Empathy Blues, March 5th, 2025.

I went to the river to jump in.

My baby showed up and said, I will tell you when.

I'm tore down, Eric Clapton.

Now that's a lack of sympathy right there.

That's cold man.

Introduction.

When it comes to addressing the sin of empathy,

Joe Rigney has been on the case from the beginning.

He and I talked about it in the pilot episode of Man Rampant,

back in the first season,

and that caused something of a stir,

and then it played a significant role

in its briskly selling book,

Leadership and Emotional Sabotage.

And now, like the men of Gideon, hot after the Medianites, faint yet pursuing, he has just released a new book,

The Sin of Empathy. Judging from the online upsetness of it all, I thought it would be appropriate

to wade into the melee and offer an astute observation here and there. These astute observations

will be located alongside my other observations, and I will leave you to sort them all out.

The very first thing to notice, if we take the definition of empathy given in the top slide,

an emphasis that is standard in our therapeutic circles, is that the most obvious thing about this ongoing fracas

is that a lot of defenders of this therapeutic definition

...