Conservatives think kindness is dangerous because it is: to their ideology. Basic kindness is one of the most effective arguments against most political philosophies.
I have to agree with Ben about one thing here: I don't think we can afford to leave decision-making too much in the hands of intuition. Our sense of being kind might suggest one thing initially, but we might override that reaction if we reach a separate conclusion cognitively. Self-defense might feel awkward for some people because they hate the idea of inflicting harm on someone, but it's still important to uphold the principle. Point being, while I agree that political philosophies may tend to undervalue treating others well, I don't think reducing our analysis to that point will serve us best overall. It's critical that we're willing to question our natural reactions to things and put them under a microscope to see if they withstand scrutiny.
@@Disentropic1 But caring about others of the same class as yours is the Rational thing to do. It has nothing to do with empathy or kindness (in the sense of moral imperative)
@@hexalby Explain why. I don't agree that it's particularly rational. When I die I want to be satisfied that I lived well. My sense of morality informs me that, in part, this involves doing more good for more people. If my socioeconomic class is small by population, and I advance its interests against those of a far larger class, moving them merely from comfort to smugness while the poorer class stands to advance from misery to comfort, I will betray may higher values and die relatively miserable and dissatisfied. Following what may naively look like self-interest would ultimately disappoint me, in that sense. So what's rational about myopia? The pursuit of ever-greater profits is what's irrational. Chasing meaninglessly after something you don't want, so that you don't have to think about the darker elements of reality, especially death. The prevalence of imposter syndrome among those who, on paper, have accomplished much, is evidence that this is widely felt but not understood.
@@Disentropic1 the funny thing is, that's a false argument, no one is going by intuition. the moral imperative is always to bring the most happiness to the maximum amount of people, and that is done with research and qualitative as well as quantitative data on community development, health programs, rehabilitation, etc. PROVEN stuff that improves overall quality of life while still creating value for everyone involved, while not alienating/maligning those who cannot provide for themselves. the only people truly acting by intuition are the greedy elite who want to fuel their animalistic desire for wealth at the inhuman expense of people's lives be it through artificial divisions, resource deprivations, death, etc.
@@florascent9ts I agree, although you seem to be echoing a lot of what I wrote in my second response. I'm unclear on whether you read it, or what you wanted to add to it if so. Note that I wasn't implying that the left as a political force is operating by intuition, only that the comment above makes a simplistic appeal to kindness which as a concept seems to me to veer into intuitive territory. I was also careful to say that it isn't a strict dichotomy between intuition and analysis, but that the argument prescribed might represent an excess of the former; at minimum I can see how it might be received that way without clarification.
"You can't elect soft men, only hard men can get the job done" Me, chugging a whole bottle of Viagra before running for president: "Oh yea, I got this"
"Empathy makes you irrational, and causes you to make bad policies and poor decisions" said Ben "My God Forbids Me to Bake a Cake for Dave Rubin" Shapiro.
Well actually, he can bake him a cake, but the cake can't be a gay wedding cake. And he has to make sure there are not any rainbow sprinkles on it to ensure it is an entirely straight cake before being ravished by the gay folk, and it can't be on the day of the wedding or the anniversary or any other time when Rubin might mention that he's gay.
I mean, empathy can make you irrational but humans are irrational. Making good decisions requires a balance of the rational and irrational, because paradoxically so-called "rational" thinking is just as likely to cloud your own judgement. It's why kids are often seen as innocent or naive, they will judge a situation on how fair or unfair it seems to them, without coming up with rationalities to try to justify the actions. While it may mean their morality is more simplistic, it also means that they don't perform mental gymnastics trying to create justifications for their own beliefs. Basically, there is a very real difference between rational thinking and clear thinking. Rational thinking is when you try to create reasoning to justify your actions. Clear thinking is where you take a step back and actually try to reflect on *why* you want to commit actions, without necessarily judging them as "good" or "bad".
Haven't you heard? The only emotions that are allowed, especially for RATIONAL men, are anger, frustration and possibly fear. But fear is only allowed if your reaction to it is getting angry and being aggressive. Because anger and fear ALWAYS lead to COMPLETELY RATIONAL decision making.
Anger is seen as a default state somehow? "Stop being emotional" is always used against women, but men are the ones mad all the time, which is also an emotion
I love how conservatives will always be like "We gotta go back to a primordial state!" "Trust your instincts, not the scientists!" but then they want you to use natural emotions like empathy in a restricted way. They encourage people to be angry all the time and discourage any release. Its no wonder they keep shooting people.
@@cookiesnbubbles nb. that only emotional states/abilities which are framed as feminine are denounced by these tools. anger, aggression &c are ofc framed as neutral or even good things...
He has three daughters... I feel bad for them. Especially if they don't end up straight or cisgender when they grow up, or if they decide to choose for their own body. Yikes...
@@Exott vhjbcghhbbbb If you are genuinely saying that people having pets makes them weak I am completely and unironically so sad for you. Your life must be so fuckin sad. Damn
they have convinced themselves that a truly happy world is so impossible, that anyone seeking to create one must be illogical, or acting with an ulterior motive and its terrifying
@@heartache5742 Some are traumatized. Some are also deliberately trained to not empathize? Some are naturally just not very empathetic, there's a few people who are not instinctively very caring and never get trained to care either. ...The problem is, our society promotes and rewards a lot of selfish, cruel, vicious behavior. 😟
Ii am a human, ii care for 1-3 dogs and 1-20 cats any given day. They are very soft and ii will beat anyone who hurts them with something very hard, because they are also very nice.
I remember when I worked as a cashier back in the day. The amount of big burly scary looking guys who were anxiously buying the best treats for their pets was a little surprising and actually kind of wholesome to witness.
Imagine thinking that someone loving their pets is a sign of weakness. Weakness is refusing to care because you're afraid of your own innate human compassion.
There's a really interesting quote from an anthropologist, someone asked her what the first sign of civilisation is. Like is it pottery or more sophisticated tools or agriculture or something? She said she once dug upnthe remainsbof someone who's leg had clearly broken at some point in their life, but had fully healed. She said that's the first sign of civilisation. When you reach a point where you can not just care for someone, but have also developed to the point where you recognisevthat it's morally just to care for someone. Empathy and kindness is a sign of intelligence. The smartest animals all display signs of it, chimps will take care of injured troop members, they'll sometimes feed other animals like turtles. Orangutans will help other animals in trouble. Empathy and kindness are in no way signs of being weak. It's the opposite. To act selfishly and show complete disregard to other beings is really easy. Taking time, effort and resources to help someone just because you know it's the right thing to do is difficult, but it is right. This is something every human society has realised. As soon as your political philosophy moves into the realms of: well actually maybe kindness is bad. You've massively fucked up somewhere.
I dunno I definitely agree having your philosophy be Kind Bad is bad, but like there's all kinds of evidence Hunter Gatherer societies really cares for eachother even Disabled people which too a Hunter/Gatherer seems like something you wouldn't want because they can't hunt and gather, but then like in Athens with the first philosophers said maybe we should kill disabled people despite needing able bodies less, and like I wouldn't consider either less civilised so yeah
@@rescuerex7031 traditionally “hunter gatherer” societies did not only simply hunt and gather. They took care of eachother and wove textiles and made simple tools and pottery. They also made art and instruments. Also on a channel that very vehemently opposes eugenics consider: the body is not judged on its performance within a society and a body’s value is not worth more or less depending on its ability status. And when money wasn’t a commodity that was withheld from ppl when they were seen as lesser as a disabled person, society was probably a much more accepting place towards older folks and different abilities bc if everyone could help/wanted to help everyone could find a place in the non-hierarchy.
@@rescuerex7031 Hunter/gatherer "societies" were really just families. Cooperative social groups were extremely small, ad-hoc, and temporary, and 90% of the time there was no reason to interact at all with anyone you weren't related to or at least close friends with. I.e. emotional bonds were really the entire reason for people to be living together in the first place. People who didn't like being around each other could just choose not to--they could go their separate ways and find some other place to hunt. (Because there were so few humans in the world, and thus no shortage of space or resources available.) So if a disabled person was being taken care of by the rest of her village, this would most likely be happening because her children, siblings, cousins, etc. were the only other people living in her village. She wasn't being taken care of by strangers, because strangers didn't live with each other at all. However, actually agriculture is much more labor-intensive than foraging. Hunting enough wild animals/plants to just feed yourself and your family doesn't take all that much time (if you live in a place where there isn't a shortage of them), and thus an average Paleolithic person spent a much lower percentage of their time "working" than even most people in modern civilizations. Farming requires a much bigger investment of "person-hours", especially if the farmers are trying to produce enough food to feed not just themselves, but also other classes of professionals who specialize in any type of work other than food production (and thus have to live on food produced by people other than themselves). Schoolteachers, for example, which is what most ancient Greek "philosophers" did for a living, so it's not surprising they would think this way about the value of the life of a peasant who wasn't able to produce food. But it's probably also true in a more general sense that maximizing the number of "able-bodied workers", and minimizing the number of "useless eaters", is a more pressing concern in an agricultural civilization than it would be for a small nomadic hunting band.
@@sholem_bond my point was that if you refuse to even try and understand others, then you are leaving yourself open to tragedies that could be avoided.
