[IronKettle]

Maybe?

Bad people can still be the recipients of injustices or undue hardship. For an extreme example, you can still feel bad for a thief who gets tortured extensively.

You can even feel sorry for people who are led to ruin by their own hubris/etc. For an actual example: It's not insane to feel sorry for Travis Kalanick. Yeah, he sounds like a bad person. It would still really suck to see your "magnum opus" swept away from you. Did he need to be removed? Yes. Would I like to be friends with him? No. Do I still feel bad for him? Yeah, kinda.

Sure, the guy from the article kinda sounds like a dirtbag. Still, he was shunned from his family (and a close family at that) and is essentially losing all of his close social network because of staunch religious beliefs that most of us would call silly. That sucks.

People don't have to fall into this binary classification of "sympathetic" or "unsympathetic". I can feel bad for him losing his family and wife, but feel no sympathy for his financial situation.

As an aside, this is also part of what makes leaving cults so hard: The thought of losing your entire social circle, including your immediate family, is daunting. If you want to know why more people are involved in cults despite being seemingly normal, this is a big part of it.

[zeveb]

> Sure, the guy from the article kinda sounds like a dirtbag. Still, he was shunned from his family (and a close family at that) and is essentially losing all of his close social network because of staunch religious beliefs that most of us would call silly.

Do most of us really consider 'don't leave your wife for your mistress' a silly belief? From the article, that really sounds like the reason he was cut off.

[IronKettle]

Silly in the sense that it's considered an unforgivable offense relative to how mild it actually is (in the realm of "ways you can screw up your life and others"). It's the staunchness that makes it silly.

If my sister cheated on her husband, I wouldn't stop talking to her forever or kick her out of the family (to the extent that I have that power). I'd be disappointed and it would affect our dynamic, sure, but it's not even close to a shunning offense.

Thinking on it, there's actually relatively few things she could do to warrant that kind of treatment.

[rhizome]

"Don't leave your wife for your mistress" isn't a belief, it's a rule. Belief is saying that it applies across the board no matter what, no matter why.