BS: Empathy for Tragedy?

Subject: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 02:21 PM

This morning it is reported that former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and 8 other passengers were on a small plane (an Otter, seats something like 12, I think) that crashed last night in western Alaska. At this point it is not publicly known whether Sen. Stevens is among the five reported dead.

I find myself ruminating on my feelings. I don't like Ted Stevens, never came close to voting for him, don't like what he stands for, etc. However, that said, I feel great sympathy for those who love him.

A number of years ago, Stevens was in another small plane crash that killed his first wife. Today his second wife is at home wondering whether her husband survived this one.

Thoughts? Can we legitimately empathise with those we truly don't like? I think we can.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 02:28 PM

Yes...if we can't we are either numb or sadistic, at least when it comes to physical pain, as opposed to financial reversals etc. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: bobad
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 02:30 PM

I believe one of characteristics that define a sociopath is the inability to feel empathy toward others.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: gnu
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 02:34 PM

Can a worms, that. Stevens? Bush? Cheney? Pol Pot? Hitler? How far do/can you go?

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 02:36 PM

The family has announced that Ted Stevens was killed in the plane crash.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 02:36 PM

I am referring specifically of empathy with those we dislike. In other words, if we heard that Idi Amin had been tortured and slain, would I feel sorry that he 'went' that way? Or if Josef Mengeles had been dismembered before dying, would I care? If Stalin died in great pain from having been poisoned, does it matter to me?

I don't know.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: mauvepink
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 02:39 PM

Indeed we can and we must!

We must all know people who maybe perhaps we love but still disagree with what they do and stand for. That happens a lot in family relationships I suppose.

I detest so many things that people in power make us all swallow and put up with. They seem able to make decisions that affect millions for the worse and still sleep at night. That would not stop me feeling sorry for their families if something bad happened them. I doubt they would give me the time of day, unless it meant a vote for them, but that should not stop me having emotions and feelings. I would not wish anyone dead who had ever done me wrong (but if they fell down the stairs and maybe broke a leg perhaps I may smile a second or two?).

Death is too permanent a state to wish or heap on anyone who disagrees with our own core values. Not being able to empathise when tragedy takes its turn on them only makes us as bad as we may have seen them.

Empathising shows so much I think. One cannot manufacture it. Feeling empathy has to be better than feeling hate or loathing for anyone. That said, I can still detest some folk for what they say and believe. That stops well short of hating them

Just my opinion though

mp

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: gnu
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 02:46 PM

In that case, Ebbie, yes.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 03:01 PM

There is a whole list of people I think the world is better off without:

Torquemada, Alexander VI, Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Sadam Hussein and sons, Pol Phot, Kim Il Sung, Josef Stalin, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacey, George Custer, Lord Cornwallis, Elizabeth Bathory, Banastre Tarleton, Boone Helm, Albert Fish -- to name but a few in no particular order.

I cannot empathize with them because I cannot understand how their minds work. I can understand the James Brothers, Al Capone and others. But there are those who I truly feel are better off dead and no, I cannot raise any empathy for them. I can feel sorry for their families, perhaps maybe, but not for them.

I can feel the most empathy for the families of the girls Bathory bled to death, for the parents of Fish's victims, for the families of those Amin fed to the crocodiles...and for the victims. But not for the perpetrators. Ted Stevens, while I didn't agree with him and I think he was a crook, is not in the same league as, say, Vlad Tepes. The family of Ted Stevens has my sympathy.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Amos
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 03:06 PM

It is inherent to our spiritual side to have empathy for any being, even when we disdain his actions and his chosen solutions to the puzzles of life. Without the ability to acknowledge the suffering behind the insanity of Pol Pot, we close the door on our own ascendancy, such as it may be. Absolute resentment is a self-defeating position. This does not mean we have to endorse anything he did, stood for or said--these are shallow, short-term manifestations--in order to feel empathy for him.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 03:47 PM

It's an interesting question. It's probably natural for us to lack empathy for somebody we consider to be demonic. Maybe the problem is that we are too quick to demonize people, and too quick to hate people we consider to be demonic. Maybe we need to have more empathy for people we dislike while they're living, and not save it up until they're dead.

Ted Stevens was a moderately corrupt politician, part of a moderately corrupt political machine; but it really doesn't seem that he was a horrible person. I'm sure there were many people who loved him, and I'm sure he did many good things in his life.

May he rest in peace.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 03:59 PM

I would not wish a tragic death on someone I simply didn't care for, such as Stevens.

