Critical Feeling as Empathy

Usually, we use ideation and discernment whenever we have conflicting feelings or are overwhelmed by feelings.

For example, when we have to choose where to eat, we just go with our first impulse.

But when we go out with our friends, we have conflicting feelings on where to eat.

• Some might want to eat American-style fastfood
• Some might want to eat Chinese food
• Others might want Indian food

Often, we do not immediately impose what we want on others.

Instead, we try to build a consensus so that the final decision will be fair.

If we were omniscient, we would be able to decide on where to eat that would be acceptable to all.

But since we are not omniscient, we have to ask what our friends feel. This is an example of critical feeling or empathy and sympathy

• Ordinary feeling is reflecting on feelings in the ordinary way within this limitation.
• Critical feeling is reflecting with an added Positive effort to push against or break through such limitation.

This is why it is commonly called feeling beyond the self or empathy, which Adam Smith called sympathy or fellow-feeling.

• This happens when we apply more effort into feeling beyond our selves.

The observers are continually placing themselves in the person’s situation in order to conceive similar emotions. Through sympathy, they are constantly considering what they themselves would feel if they were the sufferers. The person is also constantly placing himself in the observers’ situation. Through sympathy, he is also constantly led to imagine how he would be affected if he was his own observer. This creates in him a reflected passion which is much weaker than his own original passion

Adam Smith

Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part 1 Section 1 Chapter 4

The big misconception is to critical feeling needs us to be more emotional.

But being emotional is actually lack of control by the lower mind of its emotions.

Positive effort does not mean more feeling is needed.

• Instead, it needs more subtlety and refinement, as access to the Higher Mind, to breach the limitation imposed by the Negative Force.

Therefore the key component of Critical Feeling or empathy is the Positive Force, just as the key component of selfishness is the Negative.

This access to the Higher mind, and therefore more control of the emotions, is done by ideation and affirmations.

The Traditional Solution to Increase Critical Feeling

Traditionally, fellow-feeling was increased to overcome the 5 senses through the imposition of moral philosophy. This was then deployed by 2 groups:

1. The government, monarch, or emperor through traditions, customs, policies, and festivals
2. Religion through religious laws and scriptures

Golden ages were times when these were succesfully done:

• Pax Romana was brought about by Roman Legalism and Stoicism
• The prosperity of the Song and Ming dynasties were from the imposition of Confucianism and Neo-confucianism respectively
• Japan’s rise was due to the imposition of a Japanese version of Confucianism by the Tokugawa and Meiji Restoration
• The British Empire from the Glorious Revolution and their philosophy of enlightened liberalism from John Locke

These golden ages result in wealth which then bombards the 5 senses. This constant barrage on the senses leads to the decline of the morals that created that very wealth:

• Pax Romana was destroyed by imperial instability
• The Song were destroyed by the Mongols just as the Ming were destroyed by the Qing
• Japan was defeated in World War 2
• The British Empire was challenged and weakened by the Americans who enshrined a shallow kind of materialist liberalism