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Originally Posted by lumberjim

I DO have empathy. Sometimes I don't have much Sympathy... but that's because people are assholes.

Isn't it their lack of sympathy that enables them to be assholes in the first place?

The Niceness Prisoner's Dilemma... Wrong NPD but unavoidably related, that pun has potential.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

That seems like a fair statement most of the time, but I wonder if it's I don't notice the people who aren't, or just have a different set of values/standards than the majority?

Is it really a fair statement?

I get what you mean by different set of values, I mean with some of the conversations right here I end up wondering if my understanding of ethics seems like blue and orange morality from the perspectives of others here.

But the question of whether most people are assholes is kind of fundemental to any set of values, because it invokes asking what makes someone into an asshole.

I've more or less come to the conclusion that I don't believe in bad intentions, or at the very least the extent to which they exist doesn't come close to the frequency in which people use them to explain other people. People generally want to be good - when presented with clear cut easy to understand options almost everyone chooses what is presented as good. Think about this: People seek ethical structures from the moment they can grasp them. We are genetically evolved to live within large tribes, to the point that small children instinctively try to look to their authority figures and use them to form ideas about right and wrong - what is ok or not ok to do - and do so by manner of following body language and tone of voice before even having a well equipped vocabulary to reason through those notions. Think what it says about us as a species that people who don't do this or who actually seek to cause harm for harm's sake are actually considered mentally ill.

But that doesn't mean that people are particularly good at being good people. And the existence of malevolence as a concept is prime example of why. Malevolence is more of a narrative tool in the stories people tell themselves then a characteristic humans embody, because when everything revolves around you, people become assholes by virtue of imagining that their intentions revolve around how what they are doing or not doing effects you in the first place, while they in turn are just as focused on their own perspective in life and perceive their choices and actions within their own reasons, which equally revolve around themselves, and if you in turn showcase or act upon the assumption that they are assholes (whether you say it or not), you are the one devaluing them, because just like you their world revolves how things effect them and they don't perceive it from your reasons (you thinking they are assholes) but from your effect on them (you making them feel like shit about themselves).

So how does it work? we're all great people in our own little bubbles and consequentially horrible on the outside? IMO the answer is that it works in the world of skulls. For ethics to have any meaning at all other then making you feel good about yourself, it has to include someone other then yourself, it has to include a shared medium in which they and their perspectives exist as much as yours does. You make a gamble on an objective reality, and in making that gamble you acknowledge that by it's nature you have no editorial authority. Emotional effects are real, physical phenomena, feeling of harm and pain or loss are real physical phenomena, happening within the skulls of other human beings just like you. You judge people for their actions and what the consequences of those are from all perspectives available to you.

And this is where personal agency becomes key - not in their own perspective of their own actions within their own little view of the world, but in the choices of how to shape the view in the first place and their willingness and capacity to ingulf the views of others into themselves, to reach out and understand perspectives different from our own and take what they mean as part of our own, most importantly in regards to their own actions and choices. To be willing to take stories where you are not the hero or the victim or the good guy or even particularly relevant, and accept your role in that story as something you've actually done in life, out there, in the world of skulls. Or in other words, sympathy.

The problem with narcissism is that it's very nature prevents doing just that. They are so terrified of that injury deep down - that thought there is something fundamentally wrong with who they are - that they can't view themselves in a negative light that for them indirectly implies that it's true.
When people imagine a narcissist they imagine someone so disgustingly douchey you'd never want to hang around, someone like toad's boss. Actually they can be very nice people, down right charming, they can care a great deal about making sure other people like them and being nice and appearing like a caring person is a fantastic strategy for that, and they'll generally believe it themselves to be pure angels, or with very concentrated points of guilt which "blame themselves" in much the same way a backhanded compliment compliments.

This is why - while I don't believe in bad intentions - I don't really believe in good people either. If you are a human adult, you've lived long enough to make not causing harm to others incredibly improbable. Good people aren't good people because of what they do, they are good people regardless of what they do.
It is the rest of us who are stuck with sympathy to the perspective of others we impacted in all the times we realized we were doing, have done or - once we become a bit competent at predicting the patterns - what we were momentarily going to do but realized before doing it, we were actually being massive assholes.

Meaning.. Yes, we are all assholes. And that's absolutely fantastic - we become assholes within our own narratives by virtue of having sympathy and empathy to all the perspectives from which we can be seen as assholes. When reality is telling you that you are been an asshole, and you are willing to listen to it. We are all assholes, and there is no better reason then this to be sympathetic.