this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2025
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On the one hand, I think everyone hates that person who pulls the "I'm an empath" card.
On the other hand, "empathy isn't real" is a bad faith attack on the concept of trying to emphasize or even understand people that are different from you.
That's what I got from every Charlie Kirk debate I ever saw: a machine gun of bad faith counterarguments.
Debate is about understanding where the other person is coming from, identifying weaknesses in each other's position, and working towards shared truths.
Since he couldn't empathize, Charlie couldn't debate. So he went with the modern debate strategy: I only win when someone else is losing.
What is the "I'm an empath" card?
Are there people who try to make out like they're Deanna Troi style empaths?
Or do you just mean people who claim to have particularly strong empathy / be particularly empathetic?
As an aside, emphasize isn't related to empathy, and I didn't think empathize is a word, although my spell-check apparently thinks it is?
It was half-facetious, but I think a lot of conservatives hear the word "empathy" and think of means this. (Watch the first 60 seconds and tell me you didn't cringe.)
Empathize is a word. It means" to feel or experience empathy", or "to be understanding of".
When I say Charlie Kirk was arguing in bad faith, I'm saying ~~he's~~ he was pretending only the first definition exists and that it sounds like the Jubilee video, when most people use the second definition in real life.
I think it's even simpler than that. Certain words just make them go "Are you calling me a nutcase/soyboy??!!" (or sth like along those lines)
Or the suggestion that therapy is actually a good thing and not a stigma.
Empathize: to feel as you imagine others feels. Sympathize: to understand/relate to others' feelings.
When I read about empathy & compassion in Daoism, Buddhism, various Hindu traditions, etc, they're referring to your 1st definition. The most important part is not to merely feel or understand, but to respond with support, ie, act with compassion.
Your 1st & 2nd definitions are typically understood as going together: to feel as we imagine others feel, we try to liken them to ourselves & understand their experiences vicariously. If you want to separate feeling from understanding though, the word sympathize exists for merely understanding or relating to.
I remember as a child getting upset and someone telling me they sympathize, explaining the difference with empathize (eg, they say that means they understand but they don't feel), which just infuriated me further