@@aintsleptinninetyyears3621 I mean yeah, but the way you phrased your comment made it sound like you were talking about emotional empathy. Cognitive empathy is a skill that can be learned, while emotional empathy is a brain chemical thing that can encourage someone to be a good person, but is only one faction in the many that impact people's decisions.
The “empathy bad” worldview only makes sense in the context of being a rich Capitalist. If being empathetic means crafting policy that benefits the majority of people, then necessarily that policy will run counter to the interests of the hyper wealthy minority elite, whose wealth is generated by making sure the vast majority of people are surviving just enough to continue working and not revolt.
Not so much capitalism, but support for \ free market in general - the concept is founded upon the notion that people seeking to act in their own best interests will also be acting in the collective interest. Empathy has no place in it. In a free market, the rich help the poor by providing them with employment, because the poor need money and the rich need employees to earn money for themselves - so it's in everyone's best interests.
@@vylbird8014 But that kind of works under the assumption that the poor actually benefit collectively from it, which they generally don't because of the inherent power imbalance there. Yeah, the poor gain employment, but that employment is also held as a bargaining chip, allowing employers to abuse/mistreat their staff under the knowledge that the employee doesn't really have much power to do anything about it. This is also why the "American Dream" is largely farcical, because a free market system all but ensures that the poor will always remain poor while the rich always remain rich. Self made people are very much an exception rather than a rule.
Vyl Bird except there’s no such thing as a “free market” beyond the brief early period in industrialized capitalism’s development. The free market created monopolies organically as Capital exponentially concentrates itself. Since we live in the age if monopoly and finance capital, the modern state exists to facilitate the needs of the Capitalist class.
Also notice how fascist will call those who want to revolt against an unjust system that only benefits a tiny fraction of society “criminals” as if it was the same thing as revolting against all of society. Yea, complete lawlessness is bad, but so is a system that has laws that are themselves “lawless”, in the sense that they make a mockery of justice and allow those with the most money to do whatever the hell they want regardless of negative consequences for society as a whole.
If you reduce the speed to .75, it's amazing. He speaks normally for most of it, but then slows down every couple of seconds and I bet if you were on LSD, it'd fuck you up.
this is such a buzzword comment that means nothing to anyone not in your echo chamber. toxic mascuilinity doesn't exist, that's just regular masculinity which is defined by our biology.....which is why that what you call fascism is indeed a biological construct that inevitably comes up when things get bad enough. it isn't an ideology at all
"It's okay to be fascist when the alternative is complete lawlessness and rampant violence, wouldn't you say?" -Cheong So what you're saying is, the solution to rampant violence is rampant violence. That's what fascism is, after all. I don't think that quite works out.
The statement is wrong at its core. The decision isn't "Fascism or complete lawlessness and rampant violence." It isn't an either-or choice. Humanity will never be in a situation where we have to make this choice. It's a false dilemma, and the correct answer to the "wouldn't you say" part is "No, I wouldn't say that because I would choose NEITHER Fascism NOR lawlessness and rampant violence."
Isn't that literally the overall message of the literal Nazi bible, the Turner Diaries? That you have to fight tyranny with tyranny? Yeah, Cheong sure went mask off there
"Asking for empathy is bad and also unfair because it implies I'm not empathic, which I'm not, but not because not being empathic is a bad thing, because empathy is a bad thing and therefor not being empathic is actually a good thing, but don't call me not empathetic because that's a personal attack and it makes me feel bad, so you should feel empathy for me."
@Hans Hanzo I consider Wolfram and Heart to be one of the most interesting villains in fiction precisely because we never see them. They realised they could do a lot more harm and obtain more power by being a supernatural lawyer cabinet and let their human allies do the deeds instead of their demonic selves. Not to mention the last season
Yeah, the right sure does a good job of spreading the concept of "selective empathy". If he's white he's a person, if he has a badge and a uniform he's a hero. If he was black, or trans, well, that's too bad.
Benny Shapiro's anti empathy rant sounds suspiciously like everyone's favourite right wing saint Ayn Rand. Colour me surprised that he sounds like an objectivist.
Ayn Rand had no problem collecting evil collectivist, redistributionist social security, just as the Rand Institute recently had no problem accepting a government bailout. Empathy for me, not for thee.
Did Ben literally just admit that the goal of sports is to distract the populous? Ben, my soft, soft, dude, you aren't meant to admit that it's all bread and circuses.
I’m so incredibly sure that Ben hasn’t read any of those “social science books”, because if he had he would know the difference between sympathy and empathy, or even how the colloquial definition differs from the psychological one. You’re right that he seems to have flipped them - cognitive and affective empathy could also be useful distinctions. Ultimately, what I think Ben really misses out on is that there’s a huge difference between being able to discern what someone is feeling without incredibly obvious cues or them just flat-out telling you, and CARING about those feelings. I’m autistic and shit at telling if something I do is going to upset somebody, but I absolutely care if I do it by mistake. There’s every chance in the world that Ben is perfectly capable of empathy - what he’s discussing is the choice he’s made not to care about what that empathy tells him.
Oh shit hey look it's what I keep saying in this very comments section lol (it doesn't matter if you experience empathy; it matters if you *do* compassion). Thanks.
Yep. Emotional empathy is a biochemical reaction. It's not something that can just be turned off or on like a switch. Trauma or therapy can impact it, but other than that it's not really something that people have control over. Acting like this biological trait is somehow a character flaw is ridiculous. What Ben is actually arguing against here is compassion. TBH I have similar problems with people who treat empathy as an inherently positive character trait that's essential to being a good person. Someone's moral goodness has nothing to do with whether or not their brain rewards them with happy juices when they do good things. Not getting rewarded or punished with brain juices can make someone less likely to be compassionate, but there are so many motivations to be a good person beyond just basic biological instinct.
People who think kindness is a weakness tend to be resentful of those who receive love and affection and thrive because of it. Their worldview is defined by power dynamics, so when "unpowerful" traits yield positive results, they think it's fake, performative for the sake of ulterior motives.
To be fair: all kindness is ultimately for selfish motives in the same vacuous sense that literally _everything_ you do is for selfish motives. I never got this argument: oh you did a kind thing, well you just did it to feel good so it nullifies the kind thing. If your initial reaction to someone doing a good thing is to bend over backwards to come up with a reason they are not as good as people think what does that say about you?
Even scary man, Vladimir Putin loves dogs. Have you seen the clip of him receiving a puppy as a gift and hugging the sweet creature? It's adorable. It nearly makes you forget that he's responsible for SO MANY deaths.
Ngl Ben and Ian calling out for "hard men" with them themselves being, uhh, hardly hard by showing and demanding compassion to themselves at times when their circles getting critiqued is epitome of alt-lite edgy grifters
Jordan Peterson Ian Miles Cheong Ben Shapiro Dave Rubin Brett Weinstein Donald Trump Jair "can't do a pushup" BolSARnaro Steve Bannon Just a few of the hard, manly men leading the right.
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind." This is quote from Kurt Vonnegut novel. It's character talking to babies in their christening if I remember correctly. It's been a while since I read it, but this quote stuck with me. I'm not always sure where I am going or what I am doing here, but being kind is something I always try to be. Doesn't mean I always am, but I try my best. Simple acts of kindness, both to me and from me have mattered in all of my time in this world more than anything else has, I believe. I don't have much time here. Neither do you, or anyone. So goddamnit, let's try to be kind when we can
What i learned from people who cannot feel empathy: "compassion" is the word everyone is looking for. Empathy is literally a specific psychological concept. Yes empathy is in fact flawed and can be completely absent in people, including being absent from some wonderful leftists who do great kindness to me and others. Being able to guess someone's feelings doesn't mean you care about them. People who literally don't experience empathy (some autistic ppl, some ppl with PDs, etc) face hatred and distrust from even other lefties due to this stigma and confusion ("ASPDs and NPDs are inherently abusive demons!!", anyone?). Lots of lefty disabled/disordered folks say empathy is a flawed model of morality that has real implications for them. COMPASSION, however, owns bones and hard boy Shapiro can huff nuts
Ben (out loud big fan of western ideals) Shapiro- “Empathy is bad” Plato-“The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.”
You got a citation for that quote? I don't disagree with you, I just think it would be good to pinpoint where in Plato's writing (or Socrates', I guess) that was said.
But also being "rational" is not something that exists. It's pretending as if you know better than someone else. That they are flawed humans and you're not. Kind of similar how the nobility thought they had a standard that the peasants never could. The concept of "rational" is itself domineering and many came about in regards to woman. That men are rational while woman are irrational and that this is why men should control woman's finances, decisions and even bodies. Cause woman are not rational enough to handle those things themselves.
There's also the irony of the "hard-man politics" people supporting one of the most thin-skinned narcissistic and feeble presidents the US has ever seen. I really never got the "you have to be tough to lead, that's why I support this guy who throws ridiculous tantrums when people make jokes about his hands being small" thing. You want a tough leader? Fine. Find one who's actually tough. I have never met one of these "tough guys" who isn't just projecting their own insecurity.
It's like Newton's 4th law or something: the louder a guy praises traditional masculinity on the internet, the less he fits the standards of traditional masculinity
"If man was made in god's image, I wonder what kind of god made Ian Miles Cheong?" is such an incredible burn and you just dropped it like it was nothing lol
@@creativepseudonym9872 nope, I can verify that while God was sculpting him out of clay, he accidentally dropped him face first into the earth. And then Ian came to life.
