Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Webco1577]

I think perhaps our definitions of "rural" and "community" differ. In my neck of the woods, community means a group of people who live, work, and/or play together. It's possible, I suppose, for one of them an "ungrateful, cunning fellow", but usually one of three things would happen.
1. You would already be aware of his inclinations because you went to school with him starting in kindergarten, and he hasn't changed much since then.
2. His whole family is like that and you've been told for years not to trust anyone from that family.
3. You would ask around to see what your friends have noticed about him lately, and if it turns out he has exploited anyone in the community, a community group would probably visit to get his side of events. It would be made clear that an attack on one of the community would be seen as an attack on all. Usually solves the problem.

[Stoppelmann]

Judging by what you have written on this topic, I think you confuse sympathy with empathy. Empathy is cognitive i.e. it's about learned knowledge of the other. Sympathy is feeling and you need not know anything at all about the other to feel sympathy and act from sympathy.

Sympathy (which comes from the Greek sym, meaning "together," and pathos, referring to feelings or emotion) is used when one person shares the feelings of another; an example is when one experiences sadness when someone close is experiencing grief or loss.

Empathy is also related to pathos. It differs from sympathy in carrying an implication of greater emotional distance. With empathy, you can imagine or understand how someone might feel, without necessarily having those feelings yourself.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... difference

However, I feel that we are talking about compassion, which is an emotional response to empathy or sympathy and creates a desire to help. According to Psychology Today, “Compassion is an empathic understanding of a person's feelings, accompanied by altruism, or a desire to act on that person's behalf.” Put simply: Compassion is when you relate to someone’s situation, and you want to help them. You see someone in trouble, and you feel like pitching in.

So whether we feel sympathy or empathy, it is a question of whether we respond. In either case, it's a matter of knowing your limits, for example, if you have an equally bad situation at home, but you help the stranger anyway. That may be spontaneous compassion, but then you return to the next situation and may have exhausted your potential, leaving the person at home in need. Or you may react to a feeling without being able to distinguish between someone taking advantage of your feelings and someone who is truly in need. These are examples of people who lack the ability to differentiate and are so spontaneous that they easily misjudge situations.

It is also a question of whether I exhaust my potential to help, or whether I give proportionately and when exploited am able to write off my loss to experience. I don’t know about others, but I suspect that we all have such experiences that we have to put down to a lesson in differentiation.

[Belindi]

Judging by what you have written on this topic, I think you confuse sympathy with empathy. Empathy is cognitive i.e. it's about learned knowledge of the other. Sympathy is feeling and you need not know anything at all about the other to feel sympathy and act from sympathy.

Sympathy (which comes from the Greek sym, meaning "together," and pathos, referring to feelings or emotion) is used when one person shares the feelings of another; an example is when one experiences sadness when someone close is experiencing grief or loss.

Empathy is also related to pathos. It differs from sympathy in carrying an implication of greater emotional distance. With empathy, you can imagine or understand how someone might feel, without necessarily having those feelings yourself.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... difference

However, I feel that we are talking about compassion, which is an emotional response to empathy or sympathy and creates a desire to help. According to Psychology Today, “Compassion is an empathic understanding of a person's feelings, accompanied by altruism, or a desire to act on that person's behalf.” Put simply: Compassion is when you relate to someone’s situation, and you want to help them. You see someone in trouble, and you feel like pitching in.

So whether we feel sympathy or empathy, it is a question of whether we respond. In either case, it's a matter of knowing your limits, for example, if you have an equally bad situation at home, but you help the stranger anyway. That may be spontaneous compassion, but then you return to the next situation and may have exhausted your potential, leaving the person at home in need. Or you may react to a feeling without being able to distinguish between someone taking advantage of your feelings and someone who is truly in need. These are examples of people who lack the ability to differentiate and are so spontaneous that they easily misjudge situations.

It is also a question of whether I exhaust my potential to help, or whether I give proportionately and when exploited am able to write off my loss to experience. I don’t know about others, but I suspect that we all have such experiences that we have to put down to a lesson in differentiation.

Taking account of your good definitions I think you imply that sympathy which may be unreasoning, and empathy which may be unfeeling are not quite as effective as compassion. If so I agree, and we have a firm ethic here.

[Stoppelmann]

Give. But don’t allow yourself to be used.

Love. But don’t allow your heart to be abused.

Trust. But don’t be naive.

Listen. But don’t lose your own voice.

