely correct - anyone who shoots someone merely for stepping foot on property SHOULD be arrested, and they often ARE.
Re:Oh god.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The person who wrote the article obviously has a massive agenda, and it is not clear that it is grounded in empiricism. I stopped reading TFA (much like the test...) when I got to this:
Another factor is the "self esteem movement" and its pernicious notion that "you can't love anyone else until you love yourself."
I don't know if the "self esteem movement" is effective or not (I would guess "not"), but what the fuck is she really advocating here? Self-hatred is okay? If you don't like yourself, you don't believe that other people should like you either, which is a formidable obstacle to love. Whether we go about creating it the right way or not, calling self-esteem "pernicious" seems...pernicious.
The author [psychologytoday.com] also absurdly idealizes the past, seriously advocating "playing outside" as a panacea. She should take pushing her books to the next level and give Dr. Laura Schlesinger a run for her money on the radio. Malevolent conservatism vs. malevolent liberalism. They could have their own malevolent channel, where anything goes (except facts).
She spends the last half of the article railing against Social Darwinism, which (after it was invented by Ronald Reagan!) apparently created the empathy epidemic. It is interesting that reliable polling data invariably indicates that the (40% more sociopathic) millennial generation is overwhelming more liberal (the only true measure of empathy, according to the author) than the Tea-Partying baby boomers, who enjoyed such empathetic childhoods, romping under the open sky. Either there is no empathy epidemic, empathy is not closely correlated with political leaning, or both (my bet). In any event, the author obviously doesn't really care.
Re:Ghost of the time? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's not. If someone gives you a little push, you assume they are being an idiot and walk away.
If someone is brazen enough to break in to your house while it is occupied, you must assume they have the intent to injure or kill you, and act accordingly to neutralize the threat. Hopefully, neutralization occurs when the burglar realizes you are armed and then flees - in this case, you would not shoot a fleeing burglar.
Re:What does gun ownership have to do with anythin (Score:5, Insightful)
What about Civil Rights, Women's Suffrage movement or Gay rights right now? Women's place in marriage in the past was usually repressive & before Women's Suffrage they didn't even have many basic rights. Religion can create community & it can destroy it. Do something "wrong" in the eyes of the religious and the entire community will hold a grudge. Social clubs usually had a racist & sexist bent to them: no women, no blacks. Families still exist, it's just Betty Crocker was a lie. Your fear of homosexuals has nothing to do with families as many of them are trying to get the rights to marriage to maintain family lifestyle like heterosexuals.
It sounds like you long for "the good ol' days", where white straight males were dominant & "life was good". My Grandma grew-up during the Great Depression, my mom grew up through the late 50s & 60s. Both lives were hard. Life was not squeaky clean back then. It was only squeaky clean for the privileged: white males who made a decent wage - forget being poor, colored, a strong female or gay.
The current situation isn't perfect, but don't act like "the good ol' days" were either.
Re:Oh god.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do we find pleasure in others' pain? Why do we laugh when Wile. E. Coyote has an anvil dropped on his head or when Dick Van Dyke trips over the ottoman? Simple: more resources are available to us when others are taken outta the game.
You've got it wrong. We find it funny because we emphasize with their predicament. Nearly every time Wile fails he looks at the camera with pleading eyes before he gets clobbered. Even as little kids we're thinking "Oh, I know what thats like LOL." Conversely you can't root for a character that wins all the time; who didn't want Wile to finally catch that fucking road runner? (Same goes for Dick Van Dyke. You'll note in later seasons he practically dances around the ottoman instead of tripping on it, and we're quietly happy for him.)
.
Re:Ghost of the time? (Score:3, Insightful)
Empathy and a concern for others isn't a trivial emotional hobby, and a concern about it isn't nostalgia (you make it sound like it's the same as longing for the days of Mickey Mantle). It *is* morality and a necessity for a society to work. Almost every religion and system of morality is centered around overcoming innate human selfishness and helping others. Did Jesus or any other religious leader preach cover your own ass? Can you think of any admirable secular leader who did? Is that what the members of our military, who do sacrifice themselves, do? And how will your attitudes make our society a better place?