There ARE villains of whom I would say 'good riddance' if I heard they had died, but this is simply a sad accident...for Stevens and others.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 04:06 PM

I agree with Amos on this one. In watching the movie "Der Untergang", for instance, which brilliantly dramatizes the last 10 days of madness, chaos, and despair in Hitler's Berlin Bunker...and all the people both great and small who were caught up in those events, I couldn't help but feel a few moments of pity and empathy here and there for even the worst of them (such as Hitler himself and Doctor Goebbels, for instance or Frau Goebbels who poisoned her own children because she couldn't bear the thought of what lay in the future for them). This doesn't mean I felt any sympathy for those individuals' crazy political ideas or their terribly bad decisions which caused death and suffering to others. I despise the political ideas and social theories they espoused. But....when I see them in moments of utter despair as everything they fervently believed in collapses around them, then I can imagine how anyone else might feel if placed in the same position. And that's what I empathize with.

What if the Germans had successfully invaded the UK in 1940, and Churchill had died trapped in a bunker under London? Would he not have felt similar desperation, defiance, and despair? Would he not have wanted to die rather than surrender? Would the Germans ever have taken him alive? I doubt it.

That's how people feel in such a circumstance when they have poured every last drop of themselves into a failed cause and met utter disaster.

I can imagine how that would feel. Therefore, I have empathy for it, no matter who it happens to, and even if that person is utterly mistaken...because if they are they simply don't get it. They obviously believe that what they're doing is right. If they didn't, they would not have done it.

Now, on the other hand, I also felt a great sense of relief when Hitler and Goebbels died, because it left the ordinary people under their command (the ordinary soldiers and nurses, etc) free to do the sane thing, surrender, and finally end the damn thing and save their own lives! So one had to be glad that the kingpins were finally dead. They were better off dead than being taken prisoner anyway, because being held prisoner would have meant many months or years of being caged like an animal, subjected to trial, and finally executed by your conquerors. Far better to die right away and get it over with.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 04:17 PM

I agree fully with you, Little Hawk. It is one of the things that makes life so difficult. I'm glad that I have never been faced with the decision or the power as to whether a person should lived or die.

Just for the record, I much doubt that you personally "felt great relief when Hitler and Goebbels died". You are much too young. Even I, who am much older, can't say that I felt relief that they died. I did pick up on the relief on the people around me that the European theatre war was over.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 05:10 PM

I wasn't even physically alive yet in 1945, Ebbie.

What I meant was that while watching the movie I felt a sense of relief when Hitler and Goebbels finally died, mainly because it set free the many people (including some quite young people) who were under their command to get back in touch with reality, get the hell out of that bunker, and perhaps save their own lives.

I was particularly relieved to see Traudl Yunge get out of there. She was a pretty sympathetic character who found herself in a horrible situation (happening to have been born in the wrong country at the wrong time and hired as a stenographer by the wrong national leader).

The person I recall having the most satisfaction in seeing him meet his grisly end (in a movie) was Robespierre when he was taken to the guillotine in "La Revolucianne Franciase" (a 6 hour movie from 1989) That guy simply HAD to go...as did Hitler...but even in the case of Robespierre, though I was very glad to see him executed, I could also see the tragic side of it. He too absolutely believed he was doing the right thing when he caused a similar death to be dealt out to thousands of innocent people. He thought he was saving the nation by executing those people. He was dead wrong. Eventually his own paranoia caught up with him, same as happened to Hitler and Goebbels.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 05:41 PM

On Little Hawk's recommendation a few years ago, I have finally got hold of a copy of Mark Twain's "Personal recollections of Joan of Arc." IMO, it's one of his very best, if not THE best. I know it is fiction, but he truly portrays, with stunning ability, the dichotomy she faced..a peasant girl who loved the fairies of a childhood tree, family and friends, the great outdoors, all creatures and had an abundance of empathy for even those, to the very end, who were her enemies and finally destroyed her mortal being, and the going to war which she was charged with in order to deliver France from the 100 years war. She had empathy for any and all and I would think she would were she here, today, for those mentioned above. A fine example, perhaps a bit too saintly for some mortals to attain, but a goal anyway.

I do try to have empathy, I have tons of it for nature, critters, family and friends and their friends. I have some for people such as Stephens and their families. It is sad that he died so tragically, but I think, like BillD, there are those I would say, maybe not "good riddance," but "better karma next time" and leave it at that.

Interesting thread, Ebbie.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 05:55 PM

His legacy will be the 49th star on the US flag.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:03 PM

Oh, it's not that I don't feel that these couldn't have been great a loved people if they had taken a different turn earlier in their lives. It's just that I cannot empathize when someone like Eichmann or Himmler get what they deserve by walking the path they followed. I have far, far, more sympathy and sadness for the death of the Goebbels children than I do for their father. There is a "right" and a "wrong" and acting as some do is wrong -- and I don't care a fig if Hitler WAS good to Blondi. People must come first, and if you put yourself above others you are on the wrong path.

