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this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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oh golly, oh joy! i sure do love assigning all of the people i don't like into the same group of people with a mental disorder, thus perpetuating the artificial class divide of the mentally well versus the mentally ill! surely this will have no unintended consequences on swathes of the population who have that mental disorder or are otherwise considered disordered but are also "functional" enough to blend in with less-marginalized society!
OwO What if there is an observed correlation? Would it truly be a benefit to ignore that? Especially when the observed groups have all the power and the mental disorders are ones defined by their lack of empathy, their disregard for relationships, and their ability to self-rationalize harmful behaviors?
"Sociopath" isn't even an official diagnosis anymore, and certain abusable positions also get noted for their tendency to have high-empathy people working in them - the levels of empathy, in the end, only determine the way the abuse comes through. Empathy is a tool like any other, and trying to insist that it's a thing that can define the goodness of a person is as absurd as any of the other times people have tried to associate a particular feature with some kind of moral position - not to mention how it only ends up harming marginalized demographics. The wealthy and powerful are not going to care if you deem them low-empathy monsters, but some people around you may feel less safe knowing that you associate low-empathy with evil.
I associate low-empathy with immoral, and I think that's a common position. These oligarchs are evil but areprotected from public visibility and scorn. If those protections were removed, then they'd face pressure to make more empathetic decisions that value the people they profit off of.
Funnily enough, empathy doesn't always apply to all other people! Many often learn to only utilize their empathy to gain social advantages by leveraging an understanding of others, or practice selective empathy in that they have functioning, typical, empathy - just only within their bubble. It's why some of them get uncomfortable when they're forced to perceive poor people in a more humanizing way - they have empathy, they're just choosing not utilize it in a way that benefits larger society. I feel I should also point out that a number of people fit the qualifications for being considered low-empathy, but are regarded as leading admirable lives by otherwise choosing to be good to their fellow human beings - James H Fallon comes to mind.