Toxic empathy...?

You know who I blame? Jesus. Going round teaching people to care about one another regardless of creed and colour. His toxic empathy has really ruined Christianity.

There is the biblical Christ, then there is alt-right Christ. One may, or may not, have existed as some weird combination of avatar/son/whatever of God. Then there is corruption and propaganda on the other side.
I'm not a Christian, by any stretch of the imagination, but I was raised in the south and my grandma taught Sunday school. I had read the bible cover to cover before most other chapter books, though against my will. Grandma also believed in the corrective powers of The Switch. So, yeah.
The biblical Christ would, if he were still entombed, be rolling in his grave over what the current GoP party is espousing as Christianity.
Of course, this post involves suspension of disbelief, so its all in the hypothetical sense.
teaching
This

There's no such thing as toxic empathy. If it's hurting others, it's not empathy.

I mean, being empathetic and using for evil... tale as old as the words' origins.
Empathy, but a lack of conscience allows one to feel for their opponent, assess their weaknesses, and exploit them.
I mean, possessing the capability for understanding harm and doing it anyway is a core characteristic of a "bad person." We don't blame a wild animal for attacking someone, at least not if you have two brain cells to rub together. I worked in Yellowstone. We had bears in civilian areas on a few occasions. I was off the clock, but didn't want to see people hurt, so I helped the park rangers clear the area of tourists, and got the fuck out of the way when they were actually trying to corral the bear (juvenile) and relocate it to a deeper part of the park away from humans.
~~Black Hat Hackers~~ Social engineers, con men, what have you, all revolve around empathetic traits.
Again, people, as an example... A knife is a tool. I carry one every day. Usually, I open boxes, break down boxes, use it as a lever (my "tool" knife EDC is robust and cheap as shit. If it breaks, it breaks, I've gotten a couple decades out of it so far) and more. After 20 years or more of service, it has more than paid for itself, we're looking at like a dollar year here.
Now the knife no one ever sees except my wife (because I disrobe in front of her) is designed for self defense. That one is a weapon. Its only purpose is self defense. It isn't unsheathed unless I'm checking it for maintenance reasons, or I need to defend myself. Thankfully, the later has not happened since I've purchased it. However, in an emergency? Its a sharp blade of good materials. It could be used for other reasons, just at its price point I prefer not to. Awkward grip for a traditional knife usage, but it could be used for an emergency trach if the need arose. Though, that may just be a consideration because of my first aid training.
Both knives serve vastly different purposes for me.
At the end of the day, they're a tool though. I could bash someone in the head with a claw hammer as easily as I built a house - except I know nothing about building a house, lol.
- If you use your empathy to being evil, it's not the empathy that is the problem, but you being evil.
  If you have empathy, but no conscience, it's not the empathy that is the problem, but the lack of conscience.

No surprises that MAGA wants to teach that we shouldn't consider someone elses position. Its their way or the highway.

So, this is controversial, but when I hear "toxic masculinity" I understand that it means that not all masculinity is toxic, but masculinity can have toxic forms. In the interest of using precise language, I do believe that, in the realm of all possibilities, there can conceivably be toxic forms of empathy.

Now, I don't think that left/progressive ideals are toxic in general, and certainly aren't toxic when they're based in empathy and compassion. And I realize that the "side" that coined the phrase "toxic empathy" is also the side that thinks "toxic masculinity" is an absolute phrase. So it would make sense that right/conservative people would think "oh we'll call ideals we don't like toxic, like the libs do with masculinity" without any deeper understanding.

Just want to be pedantic to try to keep the capital-D Discourse on the nature of empathy from becoming black-and-white polarized.

