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Empathy helps you understand why someone feels the way they feel without forcing you to accept that they are correct to feel that way. You can walk a mile in someone’s shoes and then turn around and tell them their shoes are shit and recommend new ones.
Tolerance makes you blind to the injustices of the world and forces you to accept even the most disgusting of viewpoints as “equal”.
Example: You can empathize with a racist. You can understand the cultural brainwashing that led to it. But you shouldn’t be tolerant of it. Plus, being empathetic to why they feel that way makes them more comfortable doing the same in return. Hostility breeds hostility. Empathy breeds empathy. Empathy brings us all together.
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I just think of this all the time. Although we can always agree or share the same things that other people might do (especially those that have a conflict with our moral compass), I think we can try to put ourselves in others' shoes, and try to see others persons' point of view. Not to agree, but to learn and understand a little bit better where they are coming from.
I try to do this. I confess... I'm not an angel, or the best person in the world. I have a lot of flaws, but thinking of this, and trying this, has helped me to have a little bit easier life.
What do you think? I'm open to learn more about your points of view 🤗
Apr 23, 2024
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it’s genuinely very hard for me to be mad at another person—unless they are genuinely being unreasonable and deliberately hurtful towards me. but even so, they usually have their own reasons
everyone’s allowed to live differently and make different decisions based on how they grew up and grew into the person they are, and i think understanding how inherently different we all are from each other is actually very important—not enough people grapple with that, we don’t actually sit down and comprehend that before reacting and objecting other people
i also think we need to be more comfortable with saying “i understand why you think this is the case, i just don’t agree with you, and that’s totally ok”
Oct 5, 2024
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It's one of the most wild and mind bending philosophy/psychology books I've ever read. It almost encourages you to give up and put the book down in frustration. It feels like it's aim is to so completely break down the way we conventionally approach mental illness and the larger human experience that it speaks in borderline gibberish at times, requiring you to fundamentally alter your mindset to even begin to understand what they are talking about.
"It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines—real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. An organ-machine is plugged into an energy-source-machine: the one produces a flow that the other interrupts. The breast is a machine that produces milk, and the mouth a machine coupled to it. The mouth of the anorexic wavers between several functions: its possessor is uncertain as to whether it is an eating-machine, an anal machine, a talking-machine, or a breathing machine (asthma attacks). Hence we are all handymen: each with his little machines."
Feb 5, 2024
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I’m probably the only one lol
Feb 7, 2024
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It’s the perfect amount of time to game plan for the day on the way in and unwind for the evening on the way back. Longer is just wasted time, less isn’t enough to switch headspaces
Feb 5, 2024