Empathy for Those Who Lack it

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Should we feel bad for people we think are bad
when bad things happen to them? What is the makeup
of somebody who should for we should forgive for their
actions and show them some sympathy or empathy for what
they may be going through. Or do we just not
and they have to reap what they sew. I'll explain
a couple of examples when we come back and we
can talk this through. Did you see what happened to

(00:21):
Deshaun Watson over the weekend?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Okay, so Deshaun Watson, you know the story? I do.
How many people do you think listening to this knows
this Deshaun Watson's story, like forty.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I think that I would say that out of all
the people who have heard of him, I'm curious. I
think that people are at least remotely familiar with the story.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Okay, So Deshaun Watson, up and coming young NFL quarterback
in Houston for the Texans. Remember his last game for
the Texans. Believe it was it a playoff game? Okay,
that's what I thought. They were beating Patrick Mahomes and
the Chiefs by twenty four points in the first half
before Mahomes and the Chiefs rallied in the second quarter,
and by halftime they had taken the lead. Oh that's right,

(01:02):
remember that. Yeah, that was a brutal And then in
the off season before all that, and then we got
into the pandemic and all that stuff. But Deshaun Watson
was accused by like two dozen women of he was
ordering massages, making them sign non disclosure agreements, and telling
them to you know, do other things to him potentially allegedly. Right,

(01:23):
none of this is great, none of this is a
good look. Uh. But also pretty much all of those
cases were settled. I am, I am I picking up
what this like? Is that fairly accurate? What you're what?
I'm what I'm saying here? Yeah? Yeah. So anyway, he
gets traded inexplicably to the Cleveland Browns, who signed him
to like a record breaking contract with a ton of

(01:45):
guaranteed money, expecting the same type of quarterback that looked
like he was going to be one of the top
five quarterbacks in the league for a decade at least.
I mean, he looked every bit the part. He looked
like he was going to be great. He was going
to be one of the greats. And he never materialized,
he got suspence and for I think it was eleven
games or something like that, for conduct detrimental to the
league is the personal conduct policy, even though he was

(02:07):
not found guilty of anything, which tells you that there's
probably quite a bit of evidence stacked up against him
that you know, he settled for a reason with his
millions of dollars. Then as time went on, more things
came out about him in the way that you know,
he treated these massage people messuse masis, messuses masise, I

(02:29):
like masise, the masise and h yeah, they basically these
were all women, and they claimed that he was having
them sign non disclosure agreements in whatever why he was
recovering from injury and whatnot. It was pretty convoluted. Well,
he's not got a great reputation and also happened to
be playing horrific at quarterback for the Browns, horrific like

(02:50):
one of the worst quarterbacks this season in the NFL
by far. Okay, and then on Sunday he tore his
achilles tendon. It ruptured. It was pretty ugly to look at,
to be honest with you. You know, you can tell
when you watch the replay something's going wrong. There didn't
look great. It was in Cleveland. This happened, and the
fans cheered as he laid there crying. You see him crying.

(03:11):
The fans are cheering. Now. I think Cleveland fans are
probably cheering because, Hey, our terrible quarterback that we're paying
bazillions of dollars to every single year's finally hurt. Maybe
we can try somebody else and have a chance to
win some games. A lot of the rest of the
world on social media were cheering because this is what
we seem to know to be a bad person who

(03:32):
has been accused of treating women inappropriately for a long
time while he was a professional quarterback, maybe even before that.
And so I got me to thinking. And then a
bunch of the Cleveland Browns players came out to his
aid and said, basically, look, that was incredibly inappropriate. These
people don't know him as a person, They don't know
him as a teammate and as a football player, and

(03:54):
I thought they found it to be quite disgusting. If
I can paraphrase the team in general, that the in
that stadium and even the people online cheering for him
getting hurt are terrible individuals. So I have to pose
the question here, Matt person known to be kind of
a bad person based on what we would consider, you know,
to be a bad person. You know, if you and

(04:15):
I were getting even one massage and try to, you know,
have a person sign a non disclosure agreement and force
them to do things or attempt to force them to
do things that they're not comfortable with, especially in a
sexual nature, you and I are going to jail. Yeah,
that's not going to end well for us. This guy
apparently had done that around two dozen times, or at

