We're all familiar with this graph, I assume:
Ideological Differences in the Expanse of the Moral Circle by Adam Waytz et.al.
Leftists like to believe that means they have more empathy. After all, the entire world is bigger than your neighbourhood, biggot!
I believe it means they have none.
Rightoids have empathy for things near them. Related to them. Things they can hug.
Leftards have empathy for things that are so far away, they are for all intents and purposes theoretical. Hypothetical. Children in Africa, women in Sudan, baby seals in the Arctic, trees in Brazil.
Meanwhile, their own conservative uncle is dehumanised as evil, as a monster. Their unborn children, arguably the closest thing to them imaginable, are rationalised into being "a bunch of cells", and they kill a third of them because they might become inconvenient.
Conservatives have empathy for things that exist. The people around them, their pets, their towns. Their biblical "neighbour".
What leftists have empathy for, are pixels on the screen.
The biggest issue with the pop psychology empathy discussion is you can have empathy but simply not care. I can empathize with why the Chinese want to kill me but I'm going to kill them anyway because it's in my interest.
Caring about others doesn't mean you're necessarily more empathetic.
What ultimately matters is who you care about and why. Empathy is merely the understanding of another person's position which helps you better choose to whom you will care about and why.
Leftists actually have little empathy because if they truly understood how others thought then they would care less about those people. A leftist imagines others as exactly like himself (equal) which shows a genuine lack of empathy.
Right-wing people have more empathy which is why they care about less people overall but care about the right people one ought to care about.
Exactly. They believe they completely understand how they would feel if they were born in a tree-house in Borneo, but they only project themselves into that situation, with their wants, their needs, their education, their standards, their beliefes and their world-view. "I couldn't live without my iPhone, so how could they?" In reality they can't even understand their lifelong neighbour who voted for Trump.
It's why they keep voting in 3rd-world migrants who hate everything that means anything to them. Because they believe that deep down everyone is like them.
Someone without human empathy is actually a sociopath... but the difference is small. Actual sociopaths cannot be cured, while a psychopath might, depending on how bad it is & the cause(s). Sociopaths are much better at adapting to society... at least on the surface. If they think they can get away with something, they'll do it, no matter how minor or horrible it is. Torture a bug or mutilate a child? All the same to them.
And yes, leftists severely lack empathy. They're all mentally ill at this point. Projection is how they see everything: reality is just a mirror of their self-hatred. Everyone hates them, they "reason" because they hate everyone.
Conservatives these days have to live with an HOURLY bombardment of far-left nonsense. In the 50's the Media was the other way? Mostly. The 60's saw some big changes and since the 90's it's been all-left all the time as the right-thinking journalists die off.
So we know what the "other side" believes, it's rubbed in our faces constantly. The left thinks we believe what they're told we believe, not what we actually do. And you cannot talk them out of it: their entire worldview & self esteem depends on them being 100% correct about everything! Zero tolerance for outside ideas.
It's cultural though, it can be "fixed" but at this point it will take physical revolution. Also: Europe & Canada are lost, the USA is on its own 😣
Correct