2 ms·

I feel like we should separate professionalism (i.e. the spectrum of familiarity to over-familiarity) from empathy. To me, how I want to see empathy applied in

I feel like we should separate professionalism (i.e. the spectrum of familiarity to over-familiarity) from empathy. To me, how I want to see empathy applied in a military context, is nothing to do with familiarity or chumminess, and everything to do with the idea that, if you are my commander and you order me to battle, to fight and to die, that you do so carrying the full weight of that responsibility, that you understand my life and my worth as a human being, and that you empathize with the gravity and danger of what you are asking me to undertake, and that you won't spend my life in vain. That is the real root of empathy, in the military, for leaders to really truly understand the both mundane and yet impossible weight of what they are asking their soliders to do. If you cannot empathize with the human condition at that level, then you should not be fit for military leadership (naive of me, I know).

Chan_Yuk_Chi 5y ago
Not naive at all. This is an accurate picture of how we were taught to approach decisions - that every soldier was someone's child, someone's sibling, someone's loved one. As leaders, our decisions didn't carry just the burden of their lives, but the lives of everyone else who would be affected. > If you cannot empathize with the human condition at that level, then you should not be fit for military leadership (naive of me, I know). And you are absolutely right. I knew officers who didn't care about their soldiers and saw them solely as underlings. If I had my way, they would have never seen the privilege of command.