Sunday, June 20, 2010

The new disease of empathy

All the political pundits are saying that Pres. Barack Obama lacks empathy. Maureen Dowd writes:
"His aides from the Senate, the presidential campaign, and the White House routinely described him with the same words: 'psychologically healthy,' " writes Jonathan Alter in "The Promise," a chronicle of Obama's first year in office. ...

Obama's bloodless quality about people and events, the emotional detachment that his aides said allowed him to see things more clearly, has instead obscured his vision. It has made him unable to understand things quickly on a visceral level and put him on the defensive in this spring of our discontent, failing to understand that Americans are upset that greedy corporations have screwed over the little guy without enough fierce and immediate pushback from the president.
Check out this Jeremy Rifkin video on the empathic civilization. This video is brilliant as well as being subversive.

I am becoming convinced that empathy is the first 21st century disease. Nothing good is going to come from any policy decisions based on empathy.

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