Granted, Ted Stevens was not in the same ball park, not even in the same country, as, say, Ilse Koch. Now he stands before whatever (if anything) comes after -- perhaps his means of death was his punishment.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:06 PM

bobad surely put his finger on it when he wrote "I believe one of characteristics that define a sociopath is the inability to feel empathy toward others."

That's how they are built. For those of us lucky enough not to be sociopaths we are wired so that it's virtually impossible not to feel some kind of empathy towards people who are suffering, when we are actually brought up against it.

That might not mean we may not feel they'd be better dead, or even feel bound to ensure that happens, but that's something different.

Anybody who ever finds themselves actually taking pleasure in seeing someone suffering needs to recognise that, for that time anyway, they are cut off from humanity, and are a danger to themselves and others.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:09 PM

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) -- Police said a traffic stop led to animal cruelty charges after they found a live cat "marinating" in oil and peppers in the trunk of a car. Buffalo police say officers heard the cat meowing when they stopped 51-year-old Gary Korkuc of Cheektowaga to ticket him for running a stop sign Sunday night.

They said they checked the trunk and found 4-year-old Navarro in a cage, his fur covered with oil, crushed red peppers and chili peppers.

Police said Korkuc told them he did it because Navarro was ill-tempered. Korkuc was charged with cruelty and released; his phone number isn't listed.

Police said he told them he was going to cook Navarro. But they say Korkuc also complained that the neutered male cat got pregnant after he was spayed.

Animal advocates have cleaned Navarro and put him up for adoption.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:16 PM

Not so, Donuel, no matter what the Stevens family is saying today. He was not appreciably involved in garnering statehood- he wasn't even a senator at the time statehood was granted. When Democratic Senator Bartlett died in 1968 - 9 years after statehood - Governor Wally Hickel, a Republican at the time, filled the position with Stevens.

In fact, when Bartlett went in for heart surgery on the day he died, he quipped to the surgeon: Be careful with that knife, doc. If I die, there'll be a Republican in the Senate, you know.

Alaska statehood was primarily due to the efforts of Bob Bartlett and Senator Ernest Gruening.

As to the development of Alaska, yes, Ted Stevens was in there pitching for 40 years. Not always wisely.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:25 PM

Rapaire, please post a warning before posting such...a "squeamish alert" or similar. Some of us can't bear to read of such horrible things. That's the only time I think I could become a murderer, if I was confronted with such. Thanks for understanding.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:30 PM

I have a tremendous amount of empathy and sadness for Goebbels' children. They were completely innocent and blameless. I only felt a few shreds of sadness for their parents here and there...at certain moments in the film, and hardly at all for Mr Goebbels...a bit more for his wife, though, misguided though she was.

McGrath - The interesting thing, I think, is that most sociopaths are in fact capable of showing empathy for someone...just not for very many people around them! They may, for instance, love their dog...or their children...or their personal friends...or their mother or father...or their brother...or their favorite singer... or their country...or certain of their employees, etc (Hitler was quite kind and decent to some of the people who worked for him, while he was not to others...he could be sentimental about some people, and utterly ruthless toward others.

So perhaps a sociopath is not someone incapable of showing empathy...but merely someone who doesn't show it nearly as often as an emotionally healthy person would. He withholds empathy most of the time.

And a saint, on the other hand, would show it to everyone, no matter what the circumstances were.

As you mentioned, Kat, this was the nature of Joan of Arc as portrayed in Mark Twain's magnificent book, and it was one of the things that allowed her to be such an extraordinary leader in a time of national crisis. It is also reputed to have been the nature of Jesus, and that's probably why he so impressed the people who encountered him. He truly cared about them. That's rare.

Most of us lie in that fuzzy middle ground somewhere between the apparent opposites of the saint and the sociopath. We care a certain amount of the time and to a certain extent...enough to be considered "normal" or "acceptable" by other people. The sociopath so seldom cares about anyone else that he becomes abnormal and unacceptable in the eyes of society.

One who was like that, for example, was Babyface Nelson, a man whose violent and miserable childhood had turned him by his teens into a monster who seemed to enjoy killing and brutalizing people merely for its own sake. He finally died riddled with machine gun bullets after gunning down 2 pursuing federal agents in a similar fashion. I wonder if he ever cared for anyone? If so, no one knows who it might have been.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:36 PM

As for that idiot with the abused cat, why the heck would he not just give the cat away to someone else or to a shelter if he didn't like it? They say that even the gods are rendered helpless in the face of sheer stupidity.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 06:49 PM

"Korkuc also complained that the neutered male cat got pregnant after he was spayed."

Now that doesn't sound like someone who is exactly rational, does it?

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: SINSULL
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 07:13 PM

Wonder what happened to the kittens?