Rants like yours are trendy these days, and seeing many people say those things justifies them, just like a mob 'justifies' horrific actions to otherwise normal people who are part of it. It's cool and rebellious not to care; it's uninspiring and conventional to feel empathy. If we decided our morality by trendiness, there would be no doubt what to do.
I disagree completely. If we only do the right thing when it's easy to do, then our beliefs are meaningless -- just empty words, conveniences. In tough times you find out who people really are. Do they have the courage of their convictions, or are they cowards who surrender when challenged?
Re:Ah Yes Evil Capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
" Last I checked self-determination and free market capitalism were some of the founding principles of this country ..."
Last time I checked, the Constitution and Bill of Rights made no mention of "free market capitalism". Did I miss the memo?
Re:Feel empathy for the students and their debt (Score:3, Insightful)
What I found troubling about the questions was that they conflated "irrationality" with "empathy". I would say I am a very empathetic person, but only where I rationally observe that empathy is warranted. In my mind, "empathy" is quite different from sentimental, irrational refusal to link consequences to earlier actions.
Some of the questions, however, seem to require me to choose between "empathy" and rationality:
What kind of problems? What caused them? Am I allowed to distinguish between, say, George W Bush being unpopular due to his policies and a homeless guy who gets cancer? Am I allowed to think about George W Bush the human being and try to understand how he got where he is and why he acts the way he does without feeling sorry for him because things didn't end too well with his Presidency?
Define "sure". Am I "sure" because I'm an arrogant idiot, or "sure" because I have some powerful evidentiary or logical basis for my conclusion? If it's the latter, then not listening to arguments I know to be wrong doesn't necessarily make me lacking in empathy does it? Is it evidence of "empathy" if I indulge people who hold views I know to be objectively incorrect?
This appears to test whether I am stupid enough to agree with the American mainstream media's concept of "balance" (i.e. there are no facts, just two different opinions which have to be 'balanced' with one another), rather than whether I am empathetic. Am I more "empathetic" if I answer the question "is this building on fire?" with "Let's talk about the two different views on that for a while." rather than "Yes, get the $#%^ out before you get hurt!"
Re:Ah Yes Evil Capitalism (Score:1, Insightful)
And considering that most of the leftists in the US are on the right side of the spectrum compared to the rest of the world, how far right would 'true' conservatives be? I'm trying to wrap my head around the bizarro world that you apparently live in...
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought the next couple questions were also badly thought out:
Well, yes, sometimes I don't feel sorry. If someone who has hurt others goes to jail or gets hoisted by his/her own petard, then, no, I'm not going to feel too sorry.
This question is even worse:
Protective? I'll probably feel frustrated, instead. I'm hardly likely to be in a position to even protect such a person.
Re:Oh god.. (Score:1, Insightful)
The author is not describing self-esteem as "pernicious", the author is describing the idea that "you can't love anyone else until you love yourself." as pernicious. There's an important difference.
Re:Liberal Socialist Propaganda (Score:3, Insightful)
This is so obviously a Liberian socialist bit of propaganda it makes me puke. For one the assumption is that "Feeling sorry for other people having problems" is a unambiguously good thing.
Well, yeah, it sort of is.
Very often peoples problems are self imposed.
Citation needed. And just because Jimmy stuck his hand in the door before he slammed it onto his hand doesn't mean we don't feel sorry for him, even if it was a stupid move that he brought upon himself
Wheres the questions about taking personal responsibility ? "When you see someone having problems do you think about how they may have made bad choices in the past which caused those problems ?" "Do you want to help educate them to make better decisions in their lives ?" No ... everyone with problems is a "Victim", and your supposed to "Feel Sorry" for them or your an unemphatic asshole.
