Amanda Palmer talks about the value, the need, for radical empathy, of trying to understand, even when you don't condone; to have compassion for the person, even while disagreeing or condemning their actions.
It's what that phrase "hate the sin, love the sinner" really means, even though it's rarely practiced by so many of the folk who actually use that phrase.
Because where do you draw the line? If you can't bring yourself to wonder, to consider, how Hitler felt, or how he came to be the person he was and do the awful things he did … then where's the point short of him where you can? Who's not quite bad enough to empathize with? Whose sins, misdeeds, unpleasant and disagreed-with actions is it okay to put up with in trying to understand them, to consider their perspective, to examine for echoes of your own feelings?
Amanda Palmer: Playing the Hitler Card
We live in an age of endless, foaming outrage. The only answer is to try to feel empathy for other people, no matter who they are.
Mixed feelings.
Radical empathy sounds wonderful.
How much empathy can we allow ourselves concerning those who have none, who have empirically demonstrated they have none, for us? If Dzhokhar had any empathy for the people he blew up he’d have found a way to kill himself. Slowly. Painfully.
More to the point, can those among us, military and police, who have to actually do something about the Hitlers and Dzhokhars afford it? If we, the people sleeping safe in their beds due to the readiness of rough men (and women) to to violence against those who would harm us, embrace radical empathy while those who guard us cannot… is that a healthy divide?