Dan Gingerich@dangitman50
I "lack empathy" because I was TAUGHT TO. I've been bullied, screwed over, injured, had my life torn down, and lost my best friend ALL BECAUSE OF THE STUPIDITY OF OTHERS. Most of that wasn't because they MEANT to, but mostly because they just didn't CARE about the effects of their actions on others.
I was bullied from first grade all the way up to my second year in college by dumb athletic guy and girls (the smart athletic kids were fine) because I was outperforming them in school and was also smaller than they were. They hated that I was smarter, and I was smaller so I was an easy target.
The schools were geared around teaching lower intellect kids, and when I didn't comply with their methods, they screwed me over repeatedly keeping me from learning as fast as I was able and cursing my future academics by giving me low scores.
I've been hit from behind in traffic SEVEN TIMES because of stupid people, FIVE were the EXACT same situations, where I was being tailgated by someone for going the speed limit in the right lane on the highway and some other person merged onto the highway doing 10-15 UNDER the speed limit. I had to slow down to keep from hitting the idiot in front of me, to get hit by the asshole behind me. I now suffer from constant neck pain and lost sleep specifically because of neck problems, AND THERE IS NO FIX.
THEN there's the 9/11 attacks. I had a good career going, got up to sysadmin by 27 at a well paying and established employer, only to have my employer take severe economic damage from the 9/11 attacks, laying off over 4000 of us in short order, making the competition for jobs extreme, leaving me to have to rebuild my career from the ground up, ten years behind and forever unable to get into certain jobs. ALL because some idiots following along with a suicidal religious leader. I lost EVERYTHING because of them.
My best friend was killed at work because his stupid coworker thought it was just fine to put the rented truck up on wheel ramps to get it to line up with the loading dock instead of going back to the rental place and getting a proper sized truck or use the other loading dock. My friend used the forklift to move a pallet onto the truck, the ramps slipped, the truck moved, and my friend was crushed by the forklift. ALL because some idiot was too stupid and too lazy to do things RIGHT.
So tell me, HOW ELSE am I supposed to react? "Empathy" just allows stupid people to CONTINUE to be stupid and do stupid things, and continue to hurt me and other innocent people.