TIL Heroes tend to just be well-adjusted people who learned to feel empathy as children, often from caring and patient parents

But… I’m confused. Didn’t Musk call empathy a weakness? Surely someone so tolerant, inclusive, and humble couldn’t be wrong.

Fucking hell. I can't escape being reminded of this shitstain everywhere, even if I filter political posts.
- A parasite keeps reminding you it’s there until it (or you) is destroyed.
- Yeah I wish we could filter comments as well.
- Cover your eyes, plug your ears, and ignore the cries of those suffering around you.
Paul Bloom has written an entire book arguing Against Empathy
I'm not sure I entirely agree with his thesis but it's not a completely outrageous idea. I often wish I could tone down my level of empathy as well.
- Reading the page, it doesn't sound like he's against empathy at all. He's specifically against making decisions based on "feels" and targeting empathy specifically because he seems to believe it's a tool often misused.
  For a second I was expecting something akin to Radical Candor's "ruinous empathy" which has been used an excuse by managers the world over to justify their inherent lack of any empathy for the people around them.
  Seems like an interesting read, adding it to my list. Thanks.
- I got caught up on the term 'empathy for self.' I haven't read the book, but I visited the link and couldn't get past what I felt was a tragically flawed oxymoron. But maybe that's a flaw with the Wikipedia article and not the source material, so I'll endeavor to seek out the book at some point to learn more.
People like musk are afraid of heroes

Empathy being a sign of privilege isn't the truth I needed to read today :/

In a weird way, having emotionally available and supportive parents is absolutely a privilege. People are able to develop empathy in spite of bad parents, and good parenting isn't a guarantee to a good person, but parenting is a major factor for life success. I wish it weren't, and I hope we can build a society that could guarantee every child full opportunities.
When you are fighting to survive, it's only normal to have less bandwidth to care for others.
- That's the irony of it. I'm by no means a scholar of Thich Nhat Hanh, but I remember reading an account from his early life as a Vietnamese monk during the conflict with imperial France in which he had basically nothing and was himself barely surviving, but still found a way to feel peace and express compassion for a young French soldier suffering from malaria who desperately raided the monastery at gunpoint.
- The opposite I feel, we are stronger as a group and my instinct when shit hits the fan is to make sure everyone involved is ok and ready to face the challenge together
Luckily, it is the kind of privilege you can pass on to your children.
You don't have to have any other privileges for that. Just patience and love (yep, not easy, but doable by all means)
You can break the cycle
How is it privilege?
- My parents were fucking great. Not the best but damn it they did the best they could with what they were handed. I can see how it could be considered a privilege.
- Not everyone has good parents

It makes perfect sense to me that people who suffer abuse or neglect when young would develop a deep-rooted drive to look out for themselves first and foremost. It would be (literally, socially, and emotionally) a survival mechanism. Unfortunately, it would leave less room than others might have for empathy.

I don't imagine this would ever go away completely, even if their situation improved by adulthood.

People are terrified of empathy. Empathy is the capacity (or even the obligation) to experience the suffering of others. Suffering HURTS. Empathy HURTS. People will do anything to avoid thinking about the victim on their plate.

Aversion of pain is a pretty powerful deterrent. I guess there may need to be a critical mass of empathic individuals in a community to tip the scale in favor of everyone being more empathic and feeling generally better for it. Misery shared and understood amongst peers seems to always feel better than misery in solitude.
- A history of trauma is more common among people who refuse to harm animals on the basis of empathy (as opposed to being plant based for their health or the environment or something) than among the general population. I suspect that empathy is innate. I suspect that people who have experienced trauma have less capacity to ignore, interfere with, and override their empathy.
Even that is too strong, imo. The vast majority of empathy lacking conservatives are themselves dirt poor, and on the plate of another.
But it still hurts to think about how bad others might have it, especially when you’re so beat down by life that you are barely making it by yourself, so they buy into an easier answer, “the other”.
I hope empathy has a place in this conversation too!

There's some truth here, like poorly-treated children probably have difficulty with empathy, except I've known a few people that had very hard childhoods and are some of the kindest people I've ever met, as if they developed past those issues to understand how important empathy is.

I also come from a large family, and while my siblings and my cousins had very similar upbringings, the variability in things like empathy and justice is extensive even among siblings (notably including twins).