(04:36):
least with two dozen different people. Okay, settled them the
ones that stood up in court and the cases were active,
those were settled. They didn't even make it to court
because him and his millions of dollars were able to
avoid the case. Essentially, Now he's got a torn achilles.
Rehab is going to be terrible for that. He may
never play another down in the NFL based on all

(04:57):
the headaches that he's creating see Colin kaepern for instance. Right,
it's gonna be hard for him to find a starting
quarterback job in the NFL based on how he was playing,
plus him recovering from this type of injury. Yeah, should
we feel bad for him, or is it okay to
either celebrate or be completely indifferent as to this guy
losing his opportunity essentially to be a professional quarterback, a

(05:19):
job in which, by the way, he was not doing
very well lately. Is it okay in society to not
have empathy for a person that you feel like is
a bad person. You know, we don't throw parties, but
you know, we generally feel good about when bad people, say,
in the Middle East Hesbula Hamas some of their leaders
get taken out in the war against Israel, people who
have plotted terrorists things. We generally are like, yeah, they

(05:42):
got what was coming to them, and it's better for
the world that they're not there. This isn't that. But
is it okay to be happy that someone is going
through a life altering injury that likely causes him to
lose their career just because we know them to be
probably a bad person. What's the balance of amp? You know,

(06:03):
Harvey Weinstein or Weinstein he's got cancer. Now I saw
nothing but people saying praise God, I'll alujah. Harvey Weinstein
got cancer? Is that weird? We know him to be
a terrible person too. It's always seemed weird to me
personally to cheer for bad things to happen to people,
even if they're bad people. Yeah, I tend to agree,
But is it also kind of inappropriate to show empathy

(06:25):
to somebody who obviously doesn't show empathy to others? Do
you reput you so? In some cases? Now, if Sehn
Watson didn't have these, you know, twenty four twenty five
women coming out saying that he's a terrible person and
he made me do stuff, then we would have no
reason to cheer for Deshaun Watson to be getting hurt
at all. He's he has.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Already reaped what he sewed. He made those are these
Have these things been proven or where they settled out
of court? Okay, so allegedly he made these bad decisions.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Allegedly he was suspended for them for for all of
what was happening, even though we don't have actual hard
evidence that it actually happened, he was still willing to
settle out of court with all of the people that
had open cases against him.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
I don't feel personally responsible to be someone who is
reaping anything he's sewed, you know what I mean? Like,
that's not on me, that's fair. If I let me
put it this way, if I was the doctor working
on his achilles heel, I wouldn't take the day off, right.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, but that's different. You've you've you've sworn an oath. Okay, Well,
let me put it another way.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
If if he sat next to me in church and
asked me to pray for him, I absolutely would.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
All right, that's good. Yeah, you know what I'm saying,
Like I just, I don't You're not You're not buying
all this negativity about him, even though he's allegedly a
bad person. What about Weinstein? Same thing?

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah, I don't know how that we know he did
it that change things. Those are some horrible things to do.
But again, like I'm not the I'm not the reaper
in this case, you know what I mean. Like I
just you know, you do reap what you sew in
the sense that when you do horrible things and you
get caught, there are consequences, and that's how life works,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
But like I, but you don't think it's your responsibility
to be a jerk to somebody because you know them
to be a jerk. Yeah, it doesn't really seem like
that's let's say I don't. I have a couple other examples,
and then we'll farm this out for some calls. Hold
that thought. It's three forty eight. Hold your thoughts too.
We'll take calls coming up later on this because I
think it's important to kind of discover how our emotions

(08:21):
feel in these scenarios. It's complicated. I know it is,
and we'll continue that discovery process on news radio eleven
to ten kfab em Marie Songer on News Radio eleven
ten kfab. It's kind of like quasi therapy that we're
having to discover how we feel about things and if
that's okay or appropriate. Deshaun Watson noted bad person, whether

(08:43):
it's alleged or not. You can find a laundry list
of things that he's been accused of, he's been criminally
charged with. There were court cases that he settled outside
of court to avoid this while also happening to make
millions and millions of dollars as an NFL quarterback. He
tears his achilles on Sunday, and I see just ninety
percent of people just actively cheering that this man is hurt.

