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I admit that I find it very difficult to consistently follow Jesus’ commands.</p>
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<p>I have never described myself as empathetic. I believe I am too judgmental in general to describe myself as truly empathetic… Although, particularly when it comes to people who do really horrible things, I can’t think of a situation in which I haven’t wondered what might have happened to that person to cause them to do what they did. I typically assume that people do terrible things because something terrible has happened to them or because they suffer from some deficit that is beyond their control or they are highly suggestible and someone manipulated them. I then wonder what I would had done if I believed what they believed or suffered as they had suffered. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to see them punished.</p>
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<p>What you are describing is more akin to sympathy or pity. Empathy is different. Empathy means that you can imagine what it is to be in their shoes, to be them and you have a good sense of what they are feeling and experiencing. There is something more active to being empathetic.</p>
<p>It would be a shame to see this thread locked…</p>
<p>Did I just hear that one of the students charged today was a student at MIT in the engineering department?</p>
<p>EDIT: Okay, the report says he went to U Mass Dartmouth, but his Facebook page claims he is a student at MIT. </p>
<p>Strange…</p>
<p>Let me add an observation I’ve made before when somebody has committed some horrible crime. I think it’s natural for us to distance ourselves from such a person; to think that we could never do such a horrible thing. I think people of a liberal bent tend to do this by thinking that the person who did this horrible thing was sick or damaged in some way (and thus not like me), while more conservative people tend to do this by thinking that the person was evil (and thus not like me). I think these are just two faces of the same reaction. Personally, I always wonder just how different these people are from me–in this particular case, I found it particularly chilling to see the film of suspect no. 2 ambling along, with his cap on backwards, looking like any other college bro. And we now learn that to people who knew him, he really did seem like a pretty typical college bro. I think that naturally creeps us out.</p>
<p>They were indeed just regular “bro’s”, the ones that collected about $100k in government support $$$ and the ones who had parents collecting $$ for tickets from others while driving a very expansive (by American) standards car back in Russia, which is few times more expansive in Russia than in the USA…yep, just very “regular bro.”</p>
<p>Does anyone know the timeline of the lying and obstruction charges? If this was prior to Officer Collier’s death could they face related charges that they contributed to his murder?</p>
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<p>I tend to wonder that if someone I loved had been exposed to the same things or lived the same life as the person doing a terrible thing, is there a chance someone I love or really cared about could have done the same thing? In the case of the bomber, I tried to imagine how twisted your head would be if you truly believed that the US government master minded 9/11, killing thousands of innocent people, in order to justify an attack on people of my ethnicity or religion. That is a truly hard thing to imagine but if I believed it, could I work myself into such a state that I could also justify doing truly terrible things to innocent people?</p>
<p>Hunt, I’m glad you said it (#165). When they published the full-face photo of the younger brother – not the on-scene photos, but the one with the white background – it haunted me. He looked exactly like some of D’s high school friends. Good kids, smart kids, non-bomber kids. I couldn’t help but think that if they had fallen under the sway of an older role model, they could have ended up in the same spot.</p>
<p>Well, I do feel empathy. Yes, for the suspect in custody, though, I absolutely believe that he has to go through the due process for what he did. Not the same sort of empathy for those injured, killed and the loved ones of those. The word “empathy” does not begin to express how I feel towards those who were so victimized. Pain. Sheer pain. And depression, and something akin to love too. </p>
<p>For whatever, reason, I don’t feel the usual sympathies I would towards the parents of the terrorists. Partly because I have some suspicions, warranted or not. Some things just don’t add up here,</p>
<p>With the suspect in custody, perhaps it is because he is a bit too close to many near and dear to me, that I feel the way i do. Yes, he could be any number of kids I know, though NONE, absolutely none have ever done another deliberate harm.</p>
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<p>[Azamat</a> Tazhayakov Dias Kadyrbayev - Business Insider](<a href=“http://www.businessinsider.com/azamat-tazhayakov-dias-kadyrbayev-2013-5]Azamat”>Azamat Tazhayakov Dias Kadyrbayev)</p>
<p>Yes, he lied about MIT. He was never enrolled there - at least according to this source.</p>
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And here’s another manifestation of the same thing: looking for hints and clues that show that these are bad people, different from us, bound to happen, etc.</p>
<p>People who know the younger brother were stupefied by this–not just his family, but his classmates, his teachers, everybody. It has to give you pause.</p>
<p>I believe unquestionably that people I know and love could do terrible things. I’m not sure they could do THIS terrible thing, though. I can feel great empathy for some criminals, but not all. I can personally feel more empathy for mothers of childen who go bad than for the criminals, themselves. But that’s ok, everyone has their own circumstances.</p>
<p>To me, the difference between sympathy and empathy is how I feel about the Chinese man who was taken hostage by the bombers. I sympathize with him because he was taken hostage by two murderers, and no innocent person deserves to be victimized like that. </p>
<p>I don’t empathize with him, because he completely ignored the requests of the mayor, the police, and the FBI for everyone to stay at home and keep off the streets. The orders to stay in place was not just to protect innocents, but to keep the streets clear for police action, and also to prevent the bombers from being able to get away by taking someone’s car. If he’d listened to the police, he’d never have been carjacked at all.</p>
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Seems like he wasn’t the only one. Didn’t the younger brother tell his father that he was in med school when he was a student at UMass Dartmouth???</p>
<p>^The more time people have at hands, the more time they have for stuff like this. There are a crime prone area with primarily non-working population who by no mens could be called poor, not by international standards, at least. Opposite, they have everything and much more than average (not poor) person would wish for, including cars and cell phones that are much more expansive than mine.
In regard to their family…they are very good actors, that is for sure. You need to know a bit more about people like these, a bit more than what is available in media. However, even media “leak” thru an image of the “struggling” mother with crocodile tears on her face, FARCE and nothing else, very much on a serface…</p>
<p>I have no empathy for this chicklet, either. But I don’t want to see her put to death. Prison seems awfully miserable to me, unless you are Tavon White.</p>
<p>[Woman</a> suspected of tainting OJ at Starbucks said to be trained chemist - latimes.com](<a href=“http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-woman-suspected-of-tainting-at-starbucks-said-to-be-trained-chemist-20130430,0,6975986.story]Woman”>Woman suspected of tainting OJ at Starbucks said to be trained chemist)</p>
<p>^^^^Thank goodness for an observant customer. :eek:</p>
<p>^And that is exactly one of the reasons why we will have more and more and more…they are not afraid of punishment, they laugh their heads off at our system, all of them, here and abroad…no respect whatsoever, especially if you can read other languages, it is pretty shameful, they practically call us “fools” and plan all kind of terror using this trait. They know that we do know about their plans, we do have a great system of tracking, collecting information,…and doing absolutely nothing with it, not preventing crimes, not punishing reponsible parties, the mastermind of Benghazi attack is very well known and enjoying his freedom very much and yes, this family will not loose any more members due to our legal system, that works very hard to protect criminal and do not care a bit to protect innocent, including victims of future crimes, that could have been stopped by much more severe punishments in cases when their is no littlest doubt who is at fault.</p>
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<p>hayden, didn’t the shut down/shelter in place happen after that, not before?</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s unusual to want to explore why people do such awful things. As cartera said, it’s not that we feel that they shouldn’t be held accountable but rather that it’s important to understand how someone reaches the point where they can commit such atrocities. I feel the same way about the thousands of disaffected individuals, mostly young men, who commit murders on a daily basis all across the country.</p>