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me_irl
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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me_irl
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"I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."
-- Gustave Gilbert (After interviewing Nazis post-WWII)
This is borderline using genetic arguments, ironic for Nazis. If people have learned to suppress their feelings the incapacity can be strong but is not genuine.
an empathetic society is a cooperative society, a socialist society.
capitalism is completely indifferent to the human factor, competition is about few winners and many losers. unemployment is desirable, poor people must be allowed to die.
people think economics is a science but it doesn't consider human nature, "everyone tries to maximize their personal profit" isn't an anthropological statement it's capitalism restated.
a lack of empathy isn't the source of corruption, money is. a lack of empathy is just a necessary pre-requisite.
If you want to understand evil you'll need to observe it in yourself. Secondhand observations will not do.
You will be seen as a malcontent and will be excluded from society more and more, the more you go down that road berating and lecturing people on their faults. Self righteousness doesn’t change the world for the better.
I know from experience.
Maybe naturalizing the incapacity for critical thought to be heard is the problem?
"You will be seen as malcontent"
Good. There's no reason to be compliant to cruelty, if 1 person out of 1000 learns something it will be progress. Otherwise we just let the world forget empathy. Empathy, community, love, the things that allowed us to comunicate, to cooperate.
To exist as Human beings, to protect us from the uncaring world.
It is friendship that is the ultimate measure of progress. And friends don't let friends be nazis
I agree with you! Both things can be true :)
It's deeper than that. You can't fight hunger, you can't fight indifference. You can only push people to pretend. Police has to have compassion.