(09:04):
Let's pair that down to like your personal life did
you ever get bullied grown up? Like, was there like
a person that you know, you had a horrible relationship
with you just hated to see.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
They made you feel bad about things at different points. Yeah,
when I was when I was real young, I did
I remember I had a kid. This was when I
was like five years old.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Sure, but let's let's okay, so remember how that guy
made you feel? Yeah, that guy is, you would say,
a bad person at that stage of your life. Right.
He was certainly bad to me, that's for sure. So
he's bad to you. Let's say he is not bothering
you in the moment, but breaks his arm and is
in a lot of pain and a lot of trouble.
You get you see him and he's like, you know,
he's a young kid, he's a bully, but you know,

(09:44):
you watch him across the playground and all of a sudden,
he's holding his arm and his arm's all twisted up
and crook it and he's got to go to the
hospital and get his arm fixed, And then you see
him with a cast on the next day.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Do you feel bad for him? I don't know what
would be on my heart in that moment. Two answers
I suppose I, knowing myself, I feel like I would.
But then more importantly, I just I hope that I would.
You hope that you would? But would you?

Speaker 1 (10:07):
I mean? Is it is it appropriate or okay to
not feel empathy for a person that had no empathy
for you. That's a challenging thing to get yourself ready for,
especially when you're like, Deshaun Watson didn't personally offend me. Yeah,
you know. It was the twenty five or twenty six
women or whatever that you know, accused him of sexual
misconduct while they were his you know, giving him a massage,

(10:29):
you know, like it wasn't me. They got offended by that.
Most of the Americans that are cheering that Deshaun Watson
is injured, we're not personally affected by that. Does it
change things? I think it's easier for us to, you know,
forgive somebody like that because we weren't personally involved. Can
we pull ourselves together? Or is it okay for us
to have a human emotion of like, you know what,
good that your bully broke his arm, Good that he

(10:52):
has consequences that he has to pay for being a
terrible person. I have no problem, you know, I hope
that he's I hope that he's learning his lesson. Now,
Is that okay to feel that way, because I feel
like that would be a natural reaction in that moment. Now,
if the kid was about to like drown or something,
I'm not gonna wish that upon him. I'm going to
be running over there and trying to pull him out
of the lagoon. Right. I would hope that most people

(11:13):
would feel that way. They weren't gonna They're not gonna
actively try to see harm be done to this person.
But if an accident happens to this person and their
life isn't in danger or anything, and they're reaping what
they sew in some parts in some points, is it
a natural reaction to just feel pretty indifferent or even
in some ways kind of relieve that they are going
through some pain physically mentally, or you know, any sort

(11:37):
of adversity in their life.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Again, the only answer I can give you is that
I I feel like my faith compels me to absolutely
have empathy.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
There, even though they have personally wronged you. Yeah, I
don't really know how to give any other answer than that,
I'm saying that in the moment, I'm a human and
I've done all kinds of dumb things in my life,
and I've done mean things, and you know what I mean,
And the list goes on and on. I'm so imperfect,

(12:15):
it's ridiculous. But that's where I'm I'm standing on principle
of that. I feel like that's what I'm compelled because
of my faith to do. But and I would hope
most of us would feel that way. It's just a
matter of is it okay if you can't get there
immediately right sure? And actively celebrating, I think, is a
very different thing than being indifferent. Actively celebrating, that's there's

(12:36):
a little bit of venom into that. If you got
thoughts on this, callus four h two five five eight
eleven ten four h two five five eight eleven ten,
News Radio eleven ten kfab Christy, who was listening to
a station in Wichita. Wichita, Wichita, Yeah, Wichita.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
I always think of Jack White when I hear the
word Wichita.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
Why did he have a song that says Witchita does? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (12:57):
And he says it pretty cool the way he says
it got Youah, yeah, Okay.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
So we were talking about the Deshaun Watson injury towards Achilles.
He's a quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. But mostly not
necessarily just about that, but that as an example of
like our human emotions of you know, wishing ill or
celebrating or cheering potentially somebody who we think is a
bad person because he, you know, had several lawsuits that

(13:23):
he had settled out of court for being a terrible
person toward women allegedly. And if it's okay for society
as a whole to be cheering or be happy that
someone is dealing with a legitimate bout of misfortune. Well,
I had an emailer send this in this is Matthew said.
The Germans have a word for what you're discussing. It

(13:44):
is called shot in Freud. Shot in freud something like that.
It is a term borrowed from German compound word of
shot in, which is damage or harm, and freud, which
is joy. The definition basically is the experience of pleasure, joy,
or self satisfaction that comes with comes from learning of
or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another.