Sharpie is probably talking about Paul Bloom's Against Empathy. But my understanding of that book is less "No, empathy ever" and more "People tend to react to immediate emotional stimuli, and be empathetic towards the things in their immediate vicinity. We would be better served by taking a step back, being less emotional and thinking about what generates the greatest good." I.e. the blue lives matter folks are getting too caught up in the emotional rhetoric of the police and not thinking about how police actions are affecting society as a whole.
"The reason why empathy is bad for politics because it leads you to more likely to like people that you agree with instead of people you don't like" I'm at a loss for words
Theory: Just before that weird tirade, Ian Miles Cheong saw that scene in Kingsman where the spies have to kill their dog and was like "yes, YES, THIS is what it's ALL ABOUT"
One of my absolute favorite episodes of King of the hill is when Hank sends Bobby to a military school that his dad then takes over and starts putting Bobby through all these abusive punishments to "toughen him up" but Bobby is just so inherently soft and fun-loving that he remains unaffected by any of it.
Isn't there a bit of a problem with the message? Sounds like it's suggesting that violent responses to oppression are a function of a person's lack of character, Bobby being the exception to the rule.
@@Disentropic1 King of the Hill episodes tend to actually look positively at states of mind and being that they explore in the show to be different than the 'classic Texan man' ideologies. So it's likely that the episode ended with the dad being upset at the grandpa and learning to accept the son.
"Bad times create hard men, Hard men create good times, Good times create soft men, Soft men create bad times." This is literally a fascist mantra. This is what the fascists believe.
I think that was from some Arab historian EDIT: found my old comment now a year later, and I was mistaken. I thought this quote was from Ibn Khaldun, but this is actually a misrepresentation of his philosophy. Ibn Khaldun thought that the defining factor of success was 'asabiyah', cohesion, and that groups with more cohesion (like small nomadic tribes with internal loyalty) would always win against groups with less cohesion (like large empires keeping the people down with force). In Western editions of Ibn Khaldun in the 19th and 20th centuries this was often mistranslated as "strength" or "toughness" when that was not what he meant
The irony is that the alt-right and cryptofash think they're the hard men responding to bad times but are actually cheerleading some of the older soft men (e.g. Trump) creating bad times. The working class zoomer vanguard are the actual "hard men" whose task will be to respond to decades of capitalist boomer decadence and lead the struggle to recreate good times.
I remember when I was indoctrinated into the whole “hard man” image, because of how I saw my dad and things we talked about and how he felt. I’m glad I broke out of that “men are hard and women are soft” ideology.
Soft as in penis soft or as in less testosterone so they’re “soft”. From what I understand lower test is a result of pollution, our higher caloric diet and our more sedentary lifestyle. Plus it’s hard to get hard when the woes of capitalism crush you and you feel like you can’t be emotionally vulnerable.
One book on the subject I'm aware of is Paul Bloom's Against Empathy- note that Paul Bloom is more concerned with empathy burnout clouding our judgment and empathy being bad at dealing with large numbers of people. He wants our policies to be more humane, not less like these chuds.
“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 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.” -- Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trails
Good one, but as someome growing up in Germany and delving deep into that topic, i would have a correction to that. It's not the incapacity, but the capacity to turn it off or shield oneself against it. The thing many find most baffling about people like the Nazi leadership is that they could be very empathetic. Some people who met Adolf Hitler refused to believe that Hitler had known anything of the (youtube auto delete algorithm apparently doesn't like that word), because they couldn't square that with the friendly and mild man they knew. The two main mechanisms of preventing empathy you can see are dehumanization (not only in the aggressive way, but maybe more prominently by creating a distance to the human being. Reducing people to statistical figures and abstract concepts.) and the allusion to pragmatism or necessity. The latter part is very common. Thats the whole point of the right trying to frame others as sentimental daydreamers. Its shifting responsibility away from oneself if one can convince oneself that it wasn't a cruel decision, but that ones hand was forced by the hard facts of reality. And even more horrible, it turns doing horrible things into a virtue. A valiant self sacrifice for the greater good. Heinrich Himmlers speeches in Posen to his SS-troops is a very shocking example of this. He praises his troops not for being ruthless or something of the likes, but for "staying decent" despite commiting atrocities that go against every fibre of their body. He praises them for the strength of enduring being a monster, because they know it had to be done. The rational of the Nazis crimes was not psychopathy, it was the air of pragmatism. And i hear that Posener Speech in my mind whenever i hear People like Ben talking about "snowflakes" or military and intelligence people lecturing someone about how they have to be "tough" so you can be "soft".
Ben Shapiro is referencing (read: misrepresenting) Against Empathy, by Paul Bloom. Big Joel did a video on it a while back. Benny Boy is dancing around the distinction between "empathy" and "altruism".
Actually I think it's probable. One will obviously not be just fine after a year of reading hateful comments. Also, the Internets omnipresence of wanna-be rhetorics citing wanna-be scientific studies has led a lot of people to adapt a fatalistic relativistic view on knowledge in general.
The sheer fact that we exist as a species is thanks to social behaviour and caring for each other - even ones who (for one reason or another) can not contribute as much, in whatever way, to the community, as others. Calling for anyone to supress this instinct might work for a short time (and for those amongst us who were born lacking the ability to emphatize) but in the long run? For the majority of people? We band together. We help each other. We can overcome great strife, and an unbelievable amount of suffering brought onto ourselves and others. Any ideology calling for the supression of our human tendency to help each other will fail. Sooner or later.
I'm a very peacefull guy. I never get into fights, and I avoid confrotnations, certianly physical altercations. But when I see and hear Ben Shapiro... I feel anger and violence bubbling up in me. :(
I wish I was a pundit so I could go on Jesse Lee Peterson's show and almost immediately challenge him to step outside. Would be hilarious to see him get beat up by such a BETAAAAA.
What I'd like to see is Thought Slime and Ben Shapiro join a group of mutual friends to go out and have a drink or otherwise engage in a regular set of social interactions. That's what would demonstrate some of the reality behind these claims. 😎
@@ryanfuller4401 Yup. Doing a philosophy degree, and it's honestly hilarious/depressing what "debate" is to most people. Here's the thing though - next time someone tries to use the Shaprio gish-gallop on you, just start methodically fact-checking each claim in turn. In my experience, they either start back-pedalling rapidly, or lose their shit, neither of which helps them "win" their little game. The gish-gallop only works in broadcasting, and other time-restricted contexts that don't allow for a full response.
@@kellyloganme Ben and Ian would have to have what one might call a "friend" first, wouldn't they? It's a little hard for me to believe either of them know how to view fellow humans by anything other than their potential value, how they can use this particular pawn. That being the case, most humans I've encountered (and I've encountered a few) are less than sympathetic to such reductive reasoning...
My anarchism and my atheism spring from the same well. When men claim that authority is its own justification, there is usually an autocratic entity composed purely of infinite power and toxic masculinity lurking in the shadows and prodding the thought process.
I remember going on a reactionary's channel and they were proudly announcing they'd say "What are you looking at" and be rude to strangers. First of all, I'm fairly sure that's a fib. Second, why?
If you have to ask then you've exposed yourself as some sort of weakling! HAH! Seriously, the idea is to never think or ask questions or try to understand. The alternative? Obedience.
No shit why he failed as a screenwriter . being empathetic towards other human being is literally the least basic quality we need in terms of writing a character.
And even then, I think I read something where he said that he was sick of people misinterpreting that book. His argument as I understand it is more like what TS said at one point - that it’s totally good to care about other people, but that we can’t just go by a knee-jerk reaction to do what seems to minimize suffering in that instant without paying attention to what will cause future suffering.
Can you maybe suggest something more to read on the subject? I know a few leftists who say empathy isn't reliable in the context of politics and IMO it makes sense, if empathy wasn't really, really biased we wouldn't have "good people" commit terrible acts because of things like tribalism
@@somewhat-blue oh yes, I mean the criticisms I have of the book aside, shapiros take does not represent any real argument for or against empathy at all lol
10:45 It does make sense to me. Sympathy is usually done from a position of dominance. Like the rich having sympathy with the poor or a human having sympathy for an injured animal or child. It's something done by someone who's powerful to someone who's powerless. The elite are not against kindness, they are against empathy. They view that kindness should be at their discursion and should exist to maintain the power dynamic. Empathy is connection between equals where there is no difference in power.
I love that to these people anger is one of the only emotions a man is allowed to show. Because y'know, speaking as a gamer, anger hasn't been one of THE most costly and embarrassing things in my life.
Recently watched Shazam! and there's a line toward the end of the movie that I think sums up the point of this vid quite nicely, "What good is all this power if you have no one to share it with?"
I don’t know what’s more questionable, the fact that 22,000 people retweeted that shit, or Ian Miles Cheong thinking being affectionate and manly are two mutually exclusive concepts
Fry: thatll show those poor people! Leela: but youre one of those poor people Fry: true, but one day i might not be, and then people like me better watch their step!
Empathy: the ability to imagine oneself in the position of another, experiencing the emotions, ideas or opinions of that person. Such a bad trait for leaders of people, to be able to understand people.