The only toxic empathy I can think of is Stockholm syndrome.
In the interest of using precise language, I do believe that, in the realm of all possibilities, there can conceivably be toxic forms of empathy.
Which situations can you conceive that would be made worse by all involved parties understanding each others feelings?
- Some people use the terms empathy and sympathy as two levels of understanding. Sympathy as the ability to understand how someone feels and empathy as the ability to feel the way someone else feels. In that context, empathy can be crippling and a negative trait to possess.
- There's a form of empathy I, and I think some of my friends, experience by being raised by selfish parents. We're hyper-aware of others' feelings, dread upsetting anyone, and take personal responsibility for other peoples' unhappiness (all of it, even if we didn't have any influence).
  There's another form, that's kind of like a complement to retribution and revenge. A person goes overboard trying to soothe their own empathy-inspired unhappiness that they to go absurd ends to address the source of unhappiness. Maybe like PETA, or people experiencing moral panic.
  Another form that comes to mind is the mother from Requiem for a Dream - enablers. She knows her son is an addict, she knows that he's constantly stealing her TV to sell for drug money, but she dutifully buys her TV back from the pawn shop every time, because she can't say no to her son.
  I suppose, taking drastic action to soothe one's own empathy, and not addressing the real source of unhappiness, can be pretty toxic, especially when used to manipulate, coerce and sway others.
- Yeah exactly, I don't get it either.
  With "Toxic Masculinity" it's pretty clear how masculinity - which is not a problem in itself - can become over-applied to the point where it's damaging both to oneself and to others.
  But toxic empathy? Is it really possible to care about others too much? To try and see things from someone else's perspective too much? I feel like it really isn't, because there can never be enough of that in the world.
  Which means "toxic empathy" is genuinely nothing more than a nonsense phrase for people who don't wish to see or hear about any viewpoint except their own.
- Couldn't what we typically call concern trolling be a type of toxic empathy? Of course you could make an argument that concern trolling is entirely removed from empathy, but then things like toxic positivity tends to only be positive at a very surface level view.
A hypothetical "toxic empathy" could be our evolved hunting technique. We would run down prey with endurance hunting. If we lost them, we could use empathy to put ourselves in their mindset, and so predict their movements.
Even this would be "venomous empathy". Toxic masculinity is partially defined by the way it hurts the man doing it. It's toxic to the host. It's misused enough however to muddy that, considerably.
- Toxic empathy is when you bite them and feel bad. Venomous empathy is when they bite you and you feel bad.
there can conceivably be toxic forms of empathy.
certainly aren't toxic when they're based in empathy and compassion
Pick a lane? I mean no offense, but I did kinda feel like I had a stroke trying to follow your argument.
The way I see it, "toxic empathy" is self contradicting, which is a regular tactic of fascist propaganda. The whole point is to interfere with the listeners' ability to approach their argument with reason and logic, leaving them more vulnerable to emotional manipulation.
Anyway, I'll just go ahead and say it: no, there is no such thing as "toxic empathy". It's a meaningless word salad to dress their appeal to emotion up to look like some kinda of reasoned argument (but only if you don't look to close, which of course a radical will do everything to avoid).
- Toxic empathy is when you try to see the good in people when there's no conceivable good to be found. For example, the fools who think Nazis can still be brought around to reason instead of culled.
- Not really making an argument, just want to speak precisely.
  Empathy used to justify or enable harmful actions is toxic. Like, say, people who use at an excuse for retribution, or people who do something harmful to soothe their own empathy, or people who enable another's toxic activities out of empathy.
  Empathy and compassion aren't very well-defined, but I have always understood empathy to be about sharing in another's feelings, good or bad. Compassion is a little more distanced, it's about understanding another's feelings and simultaneously being considerate about it.
  Empathy can be very powerful, and introduce feelings and emotions into someone who doesn't know how to deal with them well.
  BTW I'm not trying to make a case against empathy, not at all. But I think about empathy and compassion a lot, and while I still want to champion them as virtues, they can be just as complex and subtle as any other human experience. I think our lack of nuanced understanding of empathy and compassion is a root cause of a lot of human problems, especially recently.

It's frustrating to read Christians trying to distinguish themselves from one another based on interpretations of a book while also all believing in a magical creature that lives in the clouds who will both condemn someone to an eternity of torture and provide unconditional love and acceptance.

The idea that anything anyone could ever do warrants an infinite amount of suffering is crazy.
- Ehh I mean some people who are irredeemably awful and would do awful things when given the chance 10 times out of 10...
  Though that's more about who they are.
unconditional* love
terms and conditions apply
- Depends on who you ask.
Is there a slur for christians?
- christian is sufficient
- These sorts? Absolutely.
  My favorites:
  y'all qaeda
  talibangelicals
- Bible Humper
- unbelievable christian
right wing christians, to be exact. They only see things from an evangelical perspective.
Nevermind that it's 2000 years old
- The parts they stole from older religions are much older.

Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trials:

“In my work with the defendants, I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

They're SO DAMN CLOSE TO ACTUALLY BEING SELF AWARE

And yet so very far
- Their understanding is asymptotic

Christ: Please be kind.

Christians: Empathy is toxic.

Christ: didn't exist
Christians: This is what Jesus said and meant I know for a fact!!!!
there are plenty of kind Christians who are absolute pieces of shit
- Exactly, their kindness only extends the people they know who look like them.
Also jesus: "I come not to bring peace, but a sword"

Religion. The only mental illness not in the DSM.

When one person believes a delusion, it's schizophrenia. When millions do, it's religion
- I often wonder if the combination of schizophrenia and heat stroke explains why so many religions started in deserts.
Don't forget to add the fascism subtype.
- Literally every religion is in that subtype, so it’s a bit redundant.

