Conservatives are only capable of empathy if their ideology directly affects someone they care about. Good on them for finally getting there, but they're a day late and a dollar short
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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Only sometimes capable of empathy if someone they care about is affected.
So rare that it gets a news article when it happens!
Not everyone changes even when those close to them are impacted, sadly. I share your frustration and your point stands that it shouldn't take someone close to you being impacted to show empathy but this is a good outcome.
We need more stories like this and we should always be encouraging of people who turn away from bigotry even if they should never have been going that way to begin with.
A lot of conservatives stick to their ideology in circumstances like this. It's nice to see when they don't, even if they should have left earlier.
Listen, I get your point but...
They're not some different animal that has foreign feelings to you. They are humans and they are as you are. They are deceived, they are mistaken, they are perhaps brainwashed. But they're people.
When we start using the word "conservatives" the way you just did, to identify the "other", it permits all kinds of inhumane behavior because "they're not like us." Even when they do something objectively good, they're only doing it out of selfish interests, and not because of enlightenment. It's an ugly perspective.
Try substituting the word blacks, or Jews, or transgenders when you say conservatives next time and see if it sounds as good as you think it does. And if it doesn't, maybe back off the rhetoric a little.
This is a bad argument, and you know it was. Referring to a group who identify with political beliefs, at their own discretion, as that group, is not the same as "othering" based on ethnic or sexual traits that are predetermined. No where close.
I do not agree. I feel like it's plain and simple. Thinking can be changed, but ethnicity can't. Yet even though the possibility exists to reform them, we blame them for being "different" somehow rather than trying to understand and change their position.
I have defended my statement enough. If some of you want to argue that hating conservatives is justified, and even if they try to reform they're still doing it for selfish reasons, then I have nothing to say to you.
I do not agree. I feel like it's plain and simple. Thinking can be changed, but ethnicity can't. Yet even though the possibility exists to reform them, we blame them for being "different" somehow rather than trying to understand and change their position.
you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. they are getting their beliefs from their religious authority; how are any of us supposed to compete with that?
I have defended my statement enough. If some of you want to argue that hating conservatives is justified, and even if they try to reform they're still doing it for selfish reasons, then I have nothing to say to you.
what else do you call it when your mind only changes on a topic when it directly involves people close to you?
The difference between black people, Jewish people, or transgender people and conservatives is that you choose to be ~~an asshole~~ conservative. You don't choose to be black, (ethnically) Jewish, or transgender.
And comparing the systematic abuse those groups have suffered under to the complete lack of abuse conservatives haven't suffered is honestly disgusting. The conservatives helped cause that abuse. Don't compared the abused to their abusers.
Are you attempting to liken the condemnation of conservatives with the historical atrocities inflicted upon the black, Jewish, or transgender communities? All three of which groups are persecuted by conservatives?
Identifying people as the other does lead to all kinds of problems. However, discussing the behavior patterns of adherents of a vile and malicious belief system is just observation. This is a belief system that destroys us all and should not be tolerated. People who support the modern Republican party in the US or the Nazi ideology anywhere don't get to keep their people card until after they give up their toxic ideas.
We quarantine people with an illness to prevent them from harming the whole. We should be doing the same thing conservatives and Nazis. If they get better, wonderful! If they die out, not a significant loss to humanity.
But who will choose which ideas are good and which are bad? Every person makes that choice in how they live their lives. If one Nazi sits down at a table of nine people who do not immediately leave, then you have ten Nazis. The same can be said of American conservatives and the Israeli Defense Force and their supporters.
We should not seek to understand abhorrent ideologies outside the context of history while studying their origins as a means to prevent them from rising again, and we certainly shouldn't look upon their advocates in modern times as anything other than infected and dangerous people who need to be isolated and removed.
Look, I'm arguing for a reasonable perspective that treats people as individuals rather than labeling them as a group. You're answering me with hyperbole.
I think you would have gotten along well with senator Joe McCarthy.
You're answering me with hyperbole.
[…]
I think you would have gotten along well with senator Joe McCarthy.
People who support the modern Republican party in the US or the Nazi ideology anywhere don't get to keep their people card until after they give up their toxic ideas.
Not hyperbole. The mindset is the same.
The "quarantine them" bit is a bit extreme there, bud. That's some straight up fascist shit, I don't care what kind side you're on.
Feel free to criticize and throw milkshakes and other things that might get my banned here for saying, but that's actually fucked. Just because conservatives are willing to do it doesn't mean leftists should be willing. In the end they're still living breathing humans, even if I wished many of them weren't, and that's the main thing that separates leftists from conservatives, a belief in inherent humanity.
And we absolutely should seek understanding. Not sympathizing, mind you, but definitely an understanding. GI Joe was right when they said "Knowing is half the battle."
People who support the modern Republican party in the US or the Nazi ideology anywhere don’t get to keep their people card
Holy yikes!!! You're advocating taking about half of all voters in the US and no longer considering them as human? Not everyone who gets caught up in these ideologies understands that they are toxic. Ignorance, stupidity, brainwashing, etc. are very real. It is likely the vast majority of Republicans who don't understand that they're doing something that hurts people (often including themselves).
Theoretically, could there be some form of 'quarantining' that I would support? Maybe. But dehumanizing them is most certainly wrong. A lot of these people are just confused, and they do have good qualities as well as bad, and are very much people. Please take a closer look at what you're saying.
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A father jumped in a river to save his children, succeeded, but then drowned.
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A few years ago I risked a felony to save a life because there was no one else.
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These grandparents had empathy for their grandchildren.
None of these deserve accolades. Each met their obligation to provide basic human responses to the given situation.
Grandparents that, without trans family, recognized the hatred they'd been sucked into, perhaps even recognized it as counter their religious ideology, rejected the system in wider scope on principle, then quietly tried to keep running their ideological race: That's my hero.
Yeah, all of these deserve accolades, because we want to encourage empathetic behaviours. Minimizing someone's actions when they do the right thing implicitly sends the message that it's not important or valued to do the right thing.
While I understand and agree that some should receive personal encouragement, this is public accolade which is obviously quite different.
I've higher expectations for individuals I choose to trust and for society in general. Meeting the minimums for humanity isn't good enough. The majority of the comments in response are exemplary of how we fail each other, and thus fail as a society.
if the goal is to try to reach other conservatives with this message, it has been shown that social normalization changes behavior better than shame or fear. they need to see their peers change their minds.
This makes sense. But, lemmy isn't a MAGA, conservative, or leftist audience. It's a neoliberal audience. My response to the OP is exactly what it should be.
If you aren't training people--publicly--to meet the minimums of humanity, people aren't going to learn it. This is the entire emotional labor argument, writ large. People will say, "I don't owe you the emotional labor to explain this", or "you need to educate yourself", but the reality is that if you don't, no one will.
No, it's not fair. But life isn't fair. If you want thing to get better, then you need to be better, and you need to keep working to make shit change, instead of expecting everyone to be better on their own. The people that are intrinsically motivated need to motivate all of the people that are extrinsically motivated.
I believe I've invested the emotional labor to explain myself quite well: Good job. But, you need to do better to earn public accolade.
That's reality. Though some are still learning they're not children to be coddled.
2. A few years ago I risked a felony to save a life because there was no one else.
Story time?