#occupation of india actually spoke out against imperialism. this is because he viewed others not from a lens of sympathy/pity (feeling bad

[brookheimer]

do i post my long explanation of empathy vs sympathy re: roman tonight or is that just excessive

#like warning it is Long. will cut it down some bc i wrote it in a mad frenzy at 3 am in my notes app last night but still #tl;dr: roman is intensely empathetic and entirely devoid of sympathy. the seemingly contradictory displays of compassion vs disregard/ #cruelty are not contradictory at all and make complete sense if you understand the actual definitions of empathy and sympathy. i’d argue #that while rome’s capacity for empathy stands out in a show a #of people who are not prone to empathy his complete and total void of sympathy is much more unique in terms of humanity at large. it’s just #a show filled w cruel people so it’s less noticeable that the forms of cruelty he displays are rooted in empathy/lack of sympathy rather #than sympathy/lack of empathy like kendall and shiv (and just most people more generally) #sympathy is predicated upon difference distance and logical dissection of emotion while empathy is rooted in identification intimacy and #visceral experiences of emotion #you guys just literally do not know what these words mean. but that’s fine ! most people do not ! they are frequently confused and conflated #! that just doesn’t mean they SHOULD be. so . maybe i can help w that #also for further reading edmund burke is an absolutely fascinating figure to read esp his writings on british imperialism #although the term he uses is sympathy mehta & other later thinkers who have talked ab him have concluded that his cosmopolitanism of #sentiments/sympathy is much more like the modern definition of empathy (the words have shifted meaning slightly over the course of history) #or rather that the sentiment is empathy but the push to action is sympathy and combining together u get the cosmo. of sentiments #but basically burke is the founder of modern conservative thought basically. he is also the only british thinker who at the time of british #occupation of india actually spoke out against imperialism. this is because he viewed others not from a lens of sympathy/pity (feeling bad #for their plight) but empathy (identifying with their circumstances and placing himself within them) #love burke bc i find it so fascinating how someone i disagree with so frequently also holds a mindset that i value greatly and is anti- #imperialism despite everything else about him #kind of like rome in that sense. except rome’s sense of empathy is slightly broken because a) he doesn’t have any sympathy to supplement it #with and b) his visceral/emotion/gut instinct leading way of viewing the world + the way obscene wealth makes the rest of reality feel #fungible = inability to feel anything towards that which he does not identify #and unlike burke rome is too skewed by wealth and his upbringing to see resemblance in the masses and empathize w them #the other sibs function using sympathy and feel bad for the poor without having to relate to or understand them #but roman doesn’t do sympathy. he doesn’t feel FOR people he feels what people are feeling instead #but only so long as they’re seen as people. sympathy requires hierarchy so not viewing others as ppl v much allows for sympathy. #empathy requires some level of perceived horizontality so rome cannot empathize w that which is not horizontal to him #me: should i post this long thing? also me: posts another long thing in the tags that’s a long short summary of the much longer actual post #anyways. ahem. back to work