[Sushan]

I think perhaps our definitions of "rural" and "community" differ. In my neck of the woods, community means a group of people who live, work, and/or play together. It's possible, I suppose, for one of them an "ungrateful, cunning fellow", but usually one of three things would happen.
1. You would already be aware of his inclinations because you went to school with him starting in kindergarten, and he hasn't changed much since then.
2. His whole family is like that and you've been told for years not to trust anyone from that family.
3. You would ask around to see what your friends have noticed about him lately, and if it turns out he has exploited anyone in the community, a community group would probably visit to get his side of events. It would be made clear that an attack on one of the community would be seen as an attack on all. Usually solves the problem.

Well, in such a community there are no strangers. So we can easily choose to whom to help and to whom not to help. And in such a community such cunning fellows will not last for long as they will be automatically neglected by the rest of the community.

But when it comes to a large society and an incident with a total stranger, as we are discussing in this forum, we will have no prior knowledge and our own safety will be in our own hands.

[Sushan]

Judging by what you have written on this topic, I think you confuse sympathy with empathy. Empathy is cognitive i.e. it's about learned knowledge of the other. Sympathy is feeling and you need not know anything at all about the other to feel sympathy and act from sympathy.

Sympathy (which comes from the Greek sym, meaning "together," and pathos, referring to feelings or emotion) is used when one person shares the feelings of another; an example is when one experiences sadness when someone close is experiencing grief or loss.

Empathy is also related to pathos. It differs from sympathy in carrying an implication of greater emotional distance. With empathy, you can imagine or understand how someone might feel, without necessarily having those feelings yourself.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... difference

However, I feel that we are talking about compassion, which is an emotional response to empathy or sympathy and creates a desire to help. According to Psychology Today, “Compassion is an empathic understanding of a person's feelings, accompanied by altruism, or a desire to act on that person's behalf.” Put simply: Compassion is when you relate to someone’s situation, and you want to help them. You see someone in trouble, and you feel like pitching in.

So whether we feel sympathy or empathy, it is a question of whether we respond. In either case, it's a matter of knowing your limits, for example, if you have an equally bad situation at home, but you help the stranger anyway. That may be spontaneous compassion, but then you return to the next situation and may have exhausted your potential, leaving the person at home in need. Or you may react to a feeling without being able to distinguish between someone taking advantage of your feelings and someone who is truly in need. These are examples of people who lack the ability to differentiate and are so spontaneous that they easily misjudge situations.

It is also a question of whether I exhaust my potential to help, or whether I give proportionately and when exploited am able to write off my loss to experience. I don’t know about others, but I suspect that we all have such experiences that we have to put down to a lesson in differentiation.

You have nicely defined the terms sympathy, empathy, and compassion. Thank you.

Yes, we feel the urge to help total strangers depending on our personalities and many other facts. And we may have (or will have) faced embarrassing situations following being tricked by those who we go to help. And we learn to be cautious from those experiences. Some choose to make their hearts 'hard' and not to help anyone in the future. And some choose to help the strangers even in the future, like the man who still tried to put the snake out from the fire even it bit him. But I think the latter group is very few in numbers.

[Sushan]

Judging by what you have written on this topic, I think you confuse sympathy with empathy. Empathy is cognitive i.e. it's about learned knowledge of the other. Sympathy is feeling and you need not know anything at all about the other to feel sympathy and act from sympathy.

Sympathy (which comes from the Greek sym, meaning "together," and pathos, referring to feelings or emotion) is used when one person shares the feelings of another; an example is when one experiences sadness when someone close is experiencing grief or loss.

Empathy is also related to pathos. It differs from sympathy in carrying an implication of greater emotional distance. With empathy, you can imagine or understand how someone might feel, without necessarily having those feelings yourself.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... difference

However, I feel that we are talking about compassion, which is an emotional response to empathy or sympathy and creates a desire to help. According to Psychology Today, “Compassion is an empathic understanding of a person's feelings, accompanied by altruism, or a desire to act on that person's behalf.” Put simply: Compassion is when you relate to someone’s situation, and you want to help them. You see someone in trouble, and you feel like pitching in.

So whether we feel sympathy or empathy, it is a question of whether we respond. In either case, it's a matter of knowing your limits, for example, if you have an equally bad situation at home, but you help the stranger anyway. That may be spontaneous compassion, but then you return to the next situation and may have exhausted your potential, leaving the person at home in need. Or you may react to a feeling without being able to distinguish between someone taking advantage of your feelings and someone who is truly in need. These are examples of people who lack the ability to differentiate and are so spontaneous that they easily misjudge situations.

It is also a question of whether I exhaust my potential to help, or whether I give proportionately and when exploited am able to write off my loss to experience. I don’t know about others, but I suspect that we all have such experiences that we have to put down to a lesson in differentiation.

