Empathy is the most valuable thing in today's society. Four things make up the system of classification of MOST of people's basic feelings today:
Love,
Hate,
Apathy and Empathy.
LOVE
Love is a very bizarre idea that many people have difficulty describing. As far as most people are concerned love is the greatest feeling in the world. I would like to challenge that. There are many good things that people feel but I question why people use the word "love" sometimes. There is nothing in life that should not be questioned, including love. Consider a married couple that has lived together for decades. Sometimes genuine feelings fade and couples like this begin to care about each other less and less until they detest each other. Sometimes they'll treat each other like
garbage and wonder why they ever got
married in the first place and yet they'll insist they are in love.
Is that love?
Or on another note, what about two young teenagers who claim that what they feel is true love. They might not have any kind of emotional
maturity, they might have no clue what they're talking about, yet they call what they feel love.
Is that love?
It is understood that not all married couples are like that and not all young couples are completely naïve, but both do exist and sometimes they call that love.
You may argue, "well that is just a
twisted version of love",
Try telling them that.
To quote:
Kurt Vonnegut: "I have had some experiences with love although the ones I have liked best could be described as "
Common Decency". I treated someone well for a little while, or maybe a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in turn. Love need not have anything to do with it". Later Vonnegut makes a very important point I also find interesting; "I wish people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other when they fight: "Please a little less love and a little more common decency".
Please understand my goal is not to destroy the happiness that the feeling people call love creates, but to better understand all aspects of it while questioning just what it is we as people feel.
Pardon the crudeness of using a dictionary to define love but I find it interesting. Webster's defines love as: 1. An intense affectionate concern for another person, 2. An intense sexual desire for another person. Number 1 is hard to find value in (seeing as how there are so many different ways to interpret those words and some of them are truly horrible) and number 2 means just wanting to
fuck. I find that ridiculous. People sometimes call
sexual intercourse "
making love. Sometimes they call it fucking. Though fucking is the cruder act it can be more honest. Two people gratifying each other is better than one person taking advantage of another person using false overvalued words like "love". Making love is just about the worst description of
sex I can think of. It shouldn't be called making love considering if there is one thing I know, if it ain't there it
sex sure is not going to make it.
I also find interesting that dictionary definition number eight is "a
zero score in
tennis".
HATE
Hate is often mistaken for not liking something. Considering that that is how it is most often used this does make some sense. I prefer to think that hate is what people feel when they don't understand something. Hate and ignorance go hand in hand. The thing most people don't realize is that hate also has no value. If you hate something you might as well admit to caring intensely about it because whether the caring is positive or not it is caring just the same.
Minorities in the
United States often claim that crimes perpetrated on them are "
hate crimes". Some
homosexuals are so simple-minded that they believe every single violent act perpetrated on a homosexual by a non-homosexual is a "hate crime". To some people it is impossible that just maybe a minority could be attacked because they are a jerk. Perhaps statistics will show that most crimes perpetrated against homosexuals are hate crimes, but who really knows what motivates a person to do something. Just because a minority is attacked that does not mean that it was because they were a
minority.
Sexuality is a bad example though. A better example is race. People of the same race often attack each other. Just because people of two different ethnic backgrounds fight that does not mean that the difference in
ethnicity was the motivating factor behind the disagreement.
Even when race is a factor they are not hate crimes, but rather crimes of not understanding.
Hate crime, in my opinion, could only be when a person commits a crime against someone they are obsessed with for one reason or another.
Hate gets no on anywhere.
APATHY
Apathy is the state of not
indifference, not caring, not feeling one way or another about something. If ever the youth of
USAmerica had a rallying cry it would be "I don't care!". And why should they? So few people are shown something to care about in this day in age. The trials and hardships a person sometimes has to endure before they can find something to care about or believe in are great. The problem now is that people give in to apathy and never return. Some people consider the state of not being able to find a solution a solution itself.
Apathy might solve the problems of a person who can't find something to care about but by definition apathy is the act of giving up on finding something. Perhaps people should not give up the fight and should keep their eyes and minds open to find something to care about.
EMPATHY
Empathy. Acceptance that all humans should feel for one another. Empathy is the emotion that makes you cry when you see a stranger get hurt. Empathy is understanding without scrutiny or persecution. Empathy for other human beings is pure. Some would scrutinize empathy and say that it is just produced by a cheap self-interest, i.e. "I sure wouldn't want that to happen to me". This is a misunderstanding of a basic principle of empathy. Perhaps it is driven by self-interest but maybe that's the point. It doesn't matter what drives people to Empathize with one another but as long as they do people will always get along.
Empathy is the level we all relate on as human beings. It should be embraced above Love (the undefinable would-be-solution to all our problems), Hate (the all-too-easily definable pointless abuse of fellow humans) or Apathy (the nihilistic lack of
common Decency.) Empathy is understanding.
Empathy is the feeling that we all feel but sometimes have no name for. When you're sick and you realize how terrible it is to feel that way and for a brief second think to yourself "How horrible it must have been for everyone else who has ever gone through this".
It means far more to relate to a stranger than to die for "love" which probably caused more confusion and hardship in life then any true caring.
It means more to understand a person who you may not like than to "hate" a person you don't understand.
It means more to create bonds between humans than to permanently sever them with the trend known as apathy.
Empathy will always solve more problems than the other
three.