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So, where did that 'empathy is a sin' drivel come from?

Safe-Keeper

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Safe-Keeper
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With the unfortunately-worth-it death of Charlie Kirk and the rallying of cultists to tie themselves into pretzels over how he was unfairly and nastily quoted out of context wrt empathy, I've been thinking a lot about the fundie idea that empathy is a sin again. If I've heard of it before Kirk, I think I must have forgotten, so where did it come from? I did some digging and found a Reddit thread from someone saying they were worried they were 'on the wrong path' because they felt empathy and their church preached it was a sin, and some news articles hypothezising reasons for why fundies were attacking empathy.

I've heard Kirk's whataboutisms about how the lefty meanies didn't have enough empathy for fascists and other horrible people, and how empathy is meaningless because aaackschually you don't literally feel the other person's pain and emotions, so empathy is New Age woo. I read his weird take that he preferred sympathy over empathy, as if there can be sympathy when you've blotted out the very idea of registering and understanding other people's pain in the first place. As if empathy isn't one of the pillars of pack animals living together in a functional society. I've also seen the idea put forward that empathy is sinful because it might make you empathize with sinful people (the horror, what would Baby Jesus say?!).

Either way, to me, obviously it seems like a way to desensitize people from the horrors of the regime. Trans kids? Brown people? Susan in your algebra class who got pregnant after a rape and has no way to get to abortion? Stop those sinful empathetic thoughts, you don't really feel her pain and terror, that's just Satan worming his way into your sinful soul! Have sympathy instead --which just sounds like a cop-out and another way of saying 'thoughts and prayers'.

Either way, is this a new phenomenon or have I just been oblivious? And is it just more cruelty, or is there some sort of deluded logic behind it?
 
Captain G.M. Gilbert said:
In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have 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 men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.
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They know exactly what empathy means to their ideology.
 
I think it's just the newest (actually woke) way to dehumanize everyone who disagrees with your leaders.
Acknowledging that one can feel Empathy for someone is implicitly acknowledging that you and they are Humans. That they have feelings, just as you, and that there is no fundamental reason why you couldn't come to an agreement with one another and cooperate on common goals.

Admitting that you can feel empathy outs you as a Weak Link when it comes to removing The EnemyTM from Society.
 
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This is one of those times I wish this forum still had a large crop of fundies and loons. Would genuinely be interesting to hear someone argue the 'empathy is a sin' perspective. Even though it'd probably be bad-faith arguments and thinly veiled excuses. It just seems so transparently insincere to me (as you say, just an excuse to not care about the victims of GOP cruelties), it'd be interesting to hear from someone who actually believed it.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
I read his weird take that he preferred sympathy over empathy...
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That's great. His supporters can show us where he actually said that.

In a nutshell, I think it's just that they're ◊◊◊◊◊◊, selfish people who live in a cult where you have to profess your devotion to Jesus or be ostracized. So, as always, they take their scriptures and hammer to fit and paint to match until Jesus said what they want him to have said, namely that being a ◊◊◊◊◊◊, selfish person is the True Christian® thing to do.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
This is one of those times I wish this forum still had a large crop of fundies and loons. Would genuinely be interesting to hear someone argue the 'empathy is a sin' perspective. Even though it'd probably be bad-faith arguments and thinly veiled excuses. It just seems so transparently insincere to me (as you say, just an excuse to not care about the victims of GOP cruelties), it'd be interesting to hear from someone who actually believed it.
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Who was the guy who argued that little children being raped and murdered was proof that they'd done something to deserve it in God's eyes?
 
Foster Zygote said:
Who was the guy who argued that little children being raped and murdered was proof that they'd done something to deserve it in God's eyes?
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I actually think I remember that thread and guy, now that you say so. I've been revisiting various legendary crazy threads out of morbid fascination now that we have search back, but I think I'll skip that one.
 
The concept is rife in military organizations. The men that are in the field fighting have to believe in flag and country over any concept of humanity. And do what they are told without questions.
A soldier that doesn't hate the enemy and won't kill is useless to the organization.

Cruel, loyal and unthinking men make great soldiers. Heros in fact.
Until enemy men are taken prisoner and then it's great PR to follow all the international laws about it and treat them "fairly ".
Caring about them is still optional.

Many in the military lean hard right, many alt right sheeple are former military. Politicians know how to talk to them right now.
It's not a sin as much as weakness that some just do not want to show.

Empathy is something they would gladly receive however if they were losing or taken prisoners.
 
Of course, there is the whole Mother Theresa schtick that those who suffer are the lucky ones, because they are on an expressway to Heaven, so helping to reduce their misery is the same as wishing Hell on them.
 
I think the sentiment is pretty old.

There are complaints from paleoconservatives about Christian universalism and the harm it supposedly causes, especially the social gospel movement, applying "Christian principles" to social problems. And with that of course comes the anti-racism and empathy towards outsiders which they tend to regard as progressive guilt-tripping.
 
Helen said:
The whole "virtue-signalling" thing seems to me to be built on the idea that empathy does not exist, so how could anyone really care about those who are worse off, unless there is some kind of profit in it for themselves. It's quite revealing. And also disgusting.
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I never thought of it that way, I always saw the whole virtue signaling thing as just bad-faith trolling.
 
Something clicked at some point, and suddenly the world realized that the imaginary Jesus fella might have said some things about love and poverty that don't gel too well with Ayn Rand (who might also have been imaginary, I don't know). It's funny how this hasn't come up before.

No idea why such a populace can't just stop being religious, but it's definitely a useful tool for power. Some do have the self-awareness to turn ... neo-pagan?
 
Olmstead said:
Something clicked at some point, and suddenly the world realized that the imaginary Jesus fella might have said some things about love and poverty that don't gel too well with Ayn Rand (who might also have been imaginary, I don't know). It's funny how this hasn't come up before.

No idea why such a populace can't just stop being religious, but it's definitely a useful tool for power. Some do have the self-awareness to turn ... neo-pagan?
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Ayn Rand wasn't imaginary. She promoted her own brand of philosophy called Objectivism. Her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, The Virtues of Selfishness, and Capitalism is central to Libertarianism. Although she denounced Libertarian party, they embraced her and her philosophy as does much of the Republican Party. She also was an avowed atheist. Also, a fiction writer. Her two best known books were The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Two books that were emblematic of her selfishness ethos.
 
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