[samtimalsina]

I’m a little drunk and I have not even read the article but I was discussing this very thing with my friends. We have so many stories and we are each going through so much struggle individually. Why can’t we be kind and considerate of each other?

[whatshisface]

Because going through a struggle tends to turn people inward and makes them see everything, including the harm they do to others, as if they were a victim just doing what they have to do to survive. It is very hard to overcome it because you have to become a kind of martyr, who accepts the reality of their suffering but who's too holy to blame it on everyone else, or even on yourself.

Kids are often nicer than adults because their lives are so easy, but if they don't learn to bear a cross (this is the best metaphor I know) they'll become nasty as they get older, as people reject them and their health starts failing. It's one thing to be a nice young man, another one entirely to be a nice overweight balding 60 year old with joint pain and a skin disease. That's not to say it's about age. It's about how good you feel, and age is just the big conveyor belt that everyone goes down whether they're ahead or behind their demographic.

You can watch this play out in you next time someone says or does something annoying when you're still smarting from a minor injury, like a stubbed toe. You'll tend to act as if they were the ones who stubbed it because blame wants to earth itself.

[scaramanga]

I think that what you call "learning to bear a cross" is really an application of empathy, and an important one. It's the knowledge that "if I have an emotional meltdown, those close to me will be forced in to the role of caring for me, which emotionally drains them."

It's such an important skill to know when to hide or bear your hurt, to spare others the burden of care, and when to share your hurt to acquire some care. It's a difficult balance to strike because if you go neglected for too long, you will completely meltdown, but if you elicit care too often, you will also elicit compassion fatigue from your carers (especially as an adult, I mean, parents will pretty much pour all the care required in to their young children, it's not that they are limitless, but the limits are way higher).

To be less transactional about it: you don't make every negative event be all about you, because you recognise that things affect others, even things that seem to only affect you. That requires a quite refined and well-developed sense of empathy where you are balancing various overlapping and conflicting needs of, potentially, several people at once.

[scaramanga]

Generally, people who experience childhoods which are impoverished of the stimuli necessary to develop robust senses of self and the coping skills that come with it are left much less resilient to life struggles in adulthood.

If you have developed a sense of self early in childhood, then you are able to develop empathy for others, if you bring empathy in to a relationship, then you can be trusted and trust others. Think about it, you cannot rely on a relationship that does not have trust as it's basis, you cannot be trusted in a relationship if you cannot perceive or understand the other persons needs and feelings, and you cannot perceive or understand the other persons needs and feelings if you cannot perceive or understand your own.

If you have a sense of self, and then you have developed empathy, and then taken that empathy in to relationships, and if you have then made the moral choice with that to be a kind person, then that enables you to form resilient relationships. And you take those relationships with you in to adulthood. These relationships, and the coping mechanisms that got you them, are highly effective cushions for the shocks of adult life. Life changing struggles can still afflict such people and bring them down, but then they are much more able to recover since they still have the scaffolding they developed in childhood and they can rebuild.

For those with a childhood impoverished of the necessary stimuli, it is much more difficult, because they are rebuilding it all from scratch.

And then there are those for whom the experiences of life have been so damaging, possibly combined with genetics, that they may never be able to develop a functioning sense of self, or empathy and go through their entire lives. And yeah, the older you get, the more difficult it gets because you may not have the attributes that would enable you to turn it around earlier in life (family or school friends with whom relationships haven't yet been completely poisoned, good looks enough to meet someone new, meeting ambitious people your age at the start of their careers who are looking to network, etc..)

[airstrike]

This is a very insightful take (and really well written too)

Thanks for sharing

[routerl]

From Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens:

> Crowley, a demon: [during Jesus's crucifixion] What has he said that made everyone so upset?

> Aziraphale, an angel: Be kind to each other.

> Crowley: Oh yeah. That'll do it.

[scaramanga]

Because empathy and kindness have to be instilled in children for it to develop. We all have the capacity for it, but the capacity has to be nourished.

Adult lives generally unfold in either one of two ways:

1. Wondering how so many people have made it to adulthood without having developed empathy. Even if you ignore empathy as a moral condition, it's acquisition is a practical condition which is a pre-requisite for managing many other aspects of adult life (careers, relationships, interactions with strangers, etc.). The idea that so many people are roaming the earth without having developed this capability is astonishing, slightly terrifying.

