Social Conscience - is it possible?

Incidentally, I think I have a whole lot in common with the population at large. It's easy to just look for differences.

I don't often make judgments based on natural compassion. They come from thought or morals instead. This sounds absolutely horrible, I know, but it's not something I can change, and it doesn't mean that I never help people, it's just that I do it because I've told myself it's a good thing to do for whatever reason. (Maybe this is why Rand appeals to me, but I don't think it's the main attraction.)

Not to me, it doesn't...

Not that natural compassion isn't important -- it's crucial -- but it's fickle, manipulable, and prone to contrarianism. Moral/ethical strength comes from a synthesis of/alliance between reason and "the passions" -- sort of an internal checks-and-balances system.

It's like a romantic relationship: a good one, between healthy people, has its structure based not on the whims and emotional currents of the parties involved, but rather on the bond that they've forged from their physical, emotional, and intellectual attraction to one another. Similarly, a person with a strong moral center bases his or her actions and moral judgments not purely on the transient emotional pull of a particular event, but rather on a synthesis between that and their intellect and principles.

Oddly enough, I think the people who are the most sensitive are often the ones most likely to be numbed quickly by overexposure to images and tales of mayhem. It's probably a defense mechanism of some sort, but like you, I wish mine were easier to defeat. Things become abstractions very easily, and it takes either a huge effort of will, or an insight of sympathy, for them to fully reach me once that's happened. I think one of the roles of art is to provide that insight of sympathy in a truthful, but effective, way -- in other words, to remind ourselves of that moment of recognition, that the Other is (and suffers) like oneself, which is so crucial to every workable system of secular morality.

On another note, maybe what you call 'the impossibility of empathizing with other people' is really just the pleasure of sadism. Most people seem to enjoy a dose of sadism with their empathy. Play with that mouse!

On another other note, (but it all turns out to be connected in the grand finale), when I was in Form 2 (12), I argued with a teacher from another class and he said to me 'you don't have much empathy, do you, Maryann?' But I think he really said it because a few days before, he had grabbed me by the strings of my hooded top and pulled me close in to him, and I had just acted really shy and sullen and stared into the distance, instead of giggling. I would have giggled if I'd known that was the appropriate reaction, but I was really unknowleadgeable about sexual type interactions back then.

Anyway, I didn't know what empathy meant so I asked and he said, 'I think you better look it up in the dictionary.' I got annoyed and said, 'Why don't you just tell me,' and he said 'Look it up for yourself.' Do you think he didn't know what it meant? And if he did, was he right? Because ever since that day, I have wondered whether he was. And furthermore, I now have a deep distrust of the concept of empathy. Perhaps that word is just a sick use of language that people invoke when they want to cut you really deep.

in summary: some, yes.

Oh, even I, let alone dave q, could come up with an answer to that one.

On the other hand it does imply that there can be true heartfelt empathy with people you've never met. which leads to the question of what it means to have NOTHING in common with another person. and how would you know that that is the case with a stranger.

i can't actually *read* the Amnesty magazine as descriptions of torture make me physically ill. this seems, to me, to beggar the whole damn point of joining AMnesty!