Can you tell me which specific use of the word "empathy" I am arguing against? Because I don't think I'm arguing against any definition at all.
I think I'm arguing that telling someone to behave a way that they don't understand is unhelpful. That could be "empathetic", "thankful", or "gropulent".
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Taking the author at their word, they don't understand the request.
When they ask for clarification, they don't receive it.
In that way, it is veiled, similarly to my "gropulent" analogy.
In other words, the author is being asked to behave differently, but not given guidance on how to behave differently. Which is why they wrote this piece about what empathy is.
I think the author would have gotten a lot further by asking how rather than why, but the author admits that they thought that requests to be empathetic were requests "to be fake and lie". (i.e. They misunderstood what "empathy" meant.)
> 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
You invoked usage that connotes vapid meaning.
I see your argument: How can someone do something if they don't know what to do?
Explicit instruction is useful to a novice; say a toddler or someone new to a domain. But most adults don't spend the day explicitly telling each other how to behave socially.
A case can be made for individuals who display some difficulty learning this vicariously, but considering that should affect <1% of the world population, I think it's reasonable to be suspect of misbehavior.
i.e "you didn't tell me how to be nice, so how could I be nice?" is not a reasonable excuse for most adults.
My sentence about "gropules" was a dig at "empaths". You may not have run into them, but they're tarot and crystal adjacent. It's a teeny tiny minority of people who talk about "empathy", but they do use it vapidly, and could lead to people with an underdeveloped sense of empathy to dismiss the whole concept as something akin to new-age nonsense. I've met enough to last me a while though.
However, you're right about my argument, and our disagreement lies in the affected population.
"17% of children aged 3–17 years were diagnosed with a developmental disability, as reported by parents, during a study period of 2009–2017. These included ASD, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), blindness, and cerebral palsy, among others."[1]
Now, that's children, and with the correct support, people with those disabilities can be taught empathy along with other social skills.
But what about those without support, those who should have been diagnosed and supported but weren't, and those who didn't meet the criteria to be diagnosed with an official disability/disorder but still struggle?
I may be an outlier, but I would estimate that about 1 in 5 people that I meet have some trouble with empathy (i.e. semi-frequently misunderstanding the feelings and/or motivations of others).
Ultimately, I agree, ignorance is no excuse for bad behavior, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't act empathetically to those who have trouble doing so. If anything, the author's piece is a fantastic path to developing a sense of empathy for the <1-20% of adults affected by a lack of it.
I think I'm arguing that telling someone to behave a way that they don't understand is unhelpful. That could be "empathetic", "thankful", or "gropulent". ** Taking the author at their word, they don't understand the request.
When they ask for clarification, they don't receive it.
In that way, it is veiled, similarly to my "gropulent" analogy.
In other words, the author is being asked to behave differently, but not given guidance on how to behave differently. Which is why they wrote this piece about what empathy is.
I think the author would have gotten a lot further by asking how rather than why, but the author admits that they thought that requests to be empathetic were requests "to be fake and lie". (i.e. They misunderstood what "empathy" meant.)