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I wonder if anyone else relates to this. I feel like up until the last few years, my understanding of "empathy" was always very different than how it is often u
by tunesmith 8y ago
I wonder if anyone else relates to this. I feel like up until the last few years, my understanding of "empathy" was always very different than how it is often used now. Empathy was literally putting yourself in another person's shoes, understanding their emotional perspective. But the key there is that it was one person. Like, a friend, or a therapist to a client, etc. A relationship free of agenda.
Now I often see it as almost a corporate kind of buzzword, like with UI/UX people having "empathy" for their users (in order to understand "their" needs and make more money from them). Or people having "empathy" for populations for political reasons as a way to build political support for something. It seems more related to the language of branding and marketing now.
- adityab 8y agoYes, you're not alone. Oddly enough, it's been repurposed to mean something akin to value alignment or strategic cooperation. It used to mean thoughtful kindness, and this change seems to have suddenly happened in the last five years. It's usage now makes me vaguely uncomfortable because it feels borderline sociopathic or manipulative.
- tunesmith 8y agoYeah, exactly. Which is particularly maddening because sociopathy is about the absence of empathy.