http://www.revivingliberalism.com/the-conservative-strategy-revealed/2009/06/ The Home of Rootstock Liberalism Tue, 22 May 2012 11:55:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1 hourly 1 http://www.revivingliberalism.com/the-conservative-strategy-revealed/2009/06/comment-page-1/#comment-56 Michael Mussachia Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:45:04 +0000 http://www.revivingliberalism.com/?p=335#comment-56 To reduce empathy to "subjective feelings" is indeed a gross distortion and simplification. Empathy is a special type of cognitive state, namely one that allows the individual to experience at least in part and thereby better understand the situation of others, especially as it applies to pain, sorrow and unfair treatment. A capacity for empathy characterizes all social mammals to some degree. Humans are exceptionally social creatures, and so empathy plays a central role in shaping our interactions and judgments. Those who belittle it cater to another feature of our species, namely self-centeredness, which is rooted in the cognitive egocentricism of infancy. At the adult level, it is the center piece of the me-first worldview of social conservatives - a worldview that 1) denies the social influences on consciousness, including the individual's character and decision-making, and 2) denies the inequality of opportunity that is intrinsic in market economies and their class structures. As both Dwight and Lakoff point out, this conservative worldview is fundamentally elitist and anti-democratic. Also, like creationism's denial of evolution, it is fundamentally anti-science in that it ignores all the advances being made in the cognitive and social sciences about reasoning, emotions, empathy and the nature of social species. To reduce empathy to “subjective feelings” is indeed a gross distortion and simplification. Empathy is a special type of cognitive state, namely one that allows the individual to experience at least in part and thereby better understand the situation of others, especially as it applies to pain, sorrow and unfair treatment. A capacity for empathy characterizes all social mammals to some degree. Humans are exceptionally social creatures, and so empathy plays a central role in shaping our interactions and judgments. Those who belittle it cater to another feature of our species, namely self-centeredness, which is rooted in the cognitive egocentricism of infancy. At the adult level, it is the center piece of the me-first worldview of social conservatives - a worldview that 1) denies the social influences on consciousness, including the individual’s character and decision-making, and 2) denies the inequality of opportunity that is intrinsic in market economies and their class structures. As both Dwight and Lakoff point out, this conservative worldview is fundamentally elitist and anti-democratic. Also, like creationism’s denial of evolution, it is fundamentally anti-science in that it ignores all the advances being made in the cognitive and social sciences about reasoning, emotions, empathy and the nature of social species.

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