What if Irony is Judging Others for Lacking Empathy?
Sometimes
we run workshops on empathy,
focused on behaviors
without much focus
on the experience
of empathizing,
inadvertently teaching
manipulation.
As the computer software
“ELIZA,”
has shown,
you can enact
all the “right” behaviors
associated with empathy
without ever actually
empathizing.
In conversation,
a question worth asking
is whether we are attempting
to decrease
or increase
the number of choices
for others.
Depending on the answer,
we can often gauge
whether we are moving
in the direction of fear
or courage.
p.s: Thanks to Paul Pangaro for introducing me to the essay on Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics that inspired this post.
Manipulation
involves the desire
to move someone
or something
to a place or state
the manipulator expects.
This is not to judge manipulation
as good/bad or right/wrong.
Through mutual agreement
& rationalization,
one can differentiate between
transparent
vs. surreptitious,
well-intended
vs. ill-intended,
manipulation.
A magic show
can be thought of as
transparent manipulation.
Feeding kids hidden vegetables
can be thought of
as well-intended manipulation.
But manipulation stands
in some sense,
opposite of creation,
because creation
involves the desire
to let emerge
a place or product
the creator did not expect.