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Charlie Kuck dropped out of college after 1 semester and it shows.
This is the kind of simplistic 1-2-3 logic they use all the time to destroy entire concepts like… human empathy. Troglodytes around the world will walk around with this phrase in their back pockets for years. Thanks, dead guy.
At least he’s dead. At least we have that.
So according to https://www.etymonline.com/word/empathy the word was coined in 1858 in German. And was coined in English in 1908. So “new age” is 117 years (or less, whenever this was actually said).
Then, he seems to imply these things (empathy and sympathy) are mutually exclusive… which they are not.
And the whole point, is to appear intellectual and deep with “and no one can feel what another person feels”… If this was Reddit, this would be pinned, front page of /r/im14andthisisdeep for all time.
And much like many plots in GoT that went no where… the “lot of damage” is brought up but it didn’t go anywhere. How does it cause damage? What does it damage? What IS the damage? I’ll do you one better, WHO is the damage!
Sympathy means you are practicing concern for others from your own perspective. Usually that means relating to someone through your own similar experiences. For example, when someone loses their job, your remember how you felt when you lost your job or when you felt inadequate or betrayed, or when you faced financial struggles. And you sympathize with them through those shared circumstances. This is a great thing, and you should absolutely do this.
Empathy means you take someone’s perspective to try to understand how they feel. This is of course, impossible to do perfectly as you are not them. But the point of it to step outside of your own lens and your low personal experiences and get a glimpse of how they feel from their own experiences. This is of particular value when you do not have a comparable experience for what they are going through to pull from. Like a white person in America has never had the experience of being racial profiled by the police. Any attempt to sympathize would be ignorant at best, insulting at worst. Your experience getting pulled over for speeding is not the same as being pulled over for seeming suspicious for having your skin color in a given place and time. Practicing empathy is trying to understand what that must feel like for them from their perspective and given all of the experiences they must have had in their life. Again, this is going to be imperfect, but if services a purpose in making you understand the experiences and world views of others that are different than you.
That is why the right hatesthe concept of empathy. A) It means that their experience and viewpoint is not objective. B) It means that they are expected to practice seeing others as individuals in whole, not as charactictures and stereotypes. C) It means that they are faced with the realities of bias, bigotry, privilege, and systemic racism that does exist and is experienced by everyone differently. And D) It means that their gut reactions, their inherent feelings of fear, disgust, anger, and hatred at those different to themselves needs to be challenged and seen for the bigotry it is.
I thought the quote was bad, the full version is almost worse.
We go from “mean” to “mean and stupid”.
ATTENDEE: Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?
KIRK: Too many. [Applause]
ATTENDEE: In America, it’s five. Now, five is a lot, right, I’m going to give you — I’m going to give you some credit. Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?
KIRK: Counting or not counting gang violence?
If this had gone on, the next question should be “does gang violence only count as three-fifths of a violence to you?”
But also - even if you add gang violence to the figures, all it would do is dilute the number of trans shooters further, if taken as a genuine premise, he devastates his own argument.
Of course it’s not a genuine question though as he’s not attempting to have an honest discussion, he’s just trying to throw in a racist whataboutism to distract (and hopefully derail) the initial discussion. Standard right-wing chud ‘debate’ behaviour.
Ok. Hear me out.
We lock the doors of cpac after lacing the water with mdma.
Afterwards we let them out. Those that survived will know empathy, the rest … well good riddance I suppose.
So he has neither empathy nor sympathy…
Christ on a cracker, the context makes it even worse!
[30 comments in this is probably not an original comment anymore, but I had to write it out]
FWIW, I work with children, and I see every day that empathy is a learned skill. Usually learned at the same time they learn socialising with other kids. This person was probably failed by all adults around him in childhood. By the system. But that doesn’t excuse going on social media and whipping the masses into a hateful frenzy.
Isn’t Christ THE cracker? Wouldn’t Christ on a cracker be two crackers?
American Christ ig
I found Cheesus Christ on a Cracker
Tell me you’ve never looked up these two words before without telling me bruh wtf, they aren’t synonyms, they mean different things lmfao rest in dirt.
On the one hand, I think everyone hates that person who pulls the “I’m an empath” card.
On the other hand, “empathy isn’t real” is a bad faith attack on the concept of trying to emphasize or even understand people that are different from you.
That’s what I got from every Charlie Kirk debate I ever saw: a machine gun of bad faith counterarguments.
Debate is about understanding where the other person is coming from, identifying weaknesses in each other’s position, and working towards shared truths.
Since he couldn’t empathize, Charlie couldn’t debate. So he went with the modern debate strategy: I only win when someone else is losing.
I despise when women say “I’m an empath” and then continue to tell you how you feel when that is not actually how I feel. No. You don’t get to claim to know me better than I do.