To me it seems like there's a strong element of innate character trait with this stuff, as we've watched kids grow up and seen their character at 2 years old remain consistent into adulthood. If this stuff were driven mostly by environment, then at least most kids would be similar... And we've found they aren't, it's all over the map, unpredictable by the environment.

Not to say environment doesn't/can't influence, it certainly can, but I don't believe it's usually the primary driver, just in cases where the environment is notably negative

There very well could be something innate. Later in the chapter, Ripley writes about heroes who did what they did because they felt they wouldn't have been able to live with the sense of cowardice for not acting. The fear of future self loathing overpowered their fear of present peril.
As for nurture vs. nature origins of empathy, I'm looking forward to watching Boarding On Insanity.
Some people when faced with struggle become cold and bitter: "If I got through it without help, so can they."
Some people do the opposite : "That was a hell I suffered through that I don't want anyone else to have to experience"
And I have spent my entire life trying to figure out the difference between those two kinds of people and wondering which type I truly am.

I think there's also a sort of autodidactic type of learning empathy, even if your parents don't teach it to you.

I think it's — at least for a part of the population — a very natural thing and would have to be actively discouraged as a kid to make it go away.

Although idk I did read a ton so maybe the books raised me idk

Reading books are known to increase empathy, as the very act itself forces you to see the world from someone else's perspective, putting yourself in someone else's shoes every time you open a new book.
Reading fiction teaches empathy, even if you don’t have it naturally or your parents are shit humans. There’s something about the way a novel puts you in the back seat of someone’s mind, the cliche “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.”
Which is why it’s concerning that:
In 2012, 38% of 0-17s read 'every day or nearly every day' for pleasure; by 2021, just 25% of children read for pleasure. Over the same period, children who said they 'never read' has grown from 13% to 20%, so one in five children aged 0-17 - nearly 3 million children - did not read for pleasure at all in 2021.
Many adults don’t read a book after high school. Many high schools don’t even assign books anymore - just passages, because that’s what on the ACT.
- Our shitty education system makes kids associate reading a book with homework, and many adults don't outgrow that association
- fwiw, I didn't read 0-17 for fun because reading was homework and fuck doing what you tell me.
  I started reading in my 20s. Hopefully others too.
It's called trauma.

This book is fantastic as a whole. Highly recommend.

I had asshole impatient parents (two of them), and I was like that. After I moved out, I had to learn empathy.

Ive been in a few emergency situations at- and outside-of work, and I'm always told that I'm a great leader who is calm and quick to act effectively.

My point is that empathy and leadership isnt dependent on parents.

Not entirely, and you did a great job of overcoming that. But learning empathy and really anything is easiest as a child and the parents are the best avenue for that.
What kinds of things did you consciousnessly and intentionally do to train yourself into a healthier and more empathic frame of mind? Did you naturally gravitate toward a vocation requiring calm decisiveness under pressure in dynamic and unpredictable situations?
- I can't say it was intentional. I never set out to become more empathetic. It was just that, as I began to navigate the world on my own, I realized how selfish and wrong was my thinking about the world and the people i met.
  I learned that eating animals was a major cause of the climate catastrophe shortly after moving from my patents house, and so I became vegetarian and many of my friends were vegan. My initial motivation for this was mostly still selfish, since its still in my personal interest to avoid climate catastrophe. But obviously many of my peers were veg for more empathetic reasons.
  Also at Uni many of my friends were poorer than me. So being exposed to poor vegan friends showed me a lot of what I wasn't taught by my parents (empathy).
  And then I went traveling, and I was amazed at how kind most strangers I met were. We're taught to live in fear and that others want to hurt us, but I found most strangers wanted to help. And those who have less generally give more than rich folks.
  As for work, I've worked as a sysadmin. It can be high stress when things break and you're called-in to fix it. Its important to have a cool head. I've also done a lot of trekking, sometimes in sketchy situation. I think the leader attribute might be more my nature, whereas empathy was learned (or, maybe, being a selfish asshole was unlearned)

highlighting images of text (about empathy), breaking accessibility

❌ (ironic) cringe

quoting text for accessibility, searchability, generally superior functionality

✔️ based

100%. Transcription is an act of empathy for blind folks.
Sorry. I've never in my life ever been accused of being based, but my personal memories consistently paint me as a paragon of cringe, so you might be on to something. You're welcome to transcribe any part(s) you think might be relevant to improve its accessibility, searchability, and generally superior functionality.
- Thats your job, as the poster.