7 ms·

Sure, but one wishes that it didn't need to arrive on the back of a face-to-face encounter with his own mortality. That understanding of a shared humanity is ac

Sure, but one wishes that it didn't need to arrive on the back of a face-to-face encounter with his own mortality. That understanding of a shared humanity is accessible in other ways, though cancer diagnoses do have a way of shoving it in your face.

slg 1y ago
We have seen this pattern repeated with numerous people who share Adams' political opinions, in that this level of empathy only seems to arrive once they themselves go through a similar experience. People who have that empathy without the need of that direct experience tend to have different politics.
- philipallstar 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - krige 1y ago
    If you want to be this petty, this can be easily explained as american right not caring about Palestine specifically and simply hating him for other things. Please do not try to left/right this.
    - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
      There is something crazy ugly going on on the left with all their 'happy he got an extremely painful cancer' that is not normal in American discourse and needs to have light shown on it. Please don't try to cover that up, it needs to stop/go away, or at the least be called out, not the calling out being silenced.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > All the people saying Biden's a genocider of Palestine and you shouldn't forget it just because he has cancer are on the left. Well, they are from the crowd using leftist rhetoric to convince people that the most important thing in the world is to oppose the dominant center-right liberal wing of the Democratic Party at all costs, and which has continued to hold that position even when the Republican Party controls all three branches of the federal government, and most state governments, and is in the process dismantling the rule of law. A crowd which, incidentally, rapidly metastasized from a small fringe group to a well-funded, highly-visible network between the time that Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020 and the 2024 election. Now, they could be genuine leftists with the worst imaginable praxis (certainly, truly effective praxis is too rare a commodity on the left), but there are other obvious explanations.
- npunt 1y ago
  I think of it as being reactively empathetic instead of proactively empathetic. Comes from a place of incuriosity and probably fear of mortality and bursting the just world fallacy, among other things. It's a bummer so many are so stingy with their hearts, as though love is some finite resource.
- verisimi 1y ago
  You think one's political opinions determine whether someone has empathy? Wow.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - reshlo 1y ago
    > Here, we tested this putative asymmetry using neuroimaging: we recorded oscillatory neural activity using magnetoencephalography while 55 participants completed a well-validated neuroimaging paradigm for empathy to vicarious suffering... This neural empathy response was significantly stronger in the leftist than in the rightist group.[0] > Our large-scale investigation of the relation between political orientation and prosociality suggests that supporters of left-wing ideologies may indeed be more prosocial than supporters of right-wing ideologies... However, the relation between political orientation and prosociality is fragile, and discovering it may depend on the methods used to operationalize prosociality in particular... Nonetheless, we are confident that our investigation has brought us one step closer to solving the puzzle about whether our political orientation is intertwined with how prosocial we behave toward unknown others—which we cautiously answer in the affirmative.[1] [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10281241/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10281241/ [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19485506241298341 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19485506241298341
    - verisimi 1y ago
      Do you think that prosocial is the same as empathy? Prosocial means getting a group/everyone to do things. But empathy is a feeling that an individual feels, group or no group. In fact, a group (collective noun) can't feel - only people can. Social groups can't have feelings, nor can they know/think etc - these events occur internally/within living humans, who themselves may then identify as part of a group. But empathy cannot be a group activity. And even if we accept the linguistic shortcut, and agreee that the individuals in some group purport to feel the same thing, how can one know whether they feel it to the same extent? And that they are all of one mind to do whatever action? Politics and feelings are really worlds apart, and intermediated by one's perception of the world. If you believe it is the group that needs to feel and do, you will look for answers in entirely different places to someone who thinks that only individuals can feel and do.
- hydrogen7800 1y ago
