The problem is the Politics of Empathy in relation to graven or craven images put forth by the media.
Empathy is a useful mental process. It is about trying to see things from the viewpoint and feelings of other persons(or even animals). Empathy doesn't necessarily mean agreement or sympathy. It means that other people have their own egos, experiences, problems, justifications, biases, and rationalizations. A novelist has to empathize with all his characters. An artist must 'read' minds. So, even though Oliver Stone was no fan of Nixon and loathed Bush II, he tried to enter their heads in his movies.
Everyone should develop one's own capacity for empathy, but he or she must also ask, "What am I empathizing with?" With Reality, ideality, or fantasy?
In reality, we come across real people, and over time, we come to see them for what they are. If we must learn to empathize with others(by looking into their thoughts, feelings, personal agendas and angst), it must on grounds of understanding their true motives and emotions. So, empathizing with reality is the most important thing and bring us closer to to the truth.
But outside our close circles of family members, friends, acquaintances, and co-workers, we have to rely on the media, education, arts, and pop culture to get a glimpse of what other people are like and what makes them tick. After all, we have no direct contact with them. They come to us filtered, altered, and/or spun by the media or academia. This reality outside our inner circle of people we actually know is almost never presented as raw reality or neutral truth by the controllers of knowledge. It is manipulated and shaped into an idealized version of the reality. So, if one has no direct contact with the real mafia and has never read a serious & honest account of them AND if one only knows about the mafia from Hollywood gangster movies, one's empathy will be with the ideality or fantasy than with reality of the mafia.
This is obvious enough, and the elite intellectuals should know this themselves and should be reminding us to be skeptical of how reality is manipulated by the media. Instead, elites are addicted to their own PC crack and incapable of rising above their biases. They fear the Cold Turkey of truth. Also, as they control media and academia, they prefer to use them as instruments of power and control than free thought. After all, a thinking people might disagree with the elites and draw different conclusions based on contrasting sets of facts.
So, the elites prefer the current condition where books, fiction, and movies are used as effective(especially when images are used with music) conveyors of ideality and fantasy as more-real-than-real. People's view of reality are shaped more by stereotypes and archetypes presented by media and academia than by what's really out there.
The result is the perversion of empathy. Empathy has value only when one tries to access and assess the thoughts & feelings of real people in the real world. It is a fool's game when we are empathizing with false graven/craven images conjured by the media.
Surely, if one doesn't the know the real Hitler or Stalin but only knows him by pro-Hitler propaganda or pro-Stalin movies, one will be 'empathizing' with a heroic & sympathetic portrait of the man. Thus, empathy can only become a mindless worship.
Or, if a certain figure or person is presented in the most despicable or villainous manner, the reader or viewer doesn't have much leeway to think otherwise of him.
Such rigging undermines the true worth of empathy. The reader or viewer can only go along with the pre-cooked 'empathy' served by the writer or film-maker. Now, a true artist may present complex characters in complex situations and invite the reader or viewer to participate in the exploration. But most books and movies dispense with complexity. For one thing, it's usually commercial poison as people prefer cops and robbers. Also, the powers-that-be despise the masses as dummies who should be controlled and manipulated, not provoked to think.
More importantly, the globalist-masters fear the rise of complexity & ambiguity among the educated elites because truly curious, skeptical, and rational scholars and journalists are likely to raise inconvenient and 'dangerous' questions about the true nature of power in the world and who has it. This is why the masters of the world want elite colleges and big media to be so PC, closed-minded, judgmental(without judiciousness), and smugly bigoted as 'more evolved' people by the virtue of spouting the tiresome mantras of 'racism', 'homophobia', and 'antisemitism'. Better to have intelligent educated elites fume mostly about 'trailer trash' rednecks and Evangelicals than ask questions about which group has the Real Power and uses it to spread misery around the world.
The masters of the world fear free-thinking elites more than free-thinking masses. After all, most people don't care about anything even if they had the freedom to think and ask questions. They are too incurious and none-too-bright. It is the educated elites who read books, ponder theories, and think new thoughts. So, if the paradigm is to shift, it usually begins with the elites. After all, it was Anglo elites, not Anglo workers, who shaped the political and ideological culture of the West. It was educated Jewish elites, intellectuals, and artists who changed culture and ideology. Jewish plumbers, accountants, and used car dealers had no use for that. So, in order for the Masters of the World to keep the power, they must control the educated elites that do the most thinking and raising of questions. Free-thinking elites are the most dangerous force against the Status Quo of Power. Then, we can understand why the Power Elites prefer PC hysteria in elite colleges. It is a way of preventing the culture of free thought.
For this very reason, there needs to be a major shift in the way that ideas are discussed. Since colleges only allow PC, there needs to be an online virtual campus where all voices can be heard. I'm not talking of online courses that many colleges now offer. I mean a Virtual Center of Free Thought and Discourse that is totally safe from PC. There are many independent voices on the internet and youtube, but they are too scattered and disorganized. Also,they are too fixated on a single issue or ideology to be part of a larger intellectual community committed to free discussion of ideas.
Anyway, many progs consider themselves very 'empathetic'. But they don't ask the crucial question of whom or what they are empathizing with. After all, there is a huge difference between the real Jesse James and the movie Jesse James(often featured heroically). Empathizing with the real Jesse James(for those who knew the real man) and empathizing with the Hollywood Jesse James are entirely different things. Empathizing with figures of ideality is to fall into a trap of a rigged system. Since the figure or character has been idealized, you can only see him as a hero, saint, or martyr. Empathizing with fantasy is even worse. In our celebrity culture, much of the cult of personality of various figures is closer to outright fantasy, going way beyond trimming and airbrushing less reputable details of their lives.
Too many pampered whites who grew up in protective environments don't knew the reality or actual conditions. Their idea of reality comes from books, movies, TV shows, and music videos. So, they are more likely to come across Magic Negroes than real blacks. Also, even black thugs who cause lots of harm in real life has been made 'fun' and 'cool' by the media, especially via the cult of rap. So, even the worst pathology of blacks is featured as something positive, and gullible and naive whites end up empathizing with the black gangsta some kind of 'hero' or 'legend'.
We often hear that Liberals are more empathetic by nature, but true or not, the more important question is "Are they empathizing with reality or with fantasy?" Those who empathize with fantasy mistake it for reality, and then, the whole point of empathy has been rendered moot.
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