I don't see how that has to do with the survey, though. And if you want to educate someone to make better decisions - eg. that you care and want to help them so that they don't suffer. In such, empathy, the very thing you decry as socialist. If you want to help them, that implies that you feel sorry for them in some fashion.
The whole thing just reeks of new-age "Make everyone feel good about themselves" psychological bullshit. With an under current of liberal socialism.
I'm not entirely sure what making people feel good has to do with liberal socialism. I was under the impression that socialism was a political philosophy that emphasized overall control through the people as a collective, not a "make everyone feel good about themselves" psychological stance. Maybe you might want to connect the dots.
For the record, liberalism is a philosophy in the US that supports regulated capitalism, not socialism.
"You dont feel sorry enough for the Poor !!! Shame on you !!!" The obvious solution to everyone's problems is for us all to feel sorry for them then create massive government structures to hand out to them sympathy dollars so the problem goes away and we can feel sooo warm and fuzzy.
Well, not quite warm and fuzzy. More on the lines of, if we up the lowest common denominator, then we have a better society. We can judge a country based on its rich elites all we want, but if we look at the poverty line then, well, if that has been upped to a reasonable line then we can say we have succeeded in making a good quality of life for all. Then we won't need to feel sorry for anyone, because the collective as succeeded and as a race we have achieved success.
We send that $5/month to help the starving children in Africa so now we can feel all smug and liberal instead of addressing the actual causes of people problems.
Whoa, whoa whoa, so then, you want to say that helping African children is a bad thing? What other kind of problems do we have to deal with that is anything worse than a society that is so poor that they are literally dying of hunger? In a world where we have enough food for everyone in the world, what kind of monster do you have to be to not feel sorry for them at least a little?
That's not anti-socialist, that's sociopath behavior.
Where's my puke bucket,
Indeed.
Re:Rather a Poor Metric (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Terrible test (Score:1, Insightful)
And this is why you're not empathetic. If you felt they deserved to face the consequences, but felt sorry for them about it, then you would have an argument. Think of the father punishing the child: He feels the child needs to be punished in order to learn some lesson, but he feels bad about doing it.
You come off here as bragging about how selfish you are. You sound like one of those crazy libertarian extremists that post on Slashdot all of the time. It's one thing to not want to hear people complain because it's emotionally draining, or you have your own problems to deal with, but to come right out and say you don't care if someone has a bad day simply because it's not extremely unusual for bad days to occur demonstrates pretty clearly that you have little empathy for others.
Also, I hope the irony of your complaining about complainers is not lost on you.
Re:Rather a Poor Metric (Score:3, Insightful)
As a professor, I agree with your observation that empathetic behaviors have not changed in the last 20 years. I wonder if real empathy has remained the same or are students today just better at faking it. (Conversely, they could be more empathetic and worse at showing it.)
The relation between the measurement results and the actual trait would need to be established, assuming we could get an objective measure of empathy.
All TFA shows is that student perception of their own empathy, as measured by self-report instruments, has decreased. The "why" is another study.
Re:Oh god.. (Score:3, Insightful)
But - humans, like everything else that walks or swims or flagellates in nature, are just animals. The primitive, tribalist pack mentality is seen at all levels of human interaction, from sports teams to H.O.A.'s to the ethnocentricism of entire corporations, countries, and races.
Tribalism != lack of empathy. Quite the opposite, in fact. Humans are indeed animals -- social animals, and like all such, identification with other members of our group is an inherent part of our nature as a species. We're a lot more like wolves than we are like tigers.
Now, it's true that tribalism tends to discourage identification with members of other tribes, but that's because we tend to define them as not-quite-human. The solution seems to be one we have, in fact, implemented fairly successfully so far, which is to broaden the definition of "our tribe" to include larger and larger numbers of people. People who can't at least identify the people they're closely associated with as being of their tribe are not really functional human beings.
Re:In what units do you measure empathy? (Score:4, Insightful)
OMG. Don't you have any empathy for the poor beans?
