For me, it’s a matter of how little they know the world around them and how things affect other things. Case and point, when voters thought that voting Trump in, that he would magically make egg prices go down. They’re going down now, from what I saw shopping earlier today, but they weren’t because of him.
Another example is how when shop lifters, when they shoplift, always think that they’re harming who they call ‘The Man’ aka corporate operating the stores, directly. That’s not entirely true and I know this having worked retail several times and currently.
Who you’re hurting, really, is the store itself and those that work in it. The store pulls its own profits in by how many people shop there and part of that profit, is distributing to those who work there. When you’re stealing from that store, you are actively harming that store’s profits and in turn, harming those that work there.
The CEOs and executives are still raking in millions and they aren’t above having to shut down stores over dipshit thieves which in turn, costs a lot of jobs in that store to absorb the profits to make up whatever costs.
I mean, that’s emotional intelligence. You’re dead right to value empathy highly, imo.
There’s many types of intelligence. Many of them are useless to society if you don’t also posess one or more of the others.
Kindness and empathy is a sign that a person is able to think about the world more widely and intelligently … it means they see past the terrible person or terrible things to try to understand why people, populations or things are they way they are. If you have an understanding or patience to try to honestly and objectively understand why things are the way they are … the more likely you will have the tools and ideas to do something about those problems or those issues.
Someone without kindness or empathy impatiently makes simple assumptions of everything and everyone and immediately jumps to the easiest, simplest “solutions” that usually don’t require any of their responsibility or inconvenience. They don’t care about the source of the problem, they just want to get rid of the problem as quickly and as trouble free as possible, no matter the history, background or circumstances that caused the original problem. It’s a great way of solving problems quickly … but more often than not, this kind of mentality just repeats the same problems over and over again.