Slashdot Mirror
Students Show a Dramatic Drop In Empathy
MotorMachineMercenar writes "Several news sources report that today's college students show a precipitous drop in empathy (here's MSNBC's take). The study of 14,000 students shows that students since the year 2000 had 40% less empathy than those 20 and 30 years before them. The article lays out a laundry list of culprits, from child-rearing practices and the self-help movement, to video games and social media, to a free-market economy and income inequality. There's also a link so you can test your very own level of narcissism. Let's hope the Slashdot crowd doesn't break the empathy counter on the downside."
This is so obviously a Liberian socialist bit of propaganda it makes me puke. For one the assumption is that "Feeling sorry for other people having problems" is a unambiguously good thing. Very often peoples problems are self imposed. Wheres the questions about taking personal responsibility ? "When you see someone having problems do you think about how they may have made bad choices in the past which caused those problems ?" "Do you want to help educate them to make better decisions in their lives ?" No ... everyone with problems is a "Victim", and your supposed to "Feel Sorry" for them or your an unemphatic asshole.
The whole thing just reeks of new-age "Make everyone feel good about themselves" psychological bullshit. With an under current of liberal socialism.
Your obviously supposed to feel bad about yourself if you don't score high on this test. That way the government can control you by labeling every socialiast agenda as an empathy issue. "You dont feel sorry enough for the Poor !!! Shame on you !!!" The obvious solution to everyone's problems is for us all to feel sorry for them then create massive government structures to hand out to them sympathy dollars so the problem goes away and we can feel sooo warm and fuzzy.
We send that $5/month to help the starving children in Africa so now we can feel all smug and liberal instead of addressing the actual causes of people problems.
Where's my puke bucket,