Suggesting people eat them.... just.... wow.
Re:Oh god.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I also scored a 38 on that empathy quiz(bottom 10%), which explains why I do so well at work.
It also demonstrates why you can't leave it to certain individuals to be good. Obviously legislative intervention is required :P
Re:Oh god.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What does gun ownership have to do with anythin (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems GP is thinking recent thought movements are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Sure, social constructs can be abused, and things can get pretty bad when the abuse goes unchecked. Society today is effectively seeing the abuses, thinking that the cause of the abuses are the social constructs themselves, and in an attempt to prevent future abuse, denounce those constructs completely and absolutely. But those constructs do provide certain good, which GP argues gets marginalized and overlooked.
GP argues a more moderate approach, one that may be a little harder and take a little longer to implement, but will maintain the benefits of the old as well as prevent the abuses. But in this day and age of convenience and immediacy, such a thing would never even be considered. And if such a way does get brought up, one side will argue it's not good enough, while the other side will argue it's too much.
In an age where information is so prevalent, thoughtfulness does not seem to have increased, but mindlessness seems to have gotten louder.
Re:Who is asking for it? (Score:3, Insightful)
The opposition exists because we ask ourselves this: is the government's primary purpose to govern or be a charity organization?
For the more extreme libertarians, the spin goes like this: is the government here to support your freedoms, or forcibly extract property from people to support politically motivated wealth redistribution?
Re:what did you expect (Score:1, Insightful)
Not really. Or rather, it's nothing new.
Sure, it's been worse before when slavery was the norm. However compared to a few decades ago, things undoubtedly got worse. Whole economies are based on exploiting those with less power; and they globalised that movement to become more effecient at it.
Democracies going down the crapper. Just look at the laws politicians have passed in the last decade: they are preparing for social riots and major shitstorms.
Historically you can say it's nothing new. Contemporarily, things are getting worse.
Re:Ah Yes Evil Capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh god.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. Two people working together can do the work of 4 people separately. In a survival situation, working together is even more important. The current culture (especially corporate culture) encourages unnecessary competition. People are our greatest asset. We set them at each others throats at our own peril.
Re:Oh god.. (Score:3, Insightful)
You affect the system that your are observing. The fact that your destructive conviction is shared by so many people is a large part of what is destroying us, both as a nation and as a species. You belief is also easily falsified with a simple look at history. I would suggest, for example, Howard Zinn's "A people's history of the united states", for example. The first few chapters would suffice.
The reality is that we have a very destructive (to others and self) culture and set of values. While it's true that we will likely never eliminate cruelty and greed and other self destructive behaviours, at present we embrace a culture and belief set that seeks to maximize these beliefs. Some people engage in their selfish, harmful behaviour out of a strong conviction and indoctrination into the free-market ideals, or delusional belief that their leader, nation, religion, idealogy... can do no harm. Others follow your path. They see that problems exist, but choose to just give up, and embrace selfishness and short sightedness. Despite all the evidence that their own prosperity depends on empathy, on community, on coexistence with others, They say things like "the best thing you can do is just get yours".
Maybe you're just lazy. Maybe you're just an asshole who gets off one the suffering of others, and assumes everyone else is like you. More than likely though you're a victim of our fucked up media system, which is entirely dominated and controlled by gigantic corporations, who's only purpose is profit, and are therefore motivated to keep you isolated, uninvolved and inactive.
The solution is educate yourself, and get active. Being active and helping your fellow man actually makes you happy. Research has shown it, so you even have a selfish reason to stop being so selfish and lazy. Nearly everything good we have as human beings comes from the hard work and dedication of ordinary chumps like us, who get fed up with inequality, injustice, degradation, waste, corruption, etc. When people stop thinking "man I wish it was ME with my boot on HIS neck", and start thinking "Man, why the fuck should anyone have their boot on anyone's neck?", that's when things get better.
So stop being a victim and start being a part of the solution.