Modern Romanticism

“What person feels, if not to identify? An empathetic soul is an intimate one. There is no such thing as a loose expression of empathy. One may lose themselves, their own lonesome identification, as a sacrifice when peering too far into someone else’s anguish. That empathetic soul felt too much, not of themselves, though of someone else. When they came back to themselves, they were empty. Why? It’s because they forgot who they were.”

– Modern Romanticism

Sympathy can be witnessed on social media. It can be witnessed and expressed, from across the globe. If someone’s hashtag that supports a “noble cause” expresses anything, it is sympathy. It can be identified as someone who fears close, physical proximity to that issue. It must be fear, because why else would they not willingly lose themselves in that cause? Why would they not become devoted or even obsessed with it, while up close and breathing over it? It’s because they fear losing their self-importance. They fear the black hole that will swallow their own identity. This creates a culture of ignorance, where many disguise it as knowledge. What should make knowledge of another’s suffering? What should make it is the need to swallow the knowledge that is another’s suffering, with the tradeoff of losing knowledge of oneself.

That is empathy, for empathy encompasses knowledge. Sympathy, however, encompasses more of ignorance. We know not of any other person’s suffering, when we mean not to closely examine it. It wouldn’t be from figures, tables, or graphs. It would be from sharing in it, dining on it, making love to it, and saying “good morning” to it upon each new day.

On social media, people are naturally made distant. We are not connected, here. We are miles apart, not physically close. Due to the lack of physical closeness, we lack any ability to empathize. What do we fear? It would always have to be what we might lose from ourselves. From ourselves, for someone else, because we bore our eyes into that black hole. We allowed ourselves to become identified under another person’s suffering. There is no loose expression of empathy, any more than one person can have more than a single identity.

To empathize with everyone’s suffering would invoke insanity. This is much like a person who could, if it were possible, instantly gain all the knowledge contained in a single library. Such an instant input of information could not possibly be processed by the brain. As this relates to the knowledge gained through empathy, one’s care for all pain across our world would have to be excluded for those whom one has a personal connection with. All other feelings from that individual would deal in sympathy, having a place among ignorance for the sake of this individual safety. It’s the same safety that takes place in the fear that comes with sympathizing individuals, where what they fear is the loss of themselves and their identity.