Taking account of your good definitions I think you imply that sympathy which may be unreasoning, and empathy which may be unfeeling are not quite as effective as compassion. If so I agree, and we have a firm ethic here.

I think the response is what matters. We can choose to feel sympathy or empathy as well as to choose whether to respond to those feelings or not. But this response will be conditioned and modified with the learnt lessons and experiences. If these two are good the response will grow towards good side, but if the two are bad the response will be reduced over time, and even the particular fellow may start hating the society.

[Sushan]

Give. But don’t allow yourself to be used.

Love. But don’t allow your heart to be abused.

Trust. But don’t be naive.

Listen. But don’t lose your own voice.

Quite a good advice. I think we can take this as the cream of our discussion.

[Belindi]

Judging by what you have written on this topic, I think you confuse sympathy with empathy. Empathy is cognitive i.e. it's about learned knowledge of the other. Sympathy is feeling and you need not know anything at all about the other to feel sympathy and act from sympathy.

Sympathy (which comes from the Greek sym, meaning "together," and pathos, referring to feelings or emotion) is used when one person shares the feelings of another; an example is when one experiences sadness when someone close is experiencing grief or loss.

Empathy is also related to pathos. It differs from sympathy in carrying an implication of greater emotional distance. With empathy, you can imagine or understand how someone might feel, without necessarily having those feelings yourself.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-a ... difference

However, I feel that we are talking about compassion, which is an emotional response to empathy or sympathy and creates a desire to help. According to Psychology Today, “Compassion is an empathic understanding of a person's feelings, accompanied by altruism, or a desire to act on that person's behalf.” Put simply: Compassion is when you relate to someone’s situation, and you want to help them. You see someone in trouble, and you feel like pitching in.

So whether we feel sympathy or empathy, it is a question of whether we respond. In either case, it's a matter of knowing your limits, for example, if you have an equally bad situation at home, but you help the stranger anyway. That may be spontaneous compassion, but then you return to the next situation and may have exhausted your potential, leaving the person at home in need. Or you may react to a feeling without being able to distinguish between someone taking advantage of your feelings and someone who is truly in need. These are examples of people who lack the ability to differentiate and are so spontaneous that they easily misjudge situations.

It is also a question of whether I exhaust my potential to help, or whether I give proportionately and when exploited am able to write off my loss to experience. I don’t know about others, but I suspect that we all have such experiences that we have to put down to a lesson in differentiation.

You have nicely defined the terms sympathy, empathy, and compassion. Thank you.

Yes, we feel the urge to help total strangers depending on our personalities and many other facts. And we may have (or will have) faced embarrassing situations following being tricked by those who we go to help. And we learn to be cautious from those experiences. Some choose to make their hearts 'hard' and not to help anyone in the future. And some choose to help the strangers even in the future, like the man who still tried to put the snake out from the fire even it bit him. But I think the latter group is very few in numbers.

Do you think congregating in a church or other place of worship is or should be for the purpose of rehearsing compassionate action, thought, and speech?

[Stoppelmann]

Do you think congregating in a church or other place of worship is or should be for the purpose of rehearsing compassionate action, thought, and speech?

I don't know about rehearsing, but I would say that the congregation should be a community of people who come together looking for long- or short-term temporary relief, for encouragement, for teaching, and to communicate their experience and observations in the neighbourhood.

[Belindi]

Do you think congregating in a church or other place of worship is or should be for the purpose of rehearsing compassionate action, thought, and speech?

I don't know about rehearsing, but I would say that the congregation should be a community of people who come together looking for long- or short-term temporary relief, for encouragement, for teaching, and to communicate their experience and observations in the neighbourhood.

What you describe can be supplied by counselling, companionship, classes and colleges, and media.
There is not necessarily a religious dimension to any of those. The religious dimension, which is important for social cohesion with morality is ,as we have established, compassion. Compassion is sympathy+empathy in action. Compassion can be learned and one way to do this is by recapitulating old stories and telling new ones on the theme of compassion; that is what I mean by "rehearsing".

[Stoppelmann]

What you describe can be supplied by counselling, companionship, classes and colleges, and media.
There is not necessarily a religious dimension to any of those. The religious dimension, which is important for social cohesion with morality is ,as we have established, compassion. Compassion is sympathy+empathy in action. Compassion can be learned and one way to do this is by recapitulating old stories and telling new ones on the theme of compassion; that is what I mean by "rehearsing".

I appreciate what you are saying and yes, you are right. However, what I propose (and have done in the past) is to look at those components in a religious setting, in my case a Christian one.

