Community Chat

[Moonchilde]

@Juniebugz, I'm sure people will disagree with me (death, taxes, etc.) 👹

I'm not debating (not exactly what I would call this thread on the whole, but at least that was being attempted by some) the "correctness" of the book POV the OP mentions OR the flip side link @suzyQ3 presented, but saying in essence I guess that the whole overall viewpoint for or against boils down to one's personal definition, acquired by having lived their life, of the concepts of empathy and compassion.

IMO there's no 100% "right" or "wrong", especially when splitting semantic hairs and "my sources are the definitive answer, your sources and opinion count for zip."

There's no "winning", "losing" or "gotcha!", it's a discussion.  "I'm right, you're wrong and that's that" is NOT a discussion. 

[Juniebugz]

---

@skuggles wrote:

---

@Noel7 wrote:

This is an interesting comment from an article in Psych Today:

Compassion (‘suffering with’) is more engaged than simple empathy, and is associated with an active desire to alleviate the suffering of its object. With empathy, I share your emotions; with compassion I not only share your emotions but also elevate them into a universal and transcending experience. Compassion, which builds upon empathy, is one of the main motivators of altruism.

Maslow put altruism at the top of man's hierarchy of needs.  I see it there, too.

In his later years, Maslow explored a further dimension of needs, while criticizing his own vision on self-actualization. The self only finds its actualization in giving itself to some higher goal outside oneself, in altruism and spirituality.

Abraham Maslow

---

@Noel7 Interesting point. I'll throw a monkey wrench in to say that I do not believe that there is true altruism, except for some rare exceptions. So Maslow's theory could easily get lost in the enormity and depth of slightly  differing theories looking at this from different perspectives. 

---

Interesting @skuggles & @Noel7.

I believe altruism is defined as selfless........  how many people are fully selfless?

[Juniebugz]

---

@Moonchilde wrote:

@Juniebugz, I'm sure people will disagree with me (death, taxes, etc.) 👹

I'm not debating (not exactly what I would call this thread on the whole, but at least that was being attempted by some) the "correctness" of the book POV the OP mentions OR the flip side link @suzyQ3 presented, but saying in essence I guess that the whole overall viewpoint for or against boils down to one's personal definition, acquired by having lived their life, of the concepts of empathy and compassion.

IMO there's no 100% "right" or "wrong", especially when splitting semantic hairs and "my sources are the definitive answer, your sources and opinion count for zip."

There's no "winning", "losing" or "gotcha!", it's a discussion.  "I'm right, you're wrong and that's that" is NOT a discussion. 

---

Precisely!

A topic inviting opinion re: personal interpretation of words involving nuanced definition.

Sadly there are some who live for the "gotcha" moment not knowing it merely highlights their own shortcomings lol.

[skuggles]

I found this and it may be helpful to some, because there is clearly a difference  between compassion and empathy as OP said in her opening. 

"Psychological perspective

Although the concepts of empathy and compassion have existed for many centuries, their scientific study is relatively young. The term empathy has its origins in the Greek word ‘empatheia’ (passion), which is composed of ‘en’ (in) and ‘pathos’ (feeling). The term empathy was introduced into the English language following the German notion of ‘Einfühlung’ (feeling into), which originally described resonance with works of art and only later was used to describe the resonance between human beings. The term compassion is derived from the Latin origins ‘com’ (with/together) and ‘pati’ (to suffer); it was introduced into the English language through the French word compassion. In spite of the philosophical interest for empathy and the fundamental role that compassion plays in most religions and secular ethics, it was not until the late 20th century that researchers from social and developmental psychology started to study these phenomena scientifically.

According to this line of psychological research, an empathic response to suffering can result in two kinds of reactions: empathic distress, which is also referred to as personal distress; and compassion, which is also referred to as empathic concern or sympathy (Figure 1). For simplicity, we will refer to empathic distress and compassion when speaking about these two different families of emotions. While empathy refers to our general capacity to resonate with others’ emotional states irrespective of their valence — positive or negative — empathic distress refers to a strong aversive and self-oriented response to the suffering of others, accompanied by the desire to withdraw from a situation in order to protect oneself from excessive negative feelings. Compassion, on the other hand, is conceived as a feeling of concern for another person’s suffering which is accompanied by the motivation to help. By consequence, it is associated with approach and prosocial motivation."