Empathy is actually what stops me from acting against people I don't like. In my mind I feel like 'yeah this person has shitty views and acts in a way that hurts a lot of people' but then when I'm with those sorts of people I feel for them even if I still disagree and have automatic reaction to want to support them too. That's what empathy does. It makes us care about everyone. Lacking empathy makes you more likely to only support people you like, because you're acting for your self interest.
I asked my girlfriend & my best friend, who are both women, who comes to mind when they think of a "manly man". I genuinely asked just to see where their minds went. My girlfriend said Chuck Norris, our friend said David Hasslehoff. These men are strong, tall, muscular, talented in multiple ways, and are KNOWN FOR SPEAKING UP FOR CAUSES THAT THEY CARE ABOUT. Hasslehoff was literally one of the catalysts for the FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL because he CARED ABOUT THE PEOPLE ON EITHER SIDE OF IT, and Chuck Norris has used his HARD martial arts expertise to teach young & marginalized children how to defend themselves. These people are not only STRONG, TOUGH, and embody traditional masculinity, but they also- wow- CARE ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE, AT LEAST A TINY BIT! WHO WOULA GUESSED THAT THE STRONGEST AND MOST MANLY MEN ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT SOMETHING OTHER THAN THEMSELVES?!??!?
Straight Slimey! Sounds like every US Marine I've met. Yeah, he got empathy and sympathy backwards... also he doesn't quite understand either as they are alien to him.
Conservatives think kindness is dangerous because it is: to their ideology. Basic kindness is one of the most effective arguments against most political philosophies.
I have to agree with Ben about one thing here: I don't think we can afford to leave decision-making too much in the hands of intuition. Our sense of being kind might suggest one thing initially, but we might override that reaction if we reach a separate conclusion cognitively. Self-defense might feel awkward for some people because they hate the idea of inflicting harm on someone, but it's still important to uphold the principle.
Point being, while I agree that political philosophies may tend to undervalue treating others well, I don't think reducing our analysis to that point will serve us best overall. It's critical that we're willing to question our natural reactions to things and put them under a microscope to see if they withstand scrutiny.
@@Disentropic1 But caring about others of the same class as yours is the Rational thing to do. It has nothing to do with empathy or kindness (in the sense of moral imperative)
@@hexalby Explain why. I don't agree that it's particularly rational.
When I die I want to be satisfied that I lived well. My sense of morality informs me that, in part, this involves doing more good for more people. If my socioeconomic class is small by population, and I advance its interests against those of a far larger class, moving them merely from comfort to smugness while the poorer class stands to advance from misery to comfort, I will betray may higher values and die relatively miserable and dissatisfied. Following what may naively look like self-interest would ultimately disappoint me, in that sense. So what's rational about myopia? The pursuit of ever-greater profits is what's irrational. Chasing meaninglessly after something you don't want, so that you don't have to think about the darker elements of reality, especially death. The prevalence of imposter syndrome among those who, on paper, have accomplished much, is evidence that this is widely felt but not understood.
@@Disentropic1 the funny thing is, that's a false argument, no one is going by intuition. the moral imperative is always to bring the most happiness to the maximum amount of people, and that is done with research and qualitative as well as quantitative data on community development, health programs, rehabilitation, etc. PROVEN stuff that improves overall quality of life while still creating value for everyone involved, while not alienating/maligning those who cannot provide for themselves.
the only people truly acting by intuition are the greedy elite who want to fuel their animalistic desire for wealth at the inhuman expense of people's lives be it through artificial divisions, resource deprivations, death, etc.
@@florascent9ts I agree, although you seem to be echoing a lot of what I wrote in my second response. I'm unclear on whether you read it, or what you wanted to add to it if so.
Note that I wasn't implying that the left as a political force is operating by intuition, only that the comment above makes a simplistic appeal to kindness which as a concept seems to me to veer into intuitive territory. I was also careful to say that it isn't a strict dichotomy between intuition and analysis, but that the argument prescribed might represent an excess of the former; at minimum I can see how it might be received that way without clarification.
"You can't elect soft men, only hard men can get the job done"
Me, chugging a whole bottle of Viagra before running for president: "Oh yea, I got this"
Your heart though ?
@mayrana2 What will pump blood to get you hard? Checkmate.
So that's how The Thing from fantastic four was made!
@@NA-AN I dont care if have to get constant blood transfusions just get me an IV drip of cialis and were gucci
@@vinny5638 Nooooooo! Your logic owned me Nooooooo!!!!!2!!2!!2!1!1!1!1
"Empathy makes you irrational, and causes you to make bad policies and poor decisions" said Ben "My God Forbids Me to Bake a Cake for Dave Rubin" Shapiro.
Lololol
Well actually, he can bake him a cake, but the cake can't be a gay wedding cake. And he has to make sure there are not any rainbow sprinkles on it to ensure it is an entirely straight cake before being ravished by the gay folk, and it can't be on the day of the wedding or the anniversary or any other time when Rubin might mention that he's gay.
Legends say Davin Rube is still trying to get Ben to come to his party.
I mean, empathy can make you irrational but humans are irrational. Making good decisions requires a balance of the rational and irrational, because paradoxically so-called "rational" thinking is just as likely to cloud your own judgement. It's why kids are often seen as innocent or naive, they will judge a situation on how fair or unfair it seems to them, without coming up with rationalities to try to justify the actions. While it may mean their morality is more simplistic, it also means that they don't perform mental gymnastics trying to create justifications for their own beliefs.
Basically, there is a very real difference between rational thinking and clear thinking. Rational thinking is when you try to create reasoning to justify your actions. Clear thinking is where you take a step back and actually try to reflect on *why* you want to commit actions, without necessarily judging them as "good" or "bad".
It’s ironic because actually empathy is *rational* while selfishness and toxic masculinity are *irrational*
"Be Ruthless to Systems, Be Kind to People"
- Michael Brooks
Except the system is Anarcho-Communist XD
@@kritische3959 huh
Wow
Rest in Peace buddy. We are lesser without him, that's for sure.
RIP
Be like a non-Newtonian fluid, soft until force is applied.
I shall be known as Oobleck!
What if I'm always hard?
depressed frog penis Contact a doctor if your hardness lasts for more than four hours.
@@depressedfrogpenis if it last longer than four hours, see a doctor.
@@SapphWolf that's a really cool name though some masculin Enby would love that shit
Haven't you heard? The only emotions that are allowed, especially for RATIONAL men, are anger, frustration and possibly fear. But fear is only allowed if your reaction to it is getting angry and being aggressive.
Because anger and fear ALWAYS lead to COMPLETELY RATIONAL decision making.
@Mtpimenta AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA
Anakin Skywalker would like to know your location
Anger is seen as a default state somehow?
"Stop being emotional" is always used against women, but men are the ones mad all the time, which is also an emotion
I love how conservatives will always be like "We gotta go back to a primordial state!" "Trust your instincts, not the scientists!" but then they want you to use natural emotions like empathy in a restricted way. They encourage people to be angry all the time and discourage any release. Its no wonder they keep shooting people.
@@cookiesnbubbles nb. that only emotional states/abilities which are framed as feminine are denounced by these tools. anger, aggression &c are ofc framed as neutral or even good things...
If you're hard all the time, you may need to see a doctor...
If you have an erection lasting for more than four hours...
Benny's got a bad case of prightapism.
Go see Benjamin's wife (she's a doctor btw)
@@camcam_burger "Who's *_Benjamin_* ??? ", she asked herself. Not having realised that "Ben" is probably not short for "Bennifer".
If you're a HARD MAN for more than four hours, email your congressman and tell him how sick it was
"Empathy is not rational or ideal for decision making"
Imagine being Ben Shapiro's kid. Yikes.
Ya was thinking the same thing. He’s probably an emotionally abusive father and husband.
That's a paddlin'
I don’t think he genuinely believes anything he said XD
He has three daughters... I feel bad for them. Especially if they don't end up straight or cisgender when they grow up, or if they decide to choose for their own body. Yikes...
He actually said something along the lines of "most children are actually quite mediocre" once
the "when god is dead" tweet reads like a speech from a lawful evil villain in a dnd campaign
I was just going to post that very same thing and also tie it to the lawful evil wing of most SMT games.
The guy who SWATted someone and got their dog killed thinks people with pets are weak? IMaGInE mY shOcK
Wait what he did what?
A. A. What
@@Exott vhjbcghhbbbb
If you are genuinely saying that people having pets makes them weak I am completely and unironically so sad for you. Your life must be so fuckin sad. Damn
@@Exott no I am legitimately sad for you. Like I legit thought about how fucked up your life must be. That sucks man. Hope you get a better one soon.
@@Exott you literally cannot even distinguish pity from anger... Have a better life one day!
3:03 “You claim to oppose socialism yet are so often publicly owned”
This one's great. Is it yours & can I steal it?
@@theuncannydag ill answer. no its not his and yes you can steal it its just a joke told on the internet
@@theuncannydag It's Our Joke
@@hectorvega621 I see what you did thar :D
*Goddamn*
they have convinced themselves that a truly happy world is so impossible, that anyone seeking to create one must be illogical, or acting with an ulterior motive and its terrifying
It's a kind of aggressive despair.
they're deeply traumatised.
Yeah. If we tried to measure our country by a Happiness Index, their heads would all spontaneously explode.
So...free houses...yay.
@@heartache5742
Some are traumatized.
Some are also deliberately trained to not empathize?
