Posted on 06/01/2010 12:54:20 PM PDT by Flying Circus
A University of Michigan Study of nearly 14,000 college students has found that they have less empathy than college students did during the 1980s or 1990s. In fact, today’s college students scored about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts did 20 or 30 years ago.
Empathy is one of the most valuable psychological resources we have. It allows us to resonate with and respond to the suffering of others. It also allows us to care deeply about the fates of those we love, including our spouses and children. When empathy is destroyed, people are free (in a terrible way) not only to ignore the needs of others, but to perpetrate emotional or physical violence upon them.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
All by design...
Who cares...
Couldn't pass that quote up.
Maybe less “empathy” = more common sense. “Empathy” is a code word for social liberalism, e.g. obama’s SC appointments have lots and lots of “empathy” from which to decide future cases.
Oh yeah? Well I don’t care WHAT those college kids think OR feel.
Their empathy receptors are saturated by long-term overdosing on political correctness.
heh heh... let me take the contrarian view and we’ll see how it goes.
ZERO empathy is definitely a bad thing — but EXCESSIVE empathy is just as bad. Especially when it’s accompanied by a lack of thinking and analysis skills.
Think about it: by definition, “empathy” is what leads one to identify with another individual or group and “feel their pain”.
But excessive raw empathy is too easily manipulated by those skillful at painting a picture of a group (say, illegal aliens?) by picking an anecdotal example and playing on individual’s empathy to encourage them to draw the conclusion that ALL people of the group (i.e. ALL illegal aliens) are pathetic victims.
Isn’t this one of the main problem with liberals? That they emphasize undiscriminated “feelings” at the expense of rational thought?
No, give me a university system that trains minds to THINK and ANALYZE — hopefully without tearing down every shred of empathy.
Just my 2c
I suspect this alleged lack of empathy has more to do with the lame method of measuring it than anything else.
No doubt there is an ongoing, systematic effort to deaden the consciences of children in the public schools, colleges and entertainment industries. however I doubt they foresaw the multiplier effects of emotional distance in ‘social’ networking and the license Web anonymity gave to saying any evil and horrible thing that comes to mind.
Why should we treat people with any respect?
They’re just an “accident of evolution”, of no more value than monkeys or pigs or rats...
And that whole “think of others before yourself” is such a religious concept, and religion is just a crutch for the weak minded.
Empathy disappears in other contexts too. The military in particular selectively damages empathy in people, because you can’t have empathy for someone you have to shoot. That’s not to say that soldiers are heartless bastards; they’re not, as seen by countless humanitarian gestures they make, but at the same time they have to be able to turn it off like a switch, and the result is that even when they feel it, it’s never quite the same.
They are a mirror of the empathy their career moms showed at the daycare door.
I’m with you brother.
This can be good or bad, depending, as others have said here.
Empathy for loved ones such as grandparents who no longer ‘deserve to get health care’ is a terrible one, and we have heard young people say these things in the past couple years.
On the flip side, our society has been ‘over-empathetic’ and victims of politicians using those feelings to build an overreaching giant bureaucracy in the effort to show we ‘care’ about people for too long. Less empathy in that area would be a good thing.
My guess is it is the first example, and we are f-—ed.
The relentless promotion of self-esteem as an educational goal in itself now begins to bear toxic fruit.
We agree that excessive empathy, unchecked by reason, a bad thing. To many people move by emotions, and think that as long as something ‘feels’ right it is right. It is a quick trip into a moral cesspool.
However I don’t agree that lacking empathy equates to greater thoughtfulness and rationality. Those who lack empathy can feign at “feeling your pain” however they can also be the ones who expect sympathy for their pain out of proportion to what they show others. The emotional imbalance that makes one lack empathy will also make them easy to manipulate for what they perceive as individual gain.
They’ll be perfect liberal marxists... filled with concern for “humanity” in general, and quite indifferent to the means by which they achieve their ends.
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