Evil (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/aiop@lemmy.world
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“In my work with the defendants [at the Nuremberg Trials, 1945-1949] I was searching for the nature of evil, and I now think I have come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.” —psychologist Gustave Gilbert
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[–] 3 points 9 months ago

you can have low empathy and still decide to not be a horrible person, by using your sympathy instead

inversely, you can be an empathetic person and convince yourself that the people you are oppressing are not human and therefore feel no empathy or sympathy towards them, in fact that’s literally what bigotry is why it exists

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