Sadly, this is a thing.

(Note: I am not encouraging one to read the link.)

Witnessing to Liberals by Ron Rhodes

God’s primary attribute is said to be love. His holiness, judgment, and wrath are practically ignored. Thus, it is not surprising that liberal Christians hold out the hope of immortality for all people. The idea that any will spend eternity in hell is rejected.

The writing spends a lot of time arguing against the "mischaracterizations of evangelicals", while mischaracterizing "liberal Christians".

Such a horrible out world view.

(I don't care to find out what this detestable person has to say about Atheists.)

The idea that any will spend eternity in hell is rejected.
Hell isn't a scriptural concept, it was taken and evolved from Hellenism. While I'm deconstructed, I know several "leftist Christians" that reject most modern evangelical dogma as "unscriptural." I agree with them, but there is no ethical justification for things like "God told the Israelites to genocide an entire people, including babies." At the end of the day, even if you agree with Jesus' humanist teaching, the Bible is full to the brim with "God" ostensibly telling people to do horrible, unjust, repugnant things.
- The hell everyone thinks of was basically just biblical fan fiction.
- There absolutely is support for the existence of hell in scripture. Of course, the bible is constructed in such a way that you can use the contradicting passages to support nearly any viewpoint you want.
  A large amount of the early christianity is Hellenistic, hence the influences.
Against my best judgement, I read the whole thing. (You practically begged me to!) He's just offering incredibly disingenuous "talking points" for "liberal Christians" that are actually things you might say to an atheist. The whole thing just exists to characterize non-conservative Christians as fake Christians.
- 100% agree. It is fully repugnant.

This comment will probably seem tone-deaf at best and malicious at worst. I want to be clear that I am not saying people shouldn't be empathetic. I'm not saying that empathy-based morality is a problem. I'm not saying being a bigot is okay. So what am I saying?

It's just that yesterday I learned from the Healthy Minds program that empathy can sometimes be problematic, and that the solution is compassion.

The problem has to do with the fact that some service workers are immersed in workplaces filled with suffering. Think of nurses. Think of first-aid responders. These people constantly see human suffering. And if these service workers empathize with the suffering, they themselves can suffer immensely.

The solution, the Healthy Minds program claims, is to not be empathetic, but compassionate. The difference is that empathy, at its core, is about understanding and feeling what others are thinking and feeling. However, compassion is about understanding others enough to be able to understand their difficulties, and (crucially) wishing them well. Empathy over-identifies with suffering and compassion believes suffering is the current reality but improvements are possible.

If you are interested in reading about this, it's ironic that the Wikipedia article is titled "Compassion fatigue". I suppose that the Healthy Minds app uses different definitions than the Wikipedia article.

Anyway, I will do what the program suggests and wish you all the best!

You oversimplified. The problem is not empathy on it's own, but that's how you worded it. The problem is life is fucked up.
- That sounds like an oversimplification.

I legit felt my brain cells dying reading this!

I would say that empathy should be a basic requirement for any political office in a democracy. Anyone who lacks empathy is simply unsuitable, because you have to be able to put yourself in the voters' shoes in order to fulfill your mandate as an elected representative of the people.

Empathy would also be highly desirable in business leaders, as the purpose of the economy is to serve society and distribute goods at least somewhat fairly.

In our dark times, however, when politics and business mainly serve to maintain the power of those who are already powerful, it is hardly surprising that someone who is interested in doing just that propagates such idiotic ideas as "toxic empathy."

empathy should be a basic requirement for any political office in a democracy
Empathy should be a basic requirement for participation in society, period.
The whole concept of a social contract is based (and dependant) on empathy.
You lack empathy, you get put into a mental hospital to get it fixed, and to prevent you from harming others and society in general.
If your case is currently incurable (probably because it's not acquired but due to some as yet unfixable brain malformation), you get taken care of as well as possible for the rest of your life (or until a cure is developed), but prevented from ever interacting with society.
This alone would fix most of humanity's problems.

Ah “toxic empathy” this is the “I need to protect my mental health— I can’t be bothered with seeing homeless people or caring about genocide. It hurts me to care, so I just won’t.” crowd. And every last one of them is a “magical empath” with more empathy than anyone ever had ever. They’re the mostest empathetic and don’t question it!

I'm old enough to remember in 2009 when Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, mentioning empathy as one of the characteristics he valued in her, and the right melted down

Conservative Christians are fundamentally incapable of understanding the concept of a social contract in a pluralistic society. They'll console themselves with the belief that empathy is a sin whilst stepping on our necks with the authority of the state.

Not sure what the article is getting at, but there’s a thing called “weaponized empathy” - or “concern trolling” - which is a bad-faith argumentation tactic where you pretend to be worried about someone, when in reality you’re just using that as a cover for judgment or hostility.