2. Wondering why, despite all my best efforts, I am unable to connect with anyone. Does everyone else experience this profound sense of hurt and isolation? Even when I am with people, I feel alone. Nothing I do alleviates this condition, except momentarily. I feel like I even lack a connection to myself, or that my self doesn't exist, except maybe in rare moments. It's like there is a void and I must fill it with something: religion, drugs, sex, spending, etc.

[throwawaylinux]

> Why can’t we be kind and considerate of each other?

Well I, for one, would love to. It's those hateful divisive others who are the problem.

[user_named]

Sharp sarcasm.

[csours]

In a word, righteousness. The human mind grew up in a world of divided bands and fighting. Us vs Them is a very comfortable paradigm. So now we have people fighting about Woke-ism or Gamer's Gate. People get bitterly angry about this because their personal morality is challenged; shame is a knife to cut the sinner. We feel a shared sense of righteousness with our own band - how dare they oppress minorities / how dare they challenge the way I was raised / how dare they take away my rights and personal choice / how dare they behave so recklessly.

Maybe you're angry about one of those things right now. Anger is an emotion that tells you to change something. If you can't change the thing you get angry about, then you get angry at that feeling of not being able to fix things; you get angry at people that get in the way. You get angry at people on 'the other side'. Then they respond by defending themselves and saying things that make you more angry. Once the fighting starts, you have the original problem and the original feelings about the problem, and you also have anger about the fighting, which quickly becomes bitter.

I don't know how or if humanity will stop this at scale. A path forward would be choosing not to use shame and righteousness, but that is a deeply alien feeling. Of course you want racists/wokists to feel bad; they are doing harm and they want you to feel bad! It would be unrighteous to not attack them!

----

I do not believe wokism is a problem in the way that racism is a problem. I believe that many people experience historic structural inequality. I believe that some people want their own race to prosper ahead of other races. I believe that people try to advance their own personal interests without regard to the power structures they participate in. I don't believe that shaming non-minorities really helps fix this.

[shark_laser]

Ironically, the author mentions what you've done here directly and calls it "Narrative Take Over":

"We try to communicate "I understand" and go on to provide a personal anecdote. Our story is usually of something that we think is in the experiential vicinity of what someone is sharing with us. This, however, is not empathy."

The easiest way to be kind and considerate is to listen and attempt to understand rather than making assumptions. Even on the Internet :)

[sumedh]

> Why can’t we be kind and considerate of each other?

Because if you miss an opportunity you might miss putting food on the table specially if you live in a developed country.

[pshc]

When you live in a system that increasingly benefits the few at the expense of many, anger is a natural immune response. A healthy catalyst for change, really.

[BurningFrog]

Why would those two things be connected?

[scaramanga]

Glad you asked. There are two types of kindness:

- The one you employ as a manipulation to get something you want out of an interaction. Not to make a moral judgement on this, we all do it, when you want to buy a pack of gum at the convenience store you affect kindness (we call it "being polite") in order to make the transaction go smoothly.

- The one which requires empathy. Empathy requires a sense of self, combined with the ability to recognise the same selfness in others.

[fibonacc]

> Why can’t we be kind and considerate of each other?

inflation and social media.

before we had just inflation. now we have social media that magnifies it.

[sometimeshuman]

And the recent heatwave? The last argument with my brother was so over the top it did permanent damage to our relationship. Upon reflection I do wonder how much heat had to do with it.

[fibonacc]

heatwave is also caused by global warming caused by co2 levels as energy use rises with inflation.

inflation then widens wealth parity gap and social media reminds individuals to take risks they cannot afford and so on....

inflation causes stock prices to rise and factory outputs, exports to rise leading to more energy consumption.

edit: i think i know why your brother is mad at you

[AnimalMuppet]

Again, non sequitur. If anything, energy use falls with inflation, as people can't afford to use as much.

[vlunkr]

Do you think earth was some kind of paradise before social media?

[eulgro]

No. I would rather think its the lack of proper education on how to behave morally, how to have make valid argument, how our choices impact the life of others, and lack of self control training.

[fibonacc]

inflation causes rapid drop in education quality

[AnimalMuppet]

Non sequitur. Inflation and education quality are unrelated.

(Perhaps they are related when inflation gets really bad, but we aren't anywhere near that. And, education wasn't great when inflation was very near zero for a decade, and neither was social kindness.)

[fibonacc]

inflation means everybody takes home less pay year after year

if income is stagnant money loses value faster due to inflation.

[randomdata]

Incomes have held stagnant, on average, for hundreds of years. This time won’t likely any different.