this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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Pick a lane? I mean no offense, but I did kinda feel like I had a stroke trying to follow your argument.
The way I see it, "toxic empathy" is self contradicting, which is a regular tactic of fascist propaganda. The whole point is to interfere with the listeners' ability to approach their argument with reason and logic, leaving them more vulnerable to emotional manipulation.
Anyway, I'll just go ahead and say it: no, there is no such thing as "toxic empathy". It's a meaningless word salad to dress their appeal to emotion up to look like some kinda of reasoned argument (but only if you don't look to close, which of course a radical will do everything to avoid).
Toxic empathy is when you try to see the good in people when there's no conceivable good to be found. For example, the fools who think Nazis can still be brought around to reason instead of culled.
Not really making an argument, just want to speak precisely.
Empathy used to justify or enable harmful actions is toxic. Like, say, people who use at an excuse for retribution, or people who do something harmful to soothe their own empathy, or people who enable another's toxic activities out of empathy.
Empathy and compassion aren't very well-defined, but I have always understood empathy to be about sharing in another's feelings, good or bad. Compassion is a little more distanced, it's about understanding another's feelings and simultaneously being considerate about it.
Empathy can be very powerful, and introduce feelings and emotions into someone who doesn't know how to deal with them well.
BTW I'm not trying to make a case against empathy, not at all. But I think about empathy and compassion a lot, and while I still want to champion them as virtues, they can be just as complex and subtle as any other human experience. I think our lack of nuanced understanding of empathy and compassion is a root cause of a lot of human problems, especially recently.