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To be liberal requires empathy. A deep understanding of others and their situations and the knowledge that your own personal needs dont always automatically outweigh others.
Empathy requires emotional intelligence.
Its easy to see it in action. Pick a problem and then look at the solutions offered by populist politicians to solve them.
In the UK one of the problems is immigrants arriving on small boats. The populist "solution"? "STOP THE BOATS" shouted far and wide.
How we ask?
And then silence. And when pressed, the likes of Reform offer more soundbites like "use the navy" and "send them back" but without any substance.
Meanwhile Liberal politicians offer actual solutions that are not sound bites, and they won't work quickly. Things like working with the French to find and arrest the people organising it. Helping to improve facilities in France and the rest of Europe so the UK isn't seen as somewhere an immigrant needs to travel to.
Basically, intelligent people aren't fooled by meaningless slogans. Morons aren't able to understand that deep problems require deep and complex solutions.
It is not just a question of emotional intelligence. As an autistic person, this is really a weak point in my statistics.
I'm simply not stupid enough ti fall for their ideas.
I agree, there are always occasions where things will be different as you demonstrate
Not strictly necessarily. For me, it comes down to logic, reason, and evidence.
I’m neurodivergent. This means that among some mild cognitive superpowers, I also have some significant weaknesses, such as an inability to understand or even recognize the inner workings of others. Essentially, the first half of your second sentence, above. That simply isn’t in my wheelhouse, no matter how hard I try. It’s analogous to asking a blind person to pick out the colour red.
But I reach the same place - the second half of the second sentence - by using logic and reason and evidence (usually via science) to come to an understanding of what is correct and good and right and how the needs of others simply don’t restrict my own personal needs in any way, and so carry equally as much importance and have all the same ability to be fulfilled without conflict. And because some of these people are disadvantaged or oppressed, it is my duty as a fucking human being to have their back whenever I have a decent opportunity to do so.
As an another neurodivergent lacking some essential emotional stuff: also being nice and kind to others is smart for maximizing your personal well-being. If people think nicely of you, they are more inclined to listen to you, and help you, and that gets you way further in life than just being a selfish prick people don't want to be around. It is also logical to apply this not only to people immediately next to you, but to people far away as well, since being mean and evil towards them will not get you shit in the long run or might even make things worse, but it's more likely it might benefit you later.
Or sure, you can be as mean as you want and might even end up some bitter asshole with all the money you could imagine if you have good enough start and lot of luck. But that's pretty far from a good life in itself; you can get all your needs met a lot easier and even have nice people around you.
My theory is that we never find the actually smart sociopaths (or psychopaths or whatever the term is here), since they're intelligent enough to hide themselves with kindness
So interesting... to me (I don't think my brain profile particularly gets in the way of my daily life) what you describe is the prefrontal cortex version of empathy, but empathy nontheless.
Salutations, fellow human :)
Equating left with lib. Love it. Thanks, appropriator.
What a well thought out response, perfectly formulated to start an informed discussion.
Stop sniffing your own farts and don't look a gift horse in the mouth
Whats the gift here? Do you know the origin of that phrase?