Some are naturally just not very empathetic, there's a few people who are not instinctively very caring and never get trained to care either.
...The problem is, our society promotes and rewards a lot of selfish, cruel, vicious behavior. 😟
Excellently explained!
I'm a man. I have a puppy. She is very soft. Soft puppies are nice.
Ii am a human, ii care for 1-3 dogs and 1-20 cats any given day. They are very soft and ii will beat anyone who hurts them with something very hard, because they are also very nice.
Pathetic. I bet you don't even have muscles.
I remember when I worked as a cashier back in the day. The amount of big burly scary looking guys who were anxiously buying the best treats for their pets was a little surprising and actually kind of wholesome to witness.
@@AnSlabder your e-peen is still limp, sowwy owo
I have a kitty, he's both soft and sharp.
Imagine thinking that someone loving their pets is a sign of weakness. Weakness is refusing to care because you're afraid of your own innate human compassion.
There's a really interesting quote from an anthropologist, someone asked her what the first sign of civilisation is. Like is it pottery or more sophisticated tools or agriculture or something? She said she once dug upnthe remainsbof someone who's leg had clearly broken at some point in their life, but had fully healed. She said that's the first sign of civilisation. When you reach a point where you can not just care for someone, but have also developed to the point where you recognisevthat it's morally just to care for someone. Empathy and kindness is a sign of intelligence. The smartest animals all display signs of it, chimps will take care of injured troop members, they'll sometimes feed other animals like turtles. Orangutans will help other animals in trouble. Empathy and kindness are in no way signs of being weak. It's the opposite. To act selfishly and show complete disregard to other beings is really easy. Taking time, effort and resources to help someone just because you know it's the right thing to do is difficult, but it is right. This is something every human society has realised. As soon as your political philosophy moves into the realms of: well actually maybe kindness is bad. You've massively fucked up somewhere.
ultimatetadpole Margaret Mead got it right
I dunno I definitely agree having your philosophy be Kind Bad is bad, but like there's all kinds of evidence Hunter Gatherer societies really cares for eachother even Disabled people which too a Hunter/Gatherer seems like something you wouldn't want because they can't hunt and gather, but then like in Athens with the first philosophers said maybe we should kill disabled people despite needing able bodies less, and like I wouldn't consider either less civilised so yeah
@@rescuerex7031 traditionally “hunter gatherer” societies did not only simply hunt and gather. They took care of eachother and wove textiles and made simple tools and pottery. They also made art and instruments. Also on a channel that very vehemently opposes eugenics consider: the body is not judged on its performance within a society and a body’s value is not worth more or less depending on its ability status. And when money wasn’t a commodity that was withheld from ppl when they were seen as lesser as a disabled person, society was probably a much more accepting place towards older folks and different abilities bc if everyone could help/wanted to help everyone could find a place in the non-hierarchy.
@@rescuerex7031 Hunter/gatherer "societies" were really just families. Cooperative social groups were extremely small, ad-hoc, and temporary, and 90% of the time there was no reason to interact at all with anyone you weren't related to or at least close friends with.
I.e. emotional bonds were really the entire reason for people to be living together in the first place. People who didn't like being around each other could just choose not to--they could go their separate ways and find some other place to hunt. (Because there were so few humans in the world, and thus no shortage of space or resources available.)
So if a disabled person was being taken care of by the rest of her village, this would most likely be happening because her children, siblings, cousins, etc. were the only other people living in her village. She wasn't being taken care of by strangers, because strangers didn't live with each other at all.
However, actually agriculture is much more labor-intensive than foraging. Hunting enough wild animals/plants to just feed yourself and your family doesn't take all that much time (if you live in a place where there isn't a shortage of them), and thus an average Paleolithic person spent a much lower percentage of their time "working" than even most people in modern civilizations.
Farming requires a much bigger investment of "person-hours", especially if the farmers are trying to produce enough food to feed not just themselves, but also other classes of professionals who specialize in any type of work other than food production (and thus have to live on food produced by people other than themselves).
Schoolteachers, for example, which is what most ancient Greek "philosophers" did for a living, so it's not surprising they would think this way about the value of the life of a peasant who wasn't able to produce food.
But it's probably also true in a more general sense that maximizing the number of "able-bodied workers", and minimizing the number of "useless eaters", is a more pressing concern in an agricultural civilization than it would be for a small nomadic hunting band.
*_The ability to cooperate with others is an evolutionary advantage._*
Lmao, it's not like any terrible crimes have been committed in history because people didn't have empathy. None at all…
*Compassion. Some people just have low cognitive empathy, but they still treat others with respect.
Exactly
Hitler had empathy for the Aryan race.
@@sholem_bond my point was that if you refuse to even try and understand others, then you are leaving yourself open to tragedies that could be avoided.
@@aintsleptinninetyyears3621 I mean yeah, but the way you phrased your comment made it sound like you were talking about emotional empathy. Cognitive empathy is a skill that can be learned, while emotional empathy is a brain chemical thing that can encourage someone to be a good person, but is only one faction in the many that impact people's decisions.
The “empathy bad” worldview only makes sense in the context of being a rich Capitalist. If being empathetic means crafting policy that benefits the majority of people, then necessarily that policy will run counter to the interests of the hyper wealthy minority elite, whose wealth is generated by making sure the vast majority of people are surviving just enough to continue working and not revolt.
Not so much capitalism, but support for \ free market in general - the concept is founded upon the notion that people seeking to act in their own best interests will also be acting in the collective interest. Empathy has no place in it. In a free market, the rich help the poor by providing them with employment, because the poor need money and the rich need employees to earn money for themselves - so it's in everyone's best interests.
@@vylbird8014 But that kind of works under the assumption that the poor actually benefit collectively from it, which they generally don't because of the inherent power imbalance there.
Yeah, the poor gain employment, but that employment is also held as a bargaining chip, allowing employers to abuse/mistreat their staff under the knowledge that the employee doesn't really have much power to do anything about it. This is also why the "American Dream" is largely farcical, because a free market system all but ensures that the poor will always remain poor while the rich always remain rich. Self made people are very much an exception rather than a rule.
Vyl Bird except there’s no such thing as a “free market” beyond the brief early period in industrialized capitalism’s development. The free market created monopolies organically as Capital exponentially concentrates itself. Since we live in the age if monopoly and finance capital, the modern state exists to facilitate the needs of the Capitalist class.
@@Azeratos There may be no such thing as a free market, but there are plenty of people who believe in the free market as an ideology.
Also notice how fascist will call those who want to revolt against an unjust system that only benefits a tiny fraction of society “criminals” as if it was the same thing as revolting against all of society. Yea, complete lawlessness is bad, but so is a system that has laws that are themselves “lawless”, in the sense that they make a mockery of justice and allow those with the most money to do whatever the hell they want regardless of negative consequences for society as a whole.
Whenever I hear Ben talk, my brain can't believe that people aren't speeding up the clips to make him sound ridiculous.
I do, but not to make him sound ridiculous so much as to reduce the amount of time I have to listen to Ben Shapiro.
If you reduce the speed to .75, it's amazing. He speaks normally for most of it, but then slows down every couple of seconds and I bet if you were on LSD, it'd fuck you up.
Hey! Helium addiction is a real issue, and you have no right to make light of it.
Everytime I hear him talking I imagine a gnome
There seems to be a minor technical error in your statement. Emm.. you missed the "even more" words somehow.
toxic masculinity is inherent to fascism. we need kindness, empathy, and sensitivity if we're ever going to overcome oppression.
this is such a buzzword comment that means nothing to anyone not in your echo chamber.
toxic mascuilinity doesn't exist, that's just regular masculinity which is defined by our biology.....which is why that what you call fascism is indeed a biological construct that inevitably comes up when things get bad enough. it isn't an ideology at all
"It's okay to be fascist when the alternative is complete lawlessness and rampant violence, wouldn't you say?" -Cheong
So what you're saying is, the solution to rampant violence is rampant violence. That's what fascism is, after all. I don't think that quite works out.
His problem is that he's got it all the wrong way around. Lawlessness and rampant violence is ok when the alternative is fascism.
but the difference is fascism is rampant violence from the state, which is a-ok in his book.
The statement is wrong at its core. The decision isn't "Fascism or complete lawlessness and rampant violence." It isn't an either-or choice. Humanity will never be in a situation where we have to make this choice.
It's a false dilemma, and the correct answer to the "wouldn't you say" part is "No, I wouldn't say that because I would choose NEITHER Fascism NOR lawlessness and rampant violence."
Isn't that literally the overall message of the literal Nazi bible, the Turner Diaries? That you have to fight tyranny with tyranny?
Yeah, Cheong sure went mask off there
@Josh
I agree. The only reason this dilemma even exists is because he ignored literally every other option between fascism and anarchy.
"Asking for empathy is bad and also unfair because it implies I'm not empathic, which I'm not, but not because not being empathic is a bad thing, because empathy is a bad thing and therefor not being empathic is actually a good thing, but don't call me not empathetic because that's a personal attack and it makes me feel bad, so you should feel empathy for me."
I think he means that saying he's not empathetic doesn't make him feel bad, it just makes him _look_ bad, and that's not fair to poor old Benny boy.