It can also be used more broadly. Think of how often “think of the children” gets trotted out as a justification to invade people’s privacy, when the supposed concern for kids’ wellbeing is really just an excuse.

The line below the title tells you everything you need to know about what the article is getting at.
How Allie Beth Stuckey is holding the line on the right.
This is about not empathizing with the "wrong people" and making sure to see everything through a "Christian" lens. I put Christian in quotes because this isn't according to the actual teachings of Jesus Christ but the interpretation of the Christian Fundamental movement which sees anyone who doesn't identify as one of them as an enemy to be either converted or destroyed and anyone not confirming to the "natural" standard (I.E. Trans and Homosexuals) should be condemned as irredeemably immoral. These people are basically the ISIS of Christianity.
Like all the "why would you vote for Genocide Joe?" people who suddenly disappeared when Trump took charge...
- That does tend to happen with elections in the past.

Toxic empathy can only harm the person who has it. In truth you have to be a little selfish. The trouble with anyone who thinks empathy is really toxic are the ones who are too selfish.

We didn’t evolve to have a 24 hour news cycle, with 8 billion people someone will always be having a bad day and at some point you run out of fucks to give.

There is a difference between "I don't have the energy to care about everyone" and "empathy is toxic".

Is that what they're now calling "virtue signalling"?

Ugh, don't you just hate it when people care about someone other than themselves?

Yep! Toxic empathy is the main reason, besides Global Warming that I decided right-wing isn't for me.

This value formed the base of what would become the antithesis to my previous beliefs.

What is toxic empathy..?
- BE Right-wingers believe Empathy is toxic basically. Empathy was important for me. So I questioned the whole honor nonsense, what is it for? I speedrun de-radicalizing myself in my teenhood.

Sometimes I really believe I have died and gone to hell. WTF did I do to deserve this crap?

Believe it or not, toxic empathy.
- Fair enough

i don't understand how empathy can be toxic.....

Neither does the woman who defined the term and wrote a whole book about it.
Ruinous Empathy is an interesting concept, but unfortunately much like toxic empathy (but without the obvious malintent from the start), it's mostly used by psychopaths in positions of power to justify their antisocial behaviours in environments that generally forbid it.
It absolutely can be if you let it get out of control. I still struggle with it in fact. It can cause emotional burnout, wreck your mental health, things like that. To be fair, even the "good" version of this gets weaponized to ignore causes that someone might not want to care about without "being a bad person" all the time. Think the "I have to prioritize my own mental health" types who only seem to have energy for issues that directly affect them. Again having limited emotional energy isn't the issue, being disingenuous about it is.
But that's not what this freak is talking about. What this freak is talking about amounts to "Empathy is reserved for the in-group. If it impedes our efforts or contradicts our dogma, then it's toxic empathy," basically.
- People with higher levels of empathy are good targets for abusive and manipulative people.
Like the second you get a ping of sorry for some illegals of the wrong colour. You chastise yourself "No! this is wrong!!!" and use the daily mantra from Fox to clear your mind: Barack Hussain Obama is guilty!
/S
As an example there's my mother who feels empathy for everyone, paedophiles and rapists included, and even acts on these impulses e.g. signed a petition to ask for charges against one to be dropped. I would say she's misdirecting her empathy to a toxic level...

Too much of anything can be bad, but in North America Christian evangelicals could use more empathy.

People are leaving churches over "woke" sermons like caring for the needy or turning the other cheek.

It's common knowledge that Jesus Christ only handed out food for 2 denarius per family. Healing a common illness was priced at 3 denarius but a miracle such as curing blindness would cost 5.

The best thing to say to hateful “Christian’s”: Eat shit. Your god love me too.

For those who might want to know what she means by that phrase, here's the full interview (archive). It's... certainly a viewpoint.

TL;DR
if compassion leads to affirming trans rights, understanding racism, or treating asylum seekers like humans, it’s “toxic"
- Its toxic because allowing one's self to have such empathy would cause one to question Christian dogma and thus it must be toxic. Rigid conformity must be maintained at all costs.

At least they are finally being honest with themselves over their sociopathy lol

Anger is a bitch.

The line is "Anger is a gift" actually.

As a person of lower 1 to 1 empathy, overly empathetic people are similar to the toxic positivity people. Very off putting. But that isn't really how they are using toxic empathy in this case. So fuck em.

Could you define how overly empathetic people act?
- That is a tough one. But it is similar to the toxic positivity people. They are so empathetic, and talking about it all the time that it feels fake. Thier empathy becomes thier whole personality instead of just a trait. I think that is the best I can do.