That’s what I got from every Charlie Kirk debate I ever saw: a machine gun of bad faith counterarguments.
Spoiler alert: That’s how fascists argue. It’s all bad faith arguments.
I noted a while ago that I never once heard Kirk say an argument that wasn’t a debate fallacy. Not one time.
Every kirk debate I saw: spontaneous lead poisoning poor guy fell right out his chair.
What is the “I’m an empath” card?
Are there people who try to make out like they’re Deanna Troi style empaths?
Or do you just mean people who claim to have particularly strong empathy / be particularly empathetic?
As an aside, emphasize isn’t related to empathy, and I didn’t think empathize is a word, although my spell-check apparently thinks it is?
As an empath, I’m really in tune with other people’s emotions, and I cry all the time, so I know that you’re super broken up about not knowing about the empath card - even if you can’t stand to admit it to anyone but me, who’s more in tune with your emotions than you are… Because I’m an empath.
No shit Susan, getting sad at the commercials for starving children doesn’t make you an empath.
It was half-facetious, but I think a lot of conservatives hear the word “empathy” and think of means this. (Watch the first 60 seconds and tell me you didn’t cringe.)
Empathize is a word. It means" to feel or experience empathy", or “to be understanding of”.
When I say Charlie Kirk was arguing in bad faith, I’m saying
he’she was pretending only the first definition exists and that it sounds like the Jubilee video, when most people use the second definition in real life.I think a lot of conservatives hear the word “empathy” and think of means this.
I think it’s even simpler than that. Certain words just make them go “Are you calling me a nutcase/soyboy??!!” (or sth like along those lines)
Or the suggestion that therapy is actually a good thing and not a stigma.
You’re describing Hegelian dialectics - not debate.
Debates are usually about proving your position, and thereby proving the other person’s wrong.
That’s how I was taught to debate.
Unless your positions are mutually exclusive, it’s often possible for both parties to justify their position.
From my experience, the zero-sum I’m-right-you’re-wrong style of debate started when we started televising them. You may disagree, but I think debate was more productive when we weren’t incentivized to score points on each other.
If that’s Hegelian dialectics, then I prefer that to what you call debate.
Debate is about convincing your audience, not the people you’re arguing against.
Anyone can teach anyone anything and call it whatever they want.
What you’re talking about is the Hegelian concept of thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
As the other commenter pointed out debate is about convincing your audience or judges that you’re correct.
Your way of doing things is a much more constructive way of discussing almost anything on which you disagree with someone, in like, most cases, imo.
I dont know why you brought up “empaths.” That is kinda bad faith if you ask me. No one is talking about pseudo science spirtualism. Empathy, mirroring the feelings of someone else when observing them, is a completely scientifically proven trait people have. There is no debate.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352154617301031
Did you stop reading after the first sentence?
…okay. I’m blocking you now, so I’m literally not including you anymore.
Bye Felicia
Empathy means you realise that you are fundamentally the same as someone else, sympathy comes from a position of power. It’s a performance where you are pretending that you are feeling something so you don’t appear as a psychopath.
I think sympathy can be something you can try and understand but not fully grasp. I can TRY and understand why women are emotional during menstruation, but will I ever KNOW what that feels like? No I won’t.
Its not a performance… its a neurological function of your brain.
If you don’t have empathy, I don’t see how it’s possible to have genuine sympathy.
This would be news to those with Empathy Deficit Disorder.
This denies free will.
explain
It’s your brain performing that function
Performing a task is not the same as a performance but you know that.
Charlie Kirk’s death is very consistent with his life and ideals. You can say a lot of bad things about Charlie Kirk, but no one can accuse him of being inconsistent 😂
Damn, somehow it’s even worse with the full context.
Wait till you see the one about gun deaths and he reduces human life down to a statistic. As america spirals into authoritarianism with no recourse from the 2nd amendment defenders. At least cars do what they purport to do.
Everyday I consent to get in my car. I do not consent, to say, getting shot in a public location, like maybe, a university campus.
Everyday I consent to get in my car. I do not consent, to say, getting shot in a public location
I get that your main point is to debunk this guy’s defence of guns, and that’s a worthy goal, but this is motornormative bullshit. Cars kill thousands of people who gave no such consent, like pedestrians and cyclists. The analogy doesn’t even line up properly. A more apt analogy would be to compare consenting to carrying a gun yourself being equivalent of consenting to get in your car.
And even that implies that you really did give full and uncoerced consent with viable alternative options. Which, if you live in a typical car-dependent American (or Canadian, Australian, etc.) city, you did not. Because your city lacks adequate public transport options, lacks safe cycling infrastructure, and things are too far apart to walk in a reasonable time. [email protected]
Guns are also bad and anyone who thinks America doesn’t need radical change in gun culture and gun laws is fucking insane. But don’t let that fact be a reason to also defend motornormativity.