@Hans Hanzo I consider Wolfram and Heart to be one of the most interesting villains in fiction precisely because we never see them. They realised they could do a lot more harm and obtain more power by being a supernatural lawyer cabinet and let their human allies do the deeds instead of their demonic selves. Not to mention the last season
Just started watching and all I can think is “those grifters really hate empathy don’t they?”
Havig empathy for anyone would go against every thing the right stands for. Be it humans, animals, or the environment.
Empathy begets egalitarianism. Egalitarianism is incompatible with their ghoulish moral frameworks.
Lol they sure do demand that we have empathy for police
@@adabsurdum5905 and nazis and slaveowners and rapists and CEOs and Karens and landlords
Yeah, the right sure does a good job of spreading the concept of "selective empathy". If he's white he's a person, if he has a badge and a uniform he's a hero. If he was black, or trans, well, that's too bad.
Benny Shapiro's anti empathy rant sounds suspiciously like everyone's favourite right wing saint Ayn Rand. Colour me surprised that he sounds like an objectivist.
Objectivists are litterally the scum of the earth.
Ayn Rand had no problem collecting evil collectivist, redistributionist social security, just as the Rand Institute recently had no problem accepting a government bailout. Empathy for me, not for thee.
Hasn't Ben Shapiro said that he likes the ideas of Ayn Rand before?
why do we call the objectively wrong people objectivists?
@@stm7810 Because that's what Rand called her half-baked philosophy.
Ben Shapiro's voice sounds like what I'd assume a parody impersonation of the "real" Ben Shapiro would sound like
He sounds like the Pokédex
@@Owain9797 idk what that means but you're right
@@heavenly2k go listen to the Pokédex in the original Pokemon anime and tell me they don’t sound alike
@@Owain9797 100%, he sounds like the first or second guy to voice but on x1.25 or x1.5 speed. It's the weird fast-talking with lots of jarring pauses.
@@allnaturalfigjam310 I slowed the video down to .75% and it made him sound almost normal (altho the pauses still feel jarring)
Did Ben literally just admit that the goal of sports is to distract the populous?
Ben, my soft, soft, dude, you aren't meant to admit that it's all bread and circuses.
I’m so incredibly sure that Ben hasn’t read any of those “social science books”, because if he had he would know the difference between sympathy and empathy, or even how the colloquial definition differs from the psychological one. You’re right that he seems to have flipped them - cognitive and affective empathy could also be useful distinctions. Ultimately, what I think Ben really misses out on is that there’s a huge difference between being able to discern what someone is feeling without incredibly obvious cues or them just flat-out telling you, and CARING about those feelings. I’m autistic and shit at telling if something I do is going to upset somebody, but I absolutely care if I do it by mistake. There’s every chance in the world that Ben is perfectly capable of empathy - what he’s discussing is the choice he’s made not to care about what that empathy tells him.
Oh shit hey look it's what I keep saying in this very comments section lol (it doesn't matter if you experience empathy; it matters if you *do* compassion). Thanks.
I guess Harvard doesn't cover shit like "empathy."
Yes! I don’t really need to say anything but replying is algorithmically good for this comment and I want people to see it.
Eh, he may have *read* them. But people like him aren't that big on learning new things. He read the book to cherry pick arguments from it.
Yep. Emotional empathy is a biochemical reaction. It's not something that can just be turned off or on like a switch. Trauma or therapy can impact it, but other than that it's not really something that people have control over. Acting like this biological trait is somehow a character flaw is ridiculous. What Ben is actually arguing against here is compassion.
TBH I have similar problems with people who treat empathy as an inherently positive character trait that's essential to being a good person. Someone's moral goodness has nothing to do with whether or not their brain rewards them with happy juices when they do good things. Not getting rewarded or punished with brain juices can make someone less likely to be compassionate, but there are so many motivations to be a good person beyond just basic biological instinct.
“Protect us hard daddy” is a clip I want to see played out of context for all time
@Jason Simmons Thicker, harder, tighter, stronger
@@AriOrSomething RIPee Is Stored In The Balls, amen
People who think kindness is a weakness tend to be resentful of those who receive love and affection and thrive because of it. Their worldview is defined by power dynamics, so when "unpowerful" traits yield positive results, they think it's fake, performative for the sake of ulterior motives.
Well Ben's never felt happiness or a WAP, so it's almost expected he'd be an asshole.
"Fusion is a cheap tactic to make weak gems stronger!"
To be fair: all kindness is ultimately for selfish motives in the same vacuous sense that literally _everything_ you do is for selfish motives. I never got this argument: oh you did a kind thing, well you just did it to feel good so it nullifies the kind thing. If your initial reaction to someone doing a good thing is to bend over backwards to come up with a reason they are not as good as people think what does that say about you?
Even scary man, Vladimir Putin loves dogs. Have you seen the clip of him receiving a puppy as a gift and hugging the sweet creature? It's adorable. It nearly makes you forget that he's responsible for SO MANY deaths.
Remember Kids Even the Doom Slayer someone the entirety of Hell fears, loved his pet bunny Daisy
And his best friend Isabella.
And that's Canon too. A portrait of Daisy can be found in Doom Eternal.
Uwu beard gone
Hey it's that guy that does that thing
Oml best comment on here
I ship this. Can Big Slime be a thing?
@Adam Schiff Slig Jime
@@kookulas Okay yeah, Big Slime is a winner.
Ngl Ben and Ian calling out for "hard men" with them themselves being, uhh, hardly hard by showing and demanding compassion to themselves at times when their circles getting critiqued is epitome of alt-lite edgy grifters
Jordan Peterson
Ian Miles Cheong
Ben Shapiro
Dave Rubin
Brett Weinstein
Donald Trump
Jair "can't do a pushup" BolSARnaro
Steve Bannon
Just a few of the hard, manly men leading the right.
@@HarryS77 Dave Rubin doesn't lead shit, he's just a meek follower.
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind."
This is quote from Kurt Vonnegut novel. It's character talking to babies in their christening if I remember correctly. It's been a while since I read it, but this quote stuck with me. I'm not always sure where I am going or what I am doing here, but being kind is something I always try to be. Doesn't mean I always am, but I try my best. Simple acts of kindness, both to me and from me have mattered in all of my time in this world more than anything else has, I believe. I don't have much time here. Neither do you, or anyone. So goddamnit, let's try to be kind when we can
"No, you can't go back in."
Lol as soon as I started reading I thought it sounded like Vonnegut.
What i learned from people who cannot feel empathy: "compassion" is the word everyone is looking for. Empathy is literally a specific psychological concept. Yes empathy is in fact flawed and can be completely absent in people, including being absent from some wonderful leftists who do great kindness to me and others. Being able to guess someone's feelings doesn't mean you care about them. People who literally don't experience empathy (some autistic ppl, some ppl with PDs, etc) face hatred and distrust from even other lefties due to this stigma and confusion ("ASPDs and NPDs are inherently abusive demons!!", anyone?). Lots of lefty disabled/disordered folks say empathy is a flawed model of morality that has real implications for them.
COMPASSION, however, owns bones and hard boy Shapiro can huff nuts
Ben (out loud big fan of western ideals) Shapiro- “Empathy is bad”
Plato-“The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.”
You got a citation for that quote?
I don't disagree with you, I just think it would be good to pinpoint where in Plato's writing (or Socrates', I guess) that was said.
But also being "rational" is not something that exists. It's pretending as if you know better than someone else. That they are flawed humans and you're not. Kind of similar how the nobility thought they had a standard that the peasants never could.
The concept of "rational" is itself domineering and many came about in regards to woman. That men are rational while woman are irrational and that this is why men should control woman's finances, decisions and even bodies. Cause woman are not rational enough to handle those things themselves.
Ian out there calling people soft while he's looking like a wet marshmallow.
There's also the irony of the "hard-man politics" people supporting one of the most thin-skinned narcissistic and feeble presidents the US has ever seen.
I really never got the "you have to be tough to lead, that's why I support this guy who throws ridiculous tantrums when people make jokes about his hands being small" thing. You want a tough leader? Fine. Find one who's actually tough.
I have never met one of these "tough guys" who isn't just projecting their own insecurity.
The smallest dogs bark the loudest.
It's like Newton's 4th law or something: the louder a guy praises traditional masculinity on the internet, the less he fits the standards of traditional masculinity
The people trying to gatekeep masculinity almost always make my scrawny ass look like Dolph Lundgren.
preacher_where_the_fuck_is_your_chin.bmp
"a garbage god, a toilet god, a god ruling over turd heaven"- how caleb maupin describes Mister Thought Slime
The Toilet God and his Counter-Revolutionary Slime
No, he's a dialectical materialist which makes his worldview to scientific and rational for him to even comprehend the idea of a "god".
Ahem- Mister *so-called* Thought Slime.
@@M-CH_ Isn't Maupin Christian?
@@HarryS77 A Marxist-Leninist who holds on to Christian prejudice deserves to be dealt with by a RevTribunal.
Have we moved on from "empathy is a lie everyone is selfish!" to "empathy makes you weak actually" ? ok big strong edgy boys
Everyone is somewhat selfish, though. But they're also unselfish, otherwise society would collapse.
Just sayin'.
@@grmpEqweer I mean yeah but that's not very relevant, also I swear I saw you on kyles channel
@@AbstractTraitorHero
Probably. You look familiar.
