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Empathy and politics

Meow Mix

Chatte Féministe
Sometimes if I peek into “liberal only” spaces and peek into “conservative only” spaces (or anything similar), I see two vastly different worlds with different concerns and motivations.

It has been suggested that liberals tend to be more motivated by empathy (SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals), and on the surface, this anecdotally usually seems true to me whether I’m listening to table chatter, reading forums, or anything of the sort.

For instance, yeah, just looking at threads here there is a lot of “Trump is not good” and “I’m concerned about the state of the country” type posts, which is fine, but I also see concern about poverty, access to medical care, living wages all within the first page.

I don’t see the same kinds of concerns “next door.” I see stuff like “I want to impose my values onto people that aren’t hurting anybody (e.g., homosexuals)” and things like that. (There was one obvious post I saw celebrating lower drug prices, so, credit where due).

It would be unfair to characterize liberals as completely motivated by empathy and conservatives as motivated by tradition (or whatever they might want to call it), but how fair, or conversely how biased, is it to sort of buy into this as something that’s at least marginally true: empathy probably predicts your politics?
 

pearl

Well-Known Member
In the words of Jerry Falwell, " When the bums get hungry, they'll look for jobs." I think some political conservatives would like to eliminate entitlements like SNAP, Medicaid, ACA.
 

PoetPhilosopher

Veteran Member
I've noticed in conservative and liberal spaces, not necessarily all on RF, there's a sort of individualism vs. hive mind thing going on -

Conservatives like to work after individual interests. Those interests may be to help other conservatives, sure, but they often kind of go about it in the wrong way, and are motivated by self-interest. They see liberals as the enemy, and think that when liberals talk agendas if you will and policies, they should respond by doing things which are very "in your face" to liberals, just more passive aggressively, often kind of losing sight of the whole subject in the process.

Liberals I find to have a hive mind quite often, of working as a community to something they deem important. This can be really bad sometimes too, if not used well. I have seen liberal communities, for example, where one spends $30 on a flashy shirt of really poor taste (to me at least), and shows people... then about 20 people all "have to have" the same shirt and buy it. And the shirt's usually like I said, not even something really that good. And there's no real reason to buy it. But maybe I'm stereotyping my own group, here, too.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
These days it seems more pro vs anti authoritarianism. "Conservatives" want to ignore the Constitution and have the POTUS (assuming Trump) free to do anything and everything he wants because he can do no wrong.

Liberals by and large want the rule of law to prevail.
 
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