  I like to call it "radius of empathy". My spouse provides counseling and therapy services, and is amazed how some of her colleagues can show such genuine empathy to their clients, yet be so unconcerned with the suffering of others that result from the policies promoted by the people they vote for and vocally support.
  - slg 1y ago
    Well said. And it is probably worth a point of clarification, since some of these replies are acting as if I said that conservatives can't be compassionate. That isn't what I'm saying. I'm specifically using a definition of empathy like the following (emphasis mine)[1]: >the ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person's situation It isn't a question of caring about people. It is a question of being able to put yourself in the shoes of a stranger with which you might not have anything in common. If you can do that, you will likely have general compassion for immigrants, the poor, the sick, minorities, LGBTQ+ folks, and really anyone who is being persecuted, oppressed, or unjustly burdened by something outside their control. That is fundamentally a more left leaning mindset. If you need more direct experience (and that includes hearing a firsthand account from someone you are counseling) to engender that compassion, you are more likely to only extend this compassion to people who you share a lot with like your family, friends, and community (not just geographically), while people outside those groups wouldn't automatically be granted that compassion. This is fundamentally a more right leaning mindset. The respective "radii of emapthy" are just different sizes. [1] - https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/empathy https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/empathy
    - toomanyrichies 1y ago
      I've heard it neatly summed up this way: "In my experience, the right wing is always asking 'What about me?' whereas the left wing asks 'What about them?' And that, in a nutshell, is why I will always lean to the left." -Source unknown EDIT: alternately, you could argue that the left simply has a more expansive definition of "in-group" than the right does, with fewer litmus tests as to who is granted membership. i.e. "I don't care about their skin color / sexual orientation / gender identity / disability status, they're still human beings and therefore we're on the same team." But it might be a distinction without a difference.
- RickJWagner 1y ago
  I see it differently. There was a huge outpouring of sympathy from the right when Bidens news broke. I didn’t see a single unsympathetic comment. Then compare it to mirror issues, when something bad happens to someone on the right. It may be the rage-bait algorithms steering things, but I seem to remember snark from the left after Trumps assassination attempt, the healthcare CEO shooting, Teslas stock decline, etc.
  - inferiorhuman 1y ago
    Time to take off your blinders? Trump accused Biden of hiding his cancer diagnosis and conservatives are running with that narrative. https://old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/1kqlri6/they_lied_about_bidens_health_again/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/1kqlri6/they_... https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-jr-mocks-jill-230953098.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-jr-mocks-jill-230953... https://www.npr.org/2025/05/19/nx-s1-5403887/trump-biden-cancer https://www.npr.org/2025/05/19/nx-s1-5403887/trump-biden-can...
  - slg 1y ago
    > I didn’t see a single unsympathetic comment. Literally from the president[1], his son[2], and his VP[3]. Do these conspiracy theories about Biden hiding his diagnosis sound sympathetic to you? >Teslas stock decline So you want us to be empathetic to the guy who has directly said that "The fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy"?[4] [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DrhLWbWiPU&t=147s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DrhLWbWiPU&t=147s [2] - https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-jr-escalates-disgusting-064503966.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-jr-escalates-disgust... [3] - https://www.13abc.com/2025/05/20/vance-questions-whether-biden-was-fit-serve-president-after-cancer-diagnosis/ https://www.13abc.com/2025/05/20/vance-questions-whether-bid... [4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV_FBiHiag&t=7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV_FBiHiag&t=7s
stouset 1y ago
This is why I'm personally unimpressed by "I supported Trump until it personally affected me and my eyes were opened" narratives. When I see these stories, it's clear that nothing about that person has fundamentally changed. They didn't care that this same thing was happening to others; in many cases they cheered it on. Only when that same injustice is personally turned against them do they actually care, and they will go back to no longer caring the moment their own pain ends.
- kunzhi 1y ago
  In the case of George Wallace, he really did change. But like you're pointing out, it's not great if someone has to get shot before they realize they've been a jerk. On the other hand...plenty of alcoholics know they're ruining their own and others lives but persist in their behavior.

