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.
>> However I don’t agree that lacking empathy equates to greater thoughtfulness and rationality.
I never claimed that it did.
>> We agree that...
Who is “we”? The whole Circus? :-)
Yeah, I think too many here are willing to celebrate as if empathy and lefty progressivism MUST go hand in hand. But if you have empathy, it opens the door to morality itself. If you have morality, you can begin to have a code of individual human beings as inviolable, a sort of Kantian conception of refusing to treat people as means to ends. What Leftist politics invariably has done is led to a decline in the empathy necessary to fight off collectivism or authoritarian actions on the part of government. The only question many ask themselves is what is “effective” not what is just or the action of the government of a free people.
Remember, no empathy at all= psychopathy. That is NOT a good thing.
Also, when you hear of cases where people walk by someone hurt, callously join in with the murder of a human being simply because it seemed like something to do (or because a friend asked them to help, relationship overriding empathy for the stranger they are killing) or basically wish to use force against those they disagree with in order to impose themselves on that person (or group) that is the decline of empathy.