> "Usually, 'be more empathetic' was a veiled request for me to modify my behavior or thinking towards someone (e.g. they thought I was rude to someone and wanted me to apologize and change my behavior)."
And you actually illustrate the entire point of the post.
Imagine that someone's upset with you and tells you to be more "gropulent". Many people have said this to you, but gropulence doesn't come naturally to you, and the term is bandied about in a wide variety of situations, making it hard to pick up context clues. There are people who call themselves "gropules" who can't explain how they use gropulence to support the claims that they make about others, and they sound an awful lot like psychics, who we all know are frauds.
How would you start learning to be gropulent?
I hope you'd be as curious and thorough as the author of TFA.
'be more empathetic' is not a veiled request, it is openly declared. The author subverts the ask for behavior change by a) calling it veiled and b) not treating it as the main argument against which they're trying to make a point.
Like the author, you're constructing a similar straw man argument: selecting a specific use of the word and making that the main point to argue against.
'be more empathetic' is an argument to behave differently with the people around you. Not think differently; behave differently.
By framing an argument against semantics or social obedience, you're ignoring self-implicating behavior; you're intentionally ignoring people's needs.
Why not ask "What am I doing wrong?" instead of "Hmm ... what is the nature of empathy? How may a linguist view the word? What is it's function? Ah! Is there an interesting generalization I can find here? Wow, let us dig deeper, this is no time to consider how I treat other people."
yesfitz|4 months ago
> "Usually, 'be more empathetic' was a veiled request for me to modify my behavior or thinking towards someone (e.g. they thought I was rude to someone and wanted me to apologize and change my behavior)."
And you actually illustrate the entire point of the post.
Imagine that someone's upset with you and tells you to be more "gropulent". Many people have said this to you, but gropulence doesn't come naturally to you, and the term is bandied about in a wide variety of situations, making it hard to pick up context clues. There are people who call themselves "gropules" who can't explain how they use gropulence to support the claims that they make about others, and they sound an awful lot like psychics, who we all know are frauds.
How would you start learning to be gropulent?
I hope you'd be as curious and thorough as the author of TFA.
nilirl|4 months ago
Like the author, you're constructing a similar straw man argument: selecting a specific use of the word and making that the main point to argue against.
'be more empathetic' is an argument to behave differently with the people around you. Not think differently; behave differently.
fellowniusmonk|4 months ago
Or call it empathy, whatever.
balamatom|4 months ago
nilirl|4 months ago
By framing an argument against semantics or social obedience, you're ignoring self-implicating behavior; you're intentionally ignoring people's needs.
Why not ask "What am I doing wrong?" instead of "Hmm ... what is the nature of empathy? How may a linguist view the word? What is it's function? Ah! Is there an interesting generalization I can find here? Wow, let us dig deeper, this is no time to consider how I treat other people."