And I WAS doing event security...now I'm spending too much time on the intertubes!🙄
Hi! 😁
@@grmpEqweer Think I was on your side about something or another, nice to see you again doh.
Big strong *hard* edgy boys
"If man was made in god's image, I wonder what kind of god made Ian Miles Cheong?" is such an incredible burn and you just dropped it like it was nothing lol
God made Ian on a Sunday during a killer hangover.
@@creativepseudonym9872 nope, I can verify that while God was sculpting him out of clay, he accidentally dropped him face first into the earth. And then Ian came to life.
@@spongebobsquarepants8403 Very true
"It's actually profoundly destructive to be hard all the time..."
- Story of my teenage life
The virtues of sociopathy: Memoir of a child conservative.
Is that an actual published book because I would absolutely read it
An Ayn Rand Biography
Sociopathy is a term often associated with a mental illness and i would prefer people to stop using that word to insult others
The Wisdom of Psycopaths is an actual published book, but I have not read it.
@@thegoat20066 Same. It's an overused and really ableist insult. I am so tired of seeing its continued usage in leftist spaces.
Ian: “the State refuses to enforce law and order” bruh
Sharpie is probably talking about Paul Bloom's Against Empathy. But my understanding of that book is less "No, empathy ever" and more "People tend to react to immediate emotional stimuli, and be empathetic towards the things in their immediate vicinity. We would be better served by taking a step back, being less emotional and thinking about what generates the greatest good." I.e. the blue lives matter folks are getting too caught up in the emotional rhetoric of the police and not thinking about how police actions are affecting society as a whole.
You mean "e.g.", not "i.e." (hello, Get Shorty fans!).
That's too complicated and nuanced for a conservative to understand.
You got me in the first half, not gonna lie
"The reason why empathy is bad for politics because it leads you to more likely to like people that you agree with instead of people you don't like" I'm at a loss for words
Theory: Just before that weird tirade, Ian Miles Cheong saw that scene in Kingsman where the spies have to kill their dog and was like "yes, YES, THIS is what it's ALL ABOUT"
One of my absolute favorite episodes of King of the hill is when Hank sends Bobby to a military school that his dad then takes over and starts putting Bobby through all these abusive punishments to "toughen him up" but Bobby is just so inherently soft and fun-loving that he remains unaffected by any of it.
Isn't there a bit of a problem with the message? Sounds like it's suggesting that violent responses to oppression are a function of a person's lack of character, Bobby being the exception to the rule.
@@Disentropic1 King of the Hill episodes tend to actually look positively at states of mind and being that they explore in the show to be different than the 'classic Texan man' ideologies. So it's likely that the episode ended with the dad being upset at the grandpa and learning to accept the son.
@@notinorder9630 They realize that Bobby is unbreakable and that he's tougher then everyone.
Ben Shapiro is so hard and tough he is threatened by the very presence of women in Star Wars, which he describes as "little boy's property".
*"Nothing curbs rampant violence like-"*
State violence?
Nearly. It's gotta be rampant though. Just a little state violence is soft!
I felt that burn through the screen.
@@jeffengel2607 Only the hardest of states are acceptable. Got to really work things up into a hard state.
@@Zahaqiel ... I feel like I'm wandering into fascism porn. I don't wanna!
@@jeffengel2607 Pretty certain the existence of pro-equality protesters usually constitutes fascism porn.
"Bad times create hard men,
Hard men create good times,
Good times create soft men,
Soft men create bad times."
This is literally a fascist mantra. This is what the fascists believe.
Damn sorry that sounds like a great hook for a rap song
Somewhere, SUBTLY hidden between the lines, there is a metaphor for sex to be found there..
I think that was from some Arab historian
EDIT: found my old comment now a year later, and I was mistaken. I thought this quote was from Ibn Khaldun, but this is actually a misrepresentation of his philosophy. Ibn Khaldun thought that the defining factor of success was 'asabiyah', cohesion, and that groups with more cohesion (like small nomadic tribes with internal loyalty) would always win against groups with less cohesion (like large empires keeping the people down with force). In Western editions of Ibn Khaldun in the 19th and 20th centuries this was often mistranslated as "strength" or "toughness" when that was not what he meant
The irony is that the alt-right and cryptofash think they're the hard men responding to bad times but are actually cheerleading some of the older soft men (e.g. Trump) creating bad times. The working class zoomer vanguard are the actual "hard men" whose task will be to respond to decades of capitalist boomer decadence and lead the struggle to recreate good times.
Not really. I like it and I hate fascism.
I remember when I was indoctrinated into the whole “hard man” image, because of how I saw my dad and things we talked about and how he felt. I’m glad I broke out of that “men are hard and women are soft” ideology.
I mean they do sell Viagra for women right? And I know that Viagra was invented because there was soft men.
Soft as in penis soft or as in less testosterone so they’re “soft”. From what I understand lower test is a result of pollution, our higher caloric diet and our more sedentary lifestyle. Plus it’s hard to get hard when the woes of capitalism crush you and you feel like you can’t be emotionally vulnerable.
One book on the subject I'm aware of is Paul Bloom's Against Empathy- note that Paul Bloom is more concerned with empathy burnout clouding our judgment and empathy being bad at dealing with large numbers of people. He wants our policies to be more humane, not less like these chuds.
Well, considering that Shapiro is pretty infamous for not reading his sources, I totally believe that.
And it isn't making the case to delete your empathy, just to be careful with it. The subtitle is "The Case for Rational Compassion".
The sign outside my blanket fort reads: NO SOFT BOYS ALLOWED
you shouldnt always be hard.. in fact if you are hard for 4 hours, call a dr
N i c e
“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 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.”
-- Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trails
Good one, but as someome growing up in Germany and delving deep into that topic, i would have a correction to that. It's not the incapacity, but the capacity to turn it off or shield oneself against it. The thing many find most baffling about people like the Nazi leadership is that they could be very empathetic. Some people who met Adolf Hitler refused to believe that Hitler had known anything of the (youtube auto delete algorithm apparently doesn't like that word), because they couldn't square that with the friendly and mild man they knew.
The two main mechanisms of preventing empathy you can see are dehumanization (not only in the aggressive way, but maybe more prominently by creating a distance to the human being. Reducing people to statistical figures and abstract concepts.) and the allusion to pragmatism or necessity. The latter part is very common. Thats the whole point of the right trying to frame others as sentimental daydreamers. Its shifting responsibility away from oneself if one can convince oneself that it wasn't a cruel decision, but that ones hand was forced by the hard facts of reality. And even more horrible, it turns doing horrible things into a virtue. A valiant self sacrifice for the greater good. Heinrich Himmlers speeches in Posen to his SS-troops is a very shocking example of this. He praises his troops not for being ruthless or something of the likes, but for "staying decent" despite commiting atrocities that go against every fibre of their body. He praises them for the strength of enduring being a monster, because they know it had to be done.
The rational of the Nazis crimes was not psychopathy, it was the air of pragmatism. And i hear that Posener Speech in my mind whenever i hear People like Ben talking about "snowflakes" or military and intelligence people lecturing someone about how they have to be "tough" so you can be "soft".
@@tomitiustritus6672 Guter Punkt!
It's a hoax, like most story about communists, nazis and every other ideology depicted by anglo-capitalists.
We can't use emotions, we must use evidence. No, not that evidence that shows racism is systemic. The made up evidence that I like.
"It's destructive to be hard all the time" Yeah, you should call your doctor if that's the case.
I came here to say this, but knew in my heart it had already been said
I'm not mature enough for this video. I can't hear about soft and hard men this often without giggling uncontrollably.
If you're hard for more than 4 hours...
@@MaxGlycine89
"Nice"
The conservatives want men to be tops and not bottoms
Ben Shapiro is referencing (read: misrepresenting) Against Empathy, by Paul Bloom. Big Joel did a video on it a while back. Benny Boy is dancing around the distinction between "empathy" and "altruism".
Being hard all the time is painful. If you’re hard for more than four hours, please talk to your doctor.
I think i put the wrong kind of pills in my cup
"Empathy is bad because it makes you act based on emotion rather than logic and that makes me angry!"
Thank you so much for the very kind shout out, I'm flattered! Kudos to you and all you do. Cheers!
Thank both of you for being bad asses!
I like the idea of "psychic damage" you can take by witnessing repulsive shit on the Internet. It certainly feels like I'm taking damage
Yup.
Alternatively, a cognito-hazard.
Actually I think it's probable. One will obviously not be just fine after a year of reading hateful comments. Also, the Internets omnipresence of wanna-be rhetorics citing wanna-be scientific studies has led a lot of people to adapt a fatalistic relativistic view on knowledge in general.
Its a D&D reference "this spell does 1d6 psychic damage" or whatever, but it also makes sense outside that context :D
@@rhaeven damn it's the only thing my totem of the bear barbarian isnt resistant to
I'm grateful for the frequent uploads Slime Borger
Also, props for the Basket Case shirt
Borger? BORGER? I doubt you've ever worked in the fast food industry. SHOW ME YOUR CREDENTIALS.
Ben and Ian saying kindness is bad literally makes them sound like anime villains who will be destroyed by the power of friendship.
Or at least the power of solidarity.
Related to this week's eyeballzone: The Socialist Rifle association.
I joined this week!!
Also look at Pink Pistols!