I try to remember that each and every one of us at one point was an innocent and beautiful child babbling in wonder at the world. The worst of us has a mother who loved him or still does.
I wish I could say that I make it work. I have as little sympathy for Barbara Bush as I do for her offspring and their offspring.
I'm sorry. Genuinely sorry.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 07:27 PM

"The worst of us has a mother who loved him or still does."

Sadly that isn't always true. Perhaps especially so for some of "the worst of us".
...........

I believe that for most of us, maybe almost all of us, the hate and the indifference we feel towards people out there we've never met is a kind of fantasy, that would fade away in face of real suffering in our presence. We play at being sociopaths, but that's not the real truth.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: gnu
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 07:36 PM

LH... "What if the Germans had successfully invaded the UK in 1940, and Churchill had died trapped in a bunker under London? Would he not have felt similar desperation, defiance, and despair? Would he not have wanted to die rather than surrender? Would the Germans ever have taken him alive? I doubt it."

The last question... Yes. They would have. "we shall never surrender" ring a bell?

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Hawker
Date: 10 Aug 10 - 07:39 PM

Ebbie, in answer to your question, Yes, I think we can.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 12:39 AM

gnu - I don't follow you. It sounds like we both agree that Churchill would never have surrendered if the Germans had successfully invaded the UK in, say, 1940 or '41 and trapped him in some defensive installation in London the same way Hitler got trapped in Berlin in '45. I think Churchill would have fought to the death rather than surrender. So where do you think we disagree about it? I'm puzzled by your post. Please clarify.

Hitler, like Churchill, always swore that he and his government would never surrender, and he held to that, finally killing himself and doing his utmost to take the whole nation down with him once all hope was gone. I figure it would have been a very similar story with Stalin, had Russia fallen to German forces.

The people I feel the most for are all the ordinary citizens and soldiers who got caught up in those terrible events (on both sides).

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 12:57 AM

If one studies Hitler's life, by the way, it's quite clear that the very idea of surrender was utterly repugnant to him and his entire political movement...and that was primarily because of the deep humiliation and bitterness those people experienced in their youth when Germany lost WWI and was subjected to the very harsh terms in the Treaty of Versailles.

They couldn't bear the thought of reliving that moment, so surrender for many of them was simply unthinkable. A fair number of German soldiers and civilians commited suicide in the last days of the war (in some cases because of their deep fear of the Russians, in some cases simply out of despair).

Figure it this way. Suppose the USA or Britain lost a great war in the future with, say, the Russians or Chinese...were made by the victors to disband their armed forces and had to dismantle their traditional form of government when the war ended...and also got blamed totally for the entire thing and severly punished economically and politically for about the next 10 to 20 years. (which is what happened to the Germans after WWI)

Just suppose. How would a great many of the young British and American servicemen, the generation who fought in that lost war, feel about it? Would they swear "Never Again!" and "No surrender next time...no capitulation to the Russians and Chinese!". Would they look for a chance to even the score?

I bet they would feel just like that. It's a typical human response, given national pride and patriotic feeling.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 11:33 AM

I feel empathy for the cat. They can do what they wish with the former owner -- he's a piece of inhumanity (assuming he's sane).

That's exactly the way I feel about others such as Goebbels or Attila. At some point you lose your connection to humanity and while I recognize the form as human there is no longer a soul (or whatever you want to call it) in there.

Most, if not all, of the world's problems have been brought on by those who lack a soul. Greed, lust...the whole list...basically come down to "I got mine and I want more, screw you."

Ted Stevens wasn't that bad.

Subject: RE: BS: Empathy for Tragedy?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 08:39 PM

I understand how you feel about it, Rapaire. Not surprising that you would. I think, though, that there is a soul in there...but it's been covered over by an outer fear-driven outer personality structure that doesn't allow the soul to outwardly express itself any longer. (Just a theory...not saying I know for sure.)

It's not the soul or lack of it that's the problem if that's the case, it's surface personality that's the problem. Surface personalities can be absolutely horrible, but they're rather like a role in a play or a novel. They are constructs. We find such fractured personalities very useful in fiction, because having them there allows a good, dramatic plot to unfold. Every Sherlock Holmes must have his Moriarty to battle with. We don't so much enjoy encountering them in real life...

I don't think that the soul is either greedy or lustful, but personalities? That's another story entirely. Personalities have appetites, and they constantly fear their own demise or the thwarting of their desires.

The guy with the cat may be partially insane...or he may just be very, very stupid. Or both.

I met a Polish girl once who seemed to have no empathy at all for animals. She was fine with people and was a good, responsible co-worker, and not anti-social in any way. But she disliked all animals. I've never figured out what the heck was going on in her mind.