Do not commit the sin of empathy.

This is a lot like how our government is all concerned about National Security™ when it comes to pretty much anything else, but a bipartisan bill, supported by both of the last 2 presidents, and upheld unanimously by our current dysfunctional Supreme Court, with National Security™ as the excuse, and we still have Tiktok.

Laws are only there so the ruling class can keep us in line and them in power, and they will never be enforced homogenously.

I'd love to talk shit about the current administration too, but I've been in buildings where fire inspectors would cut off the power cords of any space heaters they found because they violated code.

Literally homeless crushing machine

And it happened in Atlanta, near Ebenezer Church of all places

Completely true. Now we just need to convince everyone else

How can a building be safe at one point of the day, but suddenly unsafe during another? That sounds like an idiotic code designed to punish exactly this.

I mean, we all know the Bible verse: "And so, the people of Bethlehem sent Joseph and the highly pregnant Mary away. They were in the right, since taking them in might have slightly inconvenienced them, and was against zoning regulations, posing a potential fire hazard"

If they cared about history before 1776 they would.

Isn't that the name of the Keanu Reeves movie about the guy who killed himself and now he's damned for all time and works for the Church, and the Archangel Gabriel was there, but he was played by a woman who kinda looks like the "perfect" chick from Fifth Element?

Jesus turns water into wine. The human body is 70% water. Earth is like 60% water. Jesus was an alcoholic.

regulations like these are written in blood

Absolutely 100% completely. But in this case it I'm not sure the church is actually violating codes, but rather the city is using the claim as a smokescreen to punish them for helping homeless people.

This article quotes the city.

Bryan's planning and zoning administrator gave the church 10 days to stop housing people, saying it was in a zone that does not permit residential use on the first floor.

The only thing worse then inadequate housing is no fucking housing in the winter

You're right, but people won't want to hear it. The people on the other side are right, too - it isn't better to freeze to death than it is to die from smoke inhalation. But you just don't violate fire code in public buildings, or people die. Anyone could list dozens of examples of this happening with tragic results after a basic web search.

The correct response to this situation would have been for the city government to assist the pastor in meeting the fire code, especially since he is providing a valuable public service by housing the people that nobody else wants to help.

Instead of a peaceful solution that probably would have been cheap to the taxpayer and could have been a PR bonus for the city, they chose to smack him with the letter of the law. Because people freezing to death in the streets isn't their fault, but people burning to death after the city overlooked a fire code violation would be. All they care about is their liability.

I dunno. Sithrak may be offended by empathy, kindness and compassion. He's a pain and misery kind of god.

It's tribalism plus brainwashing. They believe the right way to show empathy to the in-group is to attack anyone in the out-group. Driven by zero-sum thinking and beliefs around "natural social hierarchy" being necessary.

I haven't read Bloom's book, but I draw from other sources. I avoid corporate social media and its "conversations" and have been doing so quite happily for nearly 10 years.

I catch little pieces of it, like this, and it reminds me of why I stay away. I dislike the cluttered analysis and damnation or vindication of human actions and feelings sprouting all over the place; Shame, empathy, envy, anger, whatever the flavor of the month is...

Buddhist philosophy teaches us that we are aggregates of various delusions (and science has come to a similar conclusion). Spontaneous compassion, which can come from anywhere, it can't be "Rationalized," is one of the greatest tools we have for breaking patterns, of exercising a wild detachment from these aggregates, that destroy our society and ourselves.

All the tools, even the maligned ones like shame and guilt, may lead a person to these sorts of spontaneous acts of compassion, not only toward others, but toward themselves (there is ultimately no difference).

However...Of all the malign-able features of the human condition, empathy must be the strangest to hone in on.

The definition provided by Bloom is not satisfactory: The cold and detached act that arises from "imagining yourself in their place" is what some in the therapy field would call sympathy.

The being in the moment and doing what is needed in that moment is empathy, Empathy should be considered derived from compassion, it is the present choice, sympathy, the rationalized, detached choice, is the lesser guide, but of course it can lead somewhere, too.

If the empathy is missing from the effort to help than I doubt, however rationalized it may be, however well meaning the bureaucracy, NGO, or organized effort, that it will be helpful.

This is the first post on social media I have made in about 8 years that wasn't somehow related to tech support. Be merciful.

It really seems like they're on the verge of just accepting that they're evil but deciding that that's good

I'm sure somewhere in the bible, there is a line to justify the lack of empathy. Regardless of factions and sects, any religious person would not be doing what they do if it isn't prescribed in their sacred text.