This is straight out of a scholarly article http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214007702

[dooBdoo]

---

@skuggles wrote:

I found this and it may be helpful to some, because there is clearly a difference  between compassion and empathy as OP said in her opening. 

"Psychological perspective

Although the concepts of empathy and compassion have existed for many centuries, their scientific study is relatively young. The term empathy has its origins in the Greek word ‘empatheia’ (passion), which is composed of ‘en’ (in) and ‘pathos’ (feeling). The term empathy was introduced into the English language following the German notion of ‘Einfühlung’ (feeling into), which originally described resonance with works of art and only later was used to describe the resonance between human beings. The term compassion is derived from the Latin origins ‘com’ (with/together) and ‘pati’ (to suffer); it was introduced into the English language through the French word compassion. In spite of the philosophical interest for empathy and the fundamental role that compassion plays in most religions and secular ethics, it was not until the late 20th century that researchers from social and developmental psychology started to study these phenomena scientifically.

According to this line of psychological research, an empathic response to suffering can result in two kinds of reactions: empathic distress, which is also referred to as personal distress; and compassion, which is also referred to as empathic concern or sympathy (Figure 1).

For simplicity, we will refer to empathic distress and compassion when speaking about these two different families of emotions. While empathy refers to our general capacity to resonate with others’ emotional states irrespective of their valence — positive or negative — empathic distress refers to a strong aversive and self-oriented response to the suffering of others, accompanied by the desire to withdraw from a situation in order to protect oneself from excessive negative feelings. Compassion, on the other hand, is conceived as a feeling of concern for another person’s suffering which is accompanied by the motivation to help. By consequence, it is associated with approach and prosocial motivation."

This is straight out of a scholarly article http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214007702

---

          Fascinating, @skuggles!   If I read it correctly, the authors of this article feel that empathy has either a positive or negative result, and compassion is actually the positive result...  so we have to have empathy in order to feel compassion.   To me, that would be a case for empathy, as long as we don't react with empathetic distress.   Great food for thought.   A compelling thread and I'll look forward to seeing other perspectives.

[dooBdoo]

---

Juniebugz wrote:

There is no connection @dooBdoo. Nothing wrong w your post. Note she has nothing to say about the actual thread topic lol. "Just my opinion."

---

            Thanks, @Juniebugz.   I'm not concerned about it.   I agree with you about many good folks tiring of the game-playing here, weary of the "slings and arrows" directed at just about anyone who posts on just about any subject, but it doesn't bother me for someone to question me since none of us are perfect. 
          About sarcasm, I stopped using it long ago once I realized the actual meaning and also the effect it has on people.   The definition is "the use of irony to mock or convey contempt."   Synonyms are derision, mockery, ridicule, scorn, sneering, scoffing, and the etymology means "to tear flesh."   Once I realized that,  I saw why it was damaging to a conversation and can even cause rifts in friendships.  

          People recoil from sarcasm, for a reason.   But I think posters have seen it used so much on the forums that they assume all of us employ sarcasm or that we're being disingenuous, and I get how that's happened over time.   Maybe we all need to examine our own level of empathy and compassion, and remember each of us is a flesh and blood human on the other side of the silly nickname.🙃

[Noel7]

---

@skuggles wrote:

---

@Noel7 wrote:

This is an interesting comment from an article in Psych Today:

Compassion (‘suffering with’) is more engaged than simple empathy, and is associated with an active desire to alleviate the suffering of its object. With empathy, I share your emotions; with compassion I not only share your emotions but also elevate them into a universal and transcending experience. Compassion, which builds upon empathy, is one of the main motivators of altruism.

Maslow put altruism at the top of man's hierarchy of needs.  I see it there, too.

In his later years, Maslow explored a further dimension of needs, while criticizing his own vision on self-actualization. The self only finds its actualization in giving itself to some higher goal outside oneself, in altruism and spirituality.

Abraham Maslow

---

@Noel7 Interesting point. I'll throw a monkey wrench in to say that I do not believe that there is true altruism, except for some rare exceptions. So Maslow's theory could easily get lost in the enormity and depth of slightly  differing theories looking at this from different perspectives. 

********************************

@skuggles

Maslow's hierarchy is like a ladder, as I remember it.  We have to go from establishing one level before going to another, beginning with basic needs like food and shelter.  Altruism is the highest level. So basically you're right imo that it's not that common. 

But I can see that some acts of altruism, putting the needs of others before yourself, do happen spontaneously.  I'm thinking here of soldiers who put their lives in danger to save one or more of their own.