While I agree with the fuck cars concept on a hundred fronts. Our dependency on them is certainly something that can be reduced.
They are still pretty far from equivelant.
IE without a major total rebuild of my city, adding public transfer infrastructure etc… cars are necessary for me to go to the grocery stores etc… Bottom line 500 things need to be done before they start restricting cars.
meanwhile guns, serve pretty much no practical use in civilized society except, potentially protect yourself from someone with a gun.
without a major total rebuild of my city, adding public transfer infrastructure etc… cars are necessary for me to go to the grocery stores
Yes, that was my point when I said that actually, if you use a car today in motornormative societies, it does not count as true enthusiastic informed consent, because you do not have another viable option.
Bottom line 500 things need to be done before they start restricting cars
Not really. You start by doing what New York is already doing with congestion charges in inner-city areas that do have good alternative options. You make licensing requirements stricter, including removing the ability to drive “yanktanks”/“wankpanzers”/“emotional support vehicles”/whatever you want to call those absurdly dangerous impractical vehicles that are some of the most popular cars lately on a regular car licence, and instead require an upgraded, more expensive type of commercial/truck licence.
To do much more than that, yeah, you probably need to start doing more. Building separated bike paths as standard in all new roads and roads getting resurfaced (if there’s more than 2 lanes) or lowering the design speed & speed limit and adding modal filters (on smaller 2-lane streets) is kinda the bare minimum, and costs precious little, since you do it at the time you’d be spending on maintenance anyway
serve pretty much no practical use in civilized society
100%. I’m not at all trying to draw a perfect equivalence between guns and cars. Only to point out when people—even well-meaning people—may be reinforcing harmful motornormative ideas. America’s gun problem is for sure far, far less excusable and far easier to address. Which is the reason that so many other countries have addressed it, most famously when an Australian conservative politician fronted up to a crowd of angry gun owners wearing a bulletproof vest when announcing Australia’s new gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre, and yet motornormativity still pervades Australian culture to almost the same degree as American. And Canadian culture. And even the UK, though to a much lesser degree.
except, potentially protect yourself from someone with a gun
Disagree. Owning a gun increases your chance of being a victim of gun violence. There are valid reasons to own a gun. These are pretty well covered under Australian law which should serve as a model for America, if America actually wanted to become a sensible country. But self-defence is not one of them.
Im not against the movement for better public transportation and walkable living spaces. Not in the least. This is just one example of the argument for cars and guns not being completely analogous. Sure, the argument could use some work but dont just paint me as a car loving yee haw.
Im willing to bet that 50,000 deaths figure is mostly on the road accidents.
I would also suggest if youre debating guns in a public setting dont do yourself a disservice by adding in a secondary debate about cars. Depending on the audience, for the gun argument frame a more car accepting line of attack and tackle the public transportation debate in a venue more exclusively for that. Just a suggestion.
Of course, follow your own moral compass but effecting change is very difficult. Sliding the needle is the best most can hope for in this short life.
Wow, all those armed guards are really good at hiding because I never see them. I feel much safer now
Sorry to nitpick, but technically not a psychopath but a sociopath.
A psychopath recognizes that things like empathy and integrity and morality exist, and just doesn’t care. A sociopath (like, by his own admission, both Kirk and the linked poster) doesn’t even understand what they are or believe that they exist.
Aside from that - yes - it’s deliciously ironic that the linked poster apparently sincerely believes that the context somehow makes it better, rather than, as it actually does, simply driving home the point that Kirk was a sociopath.
Im not convinced he didnt know empathy existed. I believe he uses these weak cliches as a piffy jumping off point while “debating.” Sure, no one can feel the exact same way as someone but thats not what empathy means. I believe Charlie knew that but instead of conceding the point he would use appeals like this to get suggestable people to deny the reality of empathy.
He demonstrates this by admiting he knows the meaning of the word sympathy and how it is different from empathy.
Mmm… yeah. I think you have a point here.
And on reflection, I don’t know what possessed me to believe that Kirk was honestly relating his view on the matter.
Well sociopath or psychopath, we can both agree he was not mentally well.
Just fyi, I think you might mean “pithy” unless you were going for an onomatopoeia
I mean it as something that makes you go, “pft.”
Im not a word scientist.
Exactly. The whole “just debating” thing is a load of wank. It’s just a way to frame manipulative ideological recruitment.
Why was he going to universities to “just debate” ? Obviously, the purpose was to recruit supporters for his kooky agenda.
Psychopaths are perfectly capable of not knowing empathy is real, especially as they have never felt it. Sociopaths lack the kind of impulse control that Kirk regularly demonstrated and he also had a massive ego and an ‘im Better than you’ mentality that fits psychopathy much more than sociopathy. Kirk was more than likely a psychopath or extreme narcissist.
