Quote:
Originally Posted by pathway2FREEDOM
I was speaking about people who lack empathy and how that effects policy and people's very survival. I brought this up bc someene mentioned (wrote) the Einstein quote, so it was my response to this person. Of course, you can read it and comment. I think people who lack empathy, not only affect the people that they interact with personally, but can effect public policy. It is very scary to me.
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Yeah but it's a pervasive cycle that almost anyone can get sucked into.
If other people don't care about your needs and feelings, then you basically have two options.
1. Be a doormat and submit to the notion that it's okay for you to spend energy and make sacrifices for others, without receiving the same in return.
2. Be strategic and focus on your own needs and feelings, while other people do the same.
People who go with Option 1 tend to equate being a doormat with being a good person. These are going to be your codependent types, most of the time. They'll also suppress their own needs and feelings, but those needs and feelings don't just magically disappear, they just become a subconscious thing that leaks through, which results in the martyr complex, which ironically can manifest the same as NPD or BPD.
People who go with Option 2 tend to rely more on logic and nature as the framework for their morality and ethical codes. Their downfall tends to be in the rigidity of it, as well as the over-simplification of things that are actually quite complex and subjective. This sort of thinking can also easily lead to manifestations of NPD in the end, even AsPD in extreme cases.
But when you are looking at the WHOLE thing, all together as one big picture, it is easy to see that it always starts with feeling like nobody cares about your well-being, yet you are expected to care about others' well-being. Which forces you into a decision to either be the doormat or put yourself first.
So you can't determine whether or not someone has empathy until you have shown them genuine empathy in the first place. Until you have given them an option where they can care about others while feeling secure that their feelings and well-being will be valued and respected, also. And that is what most people do not do. They don't show empathy first, but they expect others to be doormats, and then cry "evil" when that doesn't happen. It makes for quite the ironic joke of a situation where it's all a bunch of self-righteous, hypocritical fools spouting off at each other in the end.