Quote Originally Posted by GreenDestiny

Sympathy, on the other hand, is what you'll find more of in the world. I view it as the evil twin of empathy. Empathy is totally understanding how someone feels, but sympathy is trying to assimilate the feeling from the one who is suffering. Sympathy feeds the ego. Another person's suffering can not be taken or copied to become your own suffering - that would fall into the category of coveting. Each person's suffering is unique, even if the same event causes their sufferings, total sympathy is not even possible.... it is a path to the dark side.

really? You think sympathy is the path to the dark side? Sympathy is what leads to action. While I agree that empathy is really important and a great skill to cultivate, I don't think you can really say that sympathy is evil. When you feel sympathetic for someone, that is because their situation causes you to have negative feelings for yourself. You will than do what you can to relieve your own negative feelings by either leaving the situation or helping the person you feel sympathetic towards, because if you help them it will help you.

When you feel empathetic towards someone, you are (like you said) really understanding how they feel. You are "putting yourself in their shoes". You are feeling what they feel. Depending on your view of the world, empathy may lead to action (if you believe people are capable of doing something for other strictly for altruistic reasons) or empathy plus sympathy will to action (if you believe all of an individuals actions serve to bring some sort of benefit to the individual).


Quote Originally Posted by GreenDestiny
We're still a stone's throw away from living in caves, we gotta do something to ensure the dominiance of our higher brain or else we'll be fighting forever with each other.

Might as well start combat training now.