The sheer fact that we exist as a species is thanks to social behaviour and caring for each other - even ones who (for one reason or another) can not contribute as much, in whatever way, to the community, as others.
Calling for anyone to supress this instinct might work for a short time (and for those amongst us who were born lacking the ability to emphatize) but in the long run? For the majority of people? We band together. We help each other. We can overcome great strife, and an unbelievable amount of suffering brought onto ourselves and others. Any ideology calling for the supression of our human tendency to help each other will fail. Sooner or later.
1Well said. If everyone was a backstabbing sociopath like these two cretins we would have died out long ago.
Thought Slime: only the second Torontonian intellectual to admit that Ben Shapiro makes him hard.
Im pretty sure thought slime would hate being called an intelectual
Who’s the other one? Jordan Peterson?
I'm a very peacefull guy. I never get into fights, and I avoid confrotnations, certianly physical altercations.
But when I see and hear Ben Shapiro... I feel anger and violence bubbling up in me. :(
He has a profoundly slappable face
People like him make me understand why the gulag existed.
I wish I was a pundit so I could go on Jesse Lee Peterson's show and almost immediately challenge him to step outside. Would be hilarious to see him get beat up by such a BETAAAAA.
But... practicing empathy is literally a reasoning skill.
Ian Miles Cheong: "You're too soft to be elected president if you own a pet."
Theodore Roosevelt: (spits out coffee)
Yeah, he is probably the most manly man ever to be president
I'm not the only one who wants to see a Thought Slime vs. Shapiro Cage Match/Debate right?
What I'd like to see is Thought Slime and Ben Shapiro join a group of mutual friends to go out and have a drink or otherwise engage in a regular set of social interactions. That's what would demonstrate some of the reality behind these claims. 😎
Honestly I don't really care for debates due to people like Ben Shapiro. I'd rather them have time to research and source each of their claims.
@@ryanfuller4401 Yup. Doing a philosophy degree, and it's honestly hilarious/depressing what "debate" is to most people. Here's the thing though - next time someone tries to use the Shaprio gish-gallop on you, just start methodically fact-checking each claim in turn. In my experience, they either start back-pedalling rapidly, or lose their shit, neither of which helps them "win" their little game.
The gish-gallop only works in broadcasting, and other time-restricted contexts that don't allow for a full response.
@@kellyloganme Ben and Ian would have to have what one might call a "friend" first, wouldn't they?
It's a little hard for me to believe either of them know how to view fellow humans by anything other than their potential value, how they can use this particular pawn.
That being the case, most humans I've encountered (and I've encountered a few) are less than sympathetic to such reductive reasoning...
@@kellyloganme oh I wanna see them all matchdebate allright ☻
My anarchism and my atheism spring from the same well. When men claim that authority is its own justification, there is usually an autocratic entity composed purely of infinite power and toxic masculinity lurking in the shadows and prodding the thought process.
Rather nicely put.
I remember going on a reactionary's channel and they were proudly announcing they'd say "What are you looking at" and be rude to strangers. First of all, I'm fairly sure that's a fib. Second, why?
If you have to ask then you've exposed yourself as some sort of weakling! HAH! Seriously, the idea is to never think or ask questions or try to understand. The alternative? Obedience.
No shit why he failed as a screenwriter . being empathetic towards other human being is literally the least basic quality we need in terms of writing a character.
We need a "Every time Slime says hard" supercut. It would quickly get demonetized, but you might acquire an entirely new audience!
There aren't enough jokes about being hard.
the like number
I wanna like this comment, but the current number of likes is just too perfect
Hard... Harrrddd... *HARRRRRRR*
Totally Normal Ad Break: YOU'RE NOT A DISH *breaks a literal dish* YOU'RE A MAAAAAAAAAAN
I'm both
Hehehe
@@justaprole6156 Dish Man! Not the hero we wanted, or needed, but he's here, he brings fear, and he'll lend an ear!
YES I GOT THIS ONE TOO! I hate that damned ad. But it made me bust out laughing because it was too perfect.
Lex Bright Raven *dishphoria
i really feel like Paul Bloom's "Against Empathy" is what shapiro's talking about, and for the record, its a horrible book
And even then, I think I read something where he said that he was sick of people misinterpreting that book. His argument as I understand it is more like what TS said at one point - that it’s totally good to care about other people, but that we can’t just go by a knee-jerk reaction to do what seems to minimize suffering in that instant without paying attention to what will cause future suffering.
I really wish someone would address that book rather than caricatures like Ben Shapiro.
Can you maybe suggest something more to read on the subject? I know a few leftists who say empathy isn't reliable in the context of politics and IMO it makes sense, if empathy wasn't really, really biased we wouldn't have "good people" commit terrible acts because of things like tribalism
@@somewhat-blue oh yes, I mean the criticisms I have of the book aside, shapiros take does not represent any real argument for or against empathy at all lol
Chris Gates Ahhh that’s the name of the book; yes, I agree, that’s what I think that he’s talking about
10:45
It does make sense to me. Sympathy is usually done from a position of dominance. Like the rich having sympathy with the poor or a human having sympathy for an injured animal or child. It's something done by someone who's powerful to someone who's powerless. The elite are not against kindness, they are against empathy. They view that kindness should be at their discursion and should exist to maintain the power dynamic. Empathy is connection between equals where there is no difference in power.
Thanks for staring into the darkness for us. It hates eye contact.
Julius Caesar was known to be vain and somewhat feminine, yet he was anything but soft in the Gallic Wars
Caesar's critics noted that he was 'a man for every woman and a woman for every man.'
More like Phallic wars am I right
Alexander the Great had a boyfriend whose death devastated him. But he was horrific against his opponents in warfare
Oh god when you started emphasizing the word "HARD" I expected the word "THROBBING" to soon follow!
Ah yes, notorious strong man ben shapiro. We meet yet again
Shhhhh... dont make fun of him, he will send his docter wife after you.
You fool. While you were busy drinking soy lattes in your Prius, he studied THE BLADE.
@@crunchytoast4993 His doctor wife is a doctor? I didn't doctor she was a doctor
I love that to these people anger is one of the only emotions a man is allowed to show. Because y'know, speaking as a gamer, anger hasn't been one of THE most costly and embarrassing things in my life.
Recently watched Shazam! and there's a line toward the end of the movie that I think sums up the point of this vid quite nicely, "What good is all this power if you have no one to share it with?"
I don’t know what’s more questionable, the fact that 22,000 people retweeted that shit, or Ian Miles Cheong thinking being affectionate and manly are two mutually exclusive concepts
"A toilet god from a turd heaven"
UA-cam: This is a good time for a GoDaddy ad.
I got an ad there too and I thought it was so funny!
Being hard all the way through makes you brittle and easy to crack
Fry: thatll show those poor people!
Leela: but youre one of those poor people
Fry: true, but one day i might not be, and then people like me better watch their step!
Empathy: the ability to imagine oneself in the position of another, experiencing the emotions, ideas or opinions of that person.
Such a bad trait for leaders of people, to be able to understand people.
OMG the performative Judaism.... it burns. One could call it “Virtue Signalling”, no? Only virtue signallers wear kippoth unless praying.
Empathy is actually what stops me from acting against people I don't like. In my mind I feel like 'yeah this person has shitty views and acts in a way that hurts a lot of people' but then when I'm with those sorts of people I feel for them even if I still disagree and have automatic reaction to want to support them too. That's what empathy does. It makes us care about everyone.
Lacking empathy makes you more likely to only support people you like, because you're acting for your self interest.
1. The thumbnail is perfect. 2. I laughed out loud to my empty apartment at your description of toilet god.
I asked my girlfriend & my best friend, who are both women, who comes to mind when they think of a "manly man". I genuinely asked just to see where their minds went. My girlfriend said Chuck Norris, our friend said David Hasslehoff. These men are strong, tall, muscular, talented in multiple ways, and are KNOWN FOR SPEAKING UP FOR CAUSES THAT THEY CARE ABOUT. Hasslehoff was literally one of the catalysts for the FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL because he CARED ABOUT THE PEOPLE ON EITHER SIDE OF IT, and Chuck Norris has used his HARD martial arts expertise to teach young & marginalized children how to defend themselves. These people are not only STRONG, TOUGH, and embody traditional masculinity, but they also- wow- CARE ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE, AT LEAST A TINY BIT! WHO WOULA GUESSED THAT THE STRONGEST AND MOST MANLY MEN ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT SOMETHING OTHER THAN THEMSELVES?!??!?
16:41 nah, the strongest animal is Gustave the unstoppable bullet proof demon crocodile.
Also cocaine bear was probably a close 2nd for the 5 seconds before its heart gave put.
Straight Slimey!
Sounds like every US Marine I've met.
Yeah, he got empathy and sympathy backwards... also he doesn't quite understand either as they are alien to him.
They are very good at their job, it’s just unfortunate that their job is killing others for the benefit of no one but the rich.
“I don’t mess with nobody named mom” -Ricky from Burger King
genuinely laughed at the intro. Slime Borger!
How many takes did it take to do the "I wanna be hard" part?
Based on this pronunciation I do not believe that this man knows about borgers OR slimes.
"Ian Miles Cheong is perhaps the world's most embarrassing human being' is the most perfect summation of the man I've ever heard.
"it's profoundly destructive to be hard all the time"
that's why i called the doctor after 4 hours