People who come together looking for long- or short-term temporary relief, should, according to my understanding of Christianity, find respite in the church, based on the fact that people came to Christ for help as well. This includes providing meals for the homeless and aged, in a communal setting, where fellowship is also available.

For encouragement means that some will not need or even want relieving of their burden, but encouragement and perhaps guidance in coping. The deacon was the traditional person that at least brought resources for that kind of assistance, and was an essential part of the congregation. Unfortunately, diaconal services have in many cases been separated from the self-concept of the church and are largely secular.

Teaching includes instruction in what you describe as social cohesion, morality, and compassion, but has the element that is often missing, namely the identity of the congregation as representatives of the divine. It is when a Christian becomes aware of their calling to align with God, that the other aforementioned aspects gain a new perspective.

Communicating their experience and observations in the neighbourhood entails much of what the deacon was tasked to do, to go out and see where people are struggling and offer assistance. Ideally this is completely without obligation on the part of the people being helped, but it has often been misused as some kind of proselytising.

I know that something like this is accepted because I even did it in a secular context. After I got a reputation as a point of contact for people needing help in the neighbourhood where the nursing home I ran was located, the local church and even the town contacted me to offer support. My mistake was to move into higher management from there, because it wasn’t continued.

[Belindi]

What you describe can be supplied by counselling, companionship, classes and colleges, and media.
There is not necessarily a religious dimension to any of those. The religious dimension, which is important for social cohesion with morality is ,as we have established, compassion. Compassion is sympathy+empathy in action. Compassion can be learned and one way to do this is by recapitulating old stories and telling new ones on the theme of compassion; that is what I mean by "rehearsing".

I appreciate what you are saying and yes, you are right. However, what I propose (and have done in the past) is to look at those components in a religious setting, in my case a Christian one.

People who come together looking for long- or short-term temporary relief, should, according to my understanding of Christianity, find respite in the church, based on the fact that people came to Christ for help as well. This includes providing meals for the homeless and aged, in a communal setting, where fellowship is also available.

For encouragement means that some will not need or even want relieving of their burden, but encouragement and perhaps guidance in coping. The deacon was the traditional person that at least brought resources for that kind of assistance, and was an essential part of the congregation. Unfortunately, diaconal services have in many cases been separated from the self-concept of the church and are largely secular.

Teaching includes instruction in what you describe as social cohesion, morality, and compassion, but has the element that is often missing, namely the identity of the congregation as representatives of the divine. It is when a Christian becomes aware of their calling to align with God, that the other aforementioned aspects gain a new perspective.

Communicating their experience and observations in the neighbourhood entails much of what the deacon was tasked to do, to go out and see where people are struggling and offer assistance. Ideally this is completely without obligation on the part of the people being helped, but it has often been misused as some kind of proselytising.

I know that something like this is accepted because I even did it in a secular context. After I got a reputation as a point of contact for people needing help in the neighbourhood where the nursing home I ran was located, the local church and even the town contacted me to offer support. My mistake was to move into higher management from there, because it wasn’t continued.

I like all that you say, including opportunities for practical compassion. I wish you well in your continuing work and hope you will find your way through the red tape of management.

The reason for lay people's fear of proselytising is mostly due to churches teaching miracles and other incredible metaphysical ideas such as virgin birth, literal Judgement Day, or Jesus being alive after he actually died.

[Theresa Moffitt]

This topic is about the January 2023 Philosophy Book of the Month



Joe, a gay stripper, saved Beth, a prostitute, from dying from malnutrition, and treated and nourished her with his hard earned money. They had no connection in between, and Joe had no benefits by doing so. When Beth asked for a reason to treating her like that, all that Joe said was "I saw my mother die".

What do you think about Joe? Is he a real character or just a fictional one? Is this the good Samaritan? Do such people still exist?

It seemed like Joe was making a connection between Beth and his mother. He saw similarities between Beth and his mother. Maybe by helping Beth he was fulfilling a need to help someone because he wasn’t able to help his mother. Even though she was a stranger, he made a connection in his mind between her and his mother that somehow brought him some peace after seeing his mother die. I think people recognize similarities between strangers and loved ones all the time and try to help similarly situated people because they can relate to the experience or suffering.

[Hubre De Klerk]

Although life has made people hard and each has to look out for themselves, I do believe good Samaritans still exist. I have see people stop in the middle of the road to help an animal that might be run over or a person scared to cross an intersection be helped. I see people everyday receive help over social media from complete strangers as they have compassion and empathy for others. The world would definitely be a better place if we can have more of this.