slg 1y ago

We have seen this pattern repeated with numerous people who share Adams' political opinions, in that this level of empathy only seems to arrive once they themselves go through a similar experience. People who have that empathy without the need of that direct experience tend to have different politics.

philipallstar 1y ago
[flagged]
- krige 1y ago
  If you want to be this petty, this can be easily explained as american right not caring about Palestine specifically and simply hating him for other things. Please do not try to left/right this.
  - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
    There is something crazy ugly going on on the left with all their 'happy he got an extremely painful cancer' that is not normal in American discourse and needs to have light shown on it. Please don't try to cover that up, it needs to stop/go away, or at the least be called out, not the calling out being silenced.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > All the people saying Biden's a genocider of Palestine and you shouldn't forget it just because he has cancer are on the left. Well, they are from the crowd using leftist rhetoric to convince people that the most important thing in the world is to oppose the dominant center-right liberal wing of the Democratic Party at all costs, and which has continued to hold that position even when the Republican Party controls all three branches of the federal government, and most state governments, and is in the process dismantling the rule of law. A crowd which, incidentally, rapidly metastasized from a small fringe group to a well-funded, highly-visible network between the time that Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020 and the 2024 election. Now, they could be genuine leftists with the worst imaginable praxis (certainly, truly effective praxis is too rare a commodity on the left), but there are other obvious explanations.
npunt 1y ago
I think of it as being reactively empathetic instead of proactively empathetic. Comes from a place of incuriosity and probably fear of mortality and bursting the just world fallacy, among other things. It's a bummer so many are so stingy with their hearts, as though love is some finite resource.
verisimi 1y ago
You think one's political opinions determine whether someone has empathy? Wow.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- reshlo 1y ago
  > Here, we tested this putative asymmetry using neuroimaging: we recorded oscillatory neural activity using magnetoencephalography while 55 participants completed a well-validated neuroimaging paradigm for empathy to vicarious suffering... This neural empathy response was significantly stronger in the leftist than in the rightist group.[0] > Our large-scale investigation of the relation between political orientation and prosociality suggests that supporters of left-wing ideologies may indeed be more prosocial than supporters of right-wing ideologies... However, the relation between political orientation and prosociality is fragile, and discovering it may depend on the methods used to operationalize prosociality in particular... Nonetheless, we are confident that our investigation has brought us one step closer to solving the puzzle about whether our political orientation is intertwined with how prosocial we behave toward unknown others—which we cautiously answer in the affirmative.[1] [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10281241/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10281241/ [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19485506241298341 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19485506241298341
  - verisimi 1y ago
    Do you think that prosocial is the same as empathy? Prosocial means getting a group/everyone to do things. But empathy is a feeling that an individual feels, group or no group. In fact, a group (collective noun) can't feel - only people can. Social groups can't have feelings, nor can they know/think etc - these events occur internally/within living humans, who themselves may then identify as part of a group. But empathy cannot be a group activity. And even if we accept the linguistic shortcut, and agreee that the individuals in some group purport to feel the same thing, how can one know whether they feel it to the same extent? And that they are all of one mind to do whatever action? Politics and feelings are really worlds apart, and intermediated by one's perception of the world. If you believe it is the group that needs to feel and do, you will look for answers in entirely different places to someone who thinks that only individuals can feel and do.
hydrogen7800 1y ago
I like to call it "radius of empathy". My spouse provides counseling and therapy services, and is amazed how some of her colleagues can show such genuine empathy to their clients, yet be so unconcerned with the suffering of others that result from the policies promoted by the people they vote for and vocally support.
- slg 1y ago
  Well said. And it is probably worth a point of clarification, since some of these replies are acting as if I said that conservatives can't be compassionate. That isn't what I'm saying. I'm specifically using a definition of empathy like the following (emphasis mine)[1]: >the ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person's situation It isn't a question of caring about people. It is a question of being able to put yourself in the shoes of a stranger with which you might not have anything in common. If you can do that, you will likely have general compassion for immigrants, the poor, the sick, minorities, LGBTQ+ folks, and really anyone who is being persecuted, oppressed, or unjustly burdened by something outside their control. That is fundamentally a more left leaning mindset. If you need more direct experience (and that includes hearing a firsthand account from someone you are counseling) to engender that compassion, you are more likely to only extend this compassion to people who you share a lot with like your family, friends, and community (not just geographically), while people outside those groups wouldn't automatically be granted that compassion. This is fundamentally a more right leaning mindset. The respective "radii of emapthy" are just different sizes. [1] - https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/empathy https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/empathy
  - toomanyrichies 1y ago
    I've heard it neatly summed up this way: "In my experience, the right wing is always asking 'What about me?' whereas the left wing asks 'What about them?' And that, in a nutshell, is why I will always lean to the left." -Source unknown EDIT: alternately, you could argue that the left simply has a more expansive definition of "in-group" than the right does, with fewer litmus tests as to who is granted membership. i.e. "I don't care about their skin color / sexual orientation / gender identity / disability status, they're still human beings and therefore we're on the same team." But it might be a distinction without a difference.
RickJWagner 1y ago
I see it differently. There was a huge outpouring of sympathy from the right when Bidens news broke. I didn’t see a single unsympathetic comment. Then compare it to mirror issues, when something bad happens to someone on the right. It may be the rage-bait algorithms steering things, but I seem to remember snark from the left after Trumps assassination attempt, the healthcare CEO shooting, Teslas stock decline, etc.
- inferiorhuman 1y ago
  Time to take off your blinders? Trump accused Biden of hiding his cancer diagnosis and conservatives are running with that narrative. https://old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/1kqlri6/they_lied_about_bidens_health_again/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Conservative/comments/1kqlri6/they_... https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-jr-mocks-jill-230953098.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-jr-mocks-jill-230953... https://www.npr.org/2025/05/19/nx-s1-5403887/trump-biden-cancer https://www.npr.org/2025/05/19/nx-s1-5403887/trump-biden-can...
- slg 1y ago
  > I didn’t see a single unsympathetic comment. Literally from the president[1], his son[2], and his VP[3]. Do these conspiracy theories about Biden hiding his diagnosis sound sympathetic to you? >Teslas stock decline So you want us to be empathetic to the guy who has directly said that "The fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy"?[4] [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DrhLWbWiPU&t=147s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DrhLWbWiPU&t=147s [2] - https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-jr-escalates-disgusting-064503966.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-jr-escalates-disgust... [3] - https://www.13abc.com/2025/05/20/vance-questions-whether-biden-was-fit-serve-president-after-cancer-diagnosis/ https://www.13abc.com/2025/05/20/vance-questions-whether-bid... [4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV_FBiHiag&t=7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV_FBiHiag&t=7s

stouset 1y ago

This is why I'm personally unimpressed by "I supported Trump until it personally affected me and my eyes were opened" narratives. When I see these stories, it's clear that nothing about that person has fundamentally changed. They didn't care that this same thing was happening to others; in many cases they cheered it on. Only when that same injustice is personally turned against them do they actually care, and they will go back to no longer caring the moment their own pain ends.

kunzhi 1y ago
In the case of George Wallace, he really did change. But like you're pointing out, it's not great if someone has to get shot before they realize they've been a jerk. On the other hand...plenty of alcoholics know they're ruining their own and others lives but persist in their behavior.