3 ms·

You're literally advocating non-empathy for a large group of people due to their heritage. You can't simply divide people into groups based on immutable charact

You're literally advocating non-empathy for a large group of people due to their heritage. You can't simply divide people into groups based on immutable characteristics and decide who does and does not deserve sympathy. Punishing a person for perceived faults of their ancestors is a recipe for ethnic conflict and racism.

krapp 9y ago
>You're literally advocating non-empathy for a large group of people due to their heritage. You can't simply divide people into groups based on immutable characteristics and decide who does and does not deserve sympathy. No, I'm advocating non-empathy for people who lack empathy for others. Fear of the presence of other ethnicities and of their cultural influence is not an immutable characteristic of the European genotype.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  It's not that they don't have empathy though. It's that they are uncomfortable with their communities changing, regardless of how that change manifests itself. And they feel this way because they are human beings, not because they are morally callous.
- whatyoucantsay 9y ago
  From over here in Asia, your comments are both non-empathatic and dangerous. Best of luck with your "non-empathy" approach, but I suspect it will make things worse for you.
  - krapp 9y ago
    I'll cop to the lack of empathy, obviously, but I don't see how it's dangerous to not feel sorry that a formerly privileged group is now slightly less privileged. And I'm not in Asia, so... fair enough?
    - whatyoucantsay 9y ago
      It's natural to think this way and it's a struggle to overcome it. People are not only members of "groups" that you chose for them based on their race, sex, country, etc. Each person deserves dignity as a human. Even if their ancestors and yours were enemies, it's not right to use tribal affiliation to judge them. Doing this promotes conflict and eventually violence. A group is made up of many people and deciding how much "privilege" a group has is like asking the temperature of Europe. You can use math to average, but that doesn't mean much to a person in Turkey or a person in Norway.
      - krapp 9y ago
        Yet here we are, discussing an article which frames the effects of globalism, automation and the economic collapse of Middle America explicitly in terms of a crisis of white identity. If this same article were written about "rising anxiety among American blacks," many of the people insisting that we understand and respect the plight of the white rural male and recognize how justifiable their anger is, would denounce it as racist and ask what being black has to do with anything. I can have sympathy for the poor, for the downtrodden and oppressed, but I can't have sympathy for someone who feels the mere presence of other races is a threat to their identity.

krapp 9y ago

>You're literally advocating non-empathy for a large group of people due to their heritage. You can't simply divide people into groups based on immutable characteristics and decide who does and does not deserve sympathy. No, I'm advocating non-empathy for people who lack empathy for others. Fear of the presence of other ethnicities and of their cultural influence is not an immutable characteristic of the European genotype.

meri_dian 9y ago
It's not that they don't have empathy though. It's that they are uncomfortable with their communities changing, regardless of how that change manifests itself. And they feel this way because they are human beings, not because they are morally callous.
whatyoucantsay 9y ago
From over here in Asia, your comments are both non-empathatic and dangerous. Best of luck with your "non-empathy" approach, but I suspect it will make things worse for you.
- krapp 9y ago
  I'll cop to the lack of empathy, obviously, but I don't see how it's dangerous to not feel sorry that a formerly privileged group is now slightly less privileged. And I'm not in Asia, so... fair enough?
  - whatyoucantsay 9y ago
    It's natural to think this way and it's a struggle to overcome it. People are not only members of "groups" that you chose for them based on their race, sex, country, etc. Each person deserves dignity as a human. Even if their ancestors and yours were enemies, it's not right to use tribal affiliation to judge them. Doing this promotes conflict and eventually violence. A group is made up of many people and deciding how much "privilege" a group has is like asking the temperature of Europe. You can use math to average, but that doesn't mean much to a person in Turkey or a person in Norway.
    - krapp 9y ago
      Yet here we are, discussing an article which frames the effects of globalism, automation and the economic collapse of Middle America explicitly in terms of a crisis of white identity. If this same article were written about "rising anxiety among American blacks," many of the people insisting that we understand and respect the plight of the white rural male and recognize how justifiable their anger is, would denounce it as racist and ask what being black has to do with anything. I can have sympathy for the poor, for the downtrodden and oppressed, but I can't have sympathy for someone who feels the mere presence of other races is a threat to their identity.