I Write As a Form of Therapy

@Chaoshead Not really. Humans are profoundly efficient at dehumanization and significantly less proficient in empathizing.

@Tatsumi I disagree - I'd say we're even. Take the Nazi's, they dehumanized other races and cultures largely due to their tremendous empathy for the "aryan" race or "germany". Often it is the strong empathy within a group that leads dehumanizing to other or between groups.

@Chaoshead That was national identity. Not empathy. Humans are good at "our team" vs "their team". But calling that empathy is a gigantic stretch, imo. Empathizing is "vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner"

They didn't feel what other Germans felt, because they felt it. They simply identified as being on the same "team". It wasn't empathy which drove them, but domination.

It's already been proven that humans are mostly selfish, and have very little capacity for empathy. Previously, scientists thought humans were incapable of empathy. Only recently they discovered part of the brain dedicated to empathy. But even so, selfishness is 90% of the equation.

@Tatsumi I guess we just disagree on what empathy is. They thought they felt the pain, passions and even shared an identity with one another. IMO, it's a profound empathy. But I can see how that can be viewed as less genuine or frivolous because it's mass-produced. But I'd argue that all groups (not just the nazi's) have shared experiences that foster a group identity, take for example african americans reaction to police violence against other african americans.

I'm sure you can find empathetic connections within people of the same profession, neighborhood, wealth etc. I think it goes beyond "teams", similarities often breed an empathy so profound that it can dissociate some with other and different groups.

@Chaoshead Well, we might not disagree on the meaning--you disagree with Merriam Webster.

I don't have the wherewithal to form a cohesive argument against that, tonight. But, I disagree. Whatever "togetherness" you're speaking of is based on survival, nothing more, nothing less. Not actual empathy.

@Tatsumi I think I misspoke, I don't disagree with Merriam Webster or your opinion of what empathy is but rather we disagree on whether or not it can be experienced at the macro level of groups or only at the individual level.