(14:08):
For instance, shot in Freud has been detected in children
as young as twenty four months and maybe an important
social emotion establishing inequity aversion. How much is different from that,
Like when you're a kid you watch Tom and Jerry
and watch Tom, you know, run into like a barbed
wire fence or something, or an electric fence and get zapped, right,
and you just laugh your head off because it's hilarious
Versus how much of that is just like us here

(14:29):
as an adult saying I'm glad that this the tortoust
terrible person has cancer, like Harvey Weinstein, I feel like
those are kind of fall into two different things, right.
There's not a whole lot of slap sticky enjoyment I
get out of people legitimately getting hurt now if it's
meant for comedy, or I watch my wife you know slip.
I mean, Okay, So here's an example where I think
that it might be shot in Freud, but not necessarily

(14:52):
what we're talking about. My wife turned around very quickly
and stubbed their toe when we were trying to take
care of a live mouse in my house. Remember that story?
Oh sure, And I couldn't help but laugh after I
got the mouse out of the house about the entire thing,
And she even laughed afterwards, even though it could cause
her a great amount of discomfort. You know, it's just
kind of a funny thing that happened. But she's not
an inherently bad person that I wouldn't be happy to see,

(15:14):
you know, Like Harvey Weinstein getting diagnosed with cancer. There's
a lot of people on social media saying awesome, that's great, hallelujah.
The weird feelings to me that we're okay with that,
or that we find joy in somebody's misfortune, even somebody
who is known to be a terrible person. And I
think you and I are kind of citing more of
our faith based education of how you're supposed to be

(15:36):
as a person and what makes you a good person.
At the same time, I do think that there's a
human element to it where your initial reaction is going
to be, Yeah, I kind of am glad that they're
dealing with some misfortune they earned that. Not to say
that it's good that people are celebrating this stuff, because
I don't think that that's good for society as a whole.
But I also kind of feel awkward saying, hey, we

(15:58):
shouldn't be celebrating Harvey Wine getting diagnosed with cancer or
Deshaun Watson tearing his achilles. I feel like I feel
like we were going too far with that. Well, I
feel like.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
There's I feel like there's more nuance to the emotions
we're talking about here. Is it joy that you feel
when you witness someone experience that maybe the justice you
feel that they deserve, because as we know, in this
imperfect world, not everybody experiences the justice that they.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
Do or do not deserve. That that would be another
factor right where you think that you know, what do
we call that karma? Right like karma gets the people
that deserve it, or if you've built up good juju
or good karma, you know you reap benefits of, you know,
good deeds that you might have done in the past.
Karma kind of I think for those who aren't super

(16:47):
into faith but might also be fairly into superstition, karma
is kind of that replacement, right of, like, hey, I
want to be a good person because I want to
build up some good karma or good juju for myself.
Whereas you know people who are or behaving like that
with who have faith in a higher power or God
or Christianity or Buddhism or anything like that, where the

(17:07):
teachings are literally the whole point is to be a
good person all the time, and you have to fight
away the urges to be a bad person. And there
are so many teachings within scripture or for Christians, or
teachings within you know, the practices of the Buddhists or
the Hindus of you know, this God or this person
like that. This, You will benefit and reap rewards if

(17:30):
you find yourself feeling that empathy loving those who have
wronged you, despite how difficult that may be. And if
all of us kind of did that, wouldn't just the
nastiest of the world kind of go away? In some ways?
You know, it's a human urge to probably wish ill
on people that you are not happy with, but one

(17:50):
hundred percent of the time that's bad. And when you're
a person of faith. To me at least, I don't
know anybody that would say, oh, yeah, it's totally okay
to be rooting for someone to hurt themsels because you
don't like them or that they're mean to you. That's
just not the way that it should be handled. Sure. Yeah,
although Ralphie in a Christmas story eventually just has enough
and takes care of business himself, like he beats Farcas
up the point help bloody pulp. Now does Farcus deserve it? Yeah?

(18:15):
But is it okay for Ralphie to do that? Is
it okay to hurt Farcas because Farcas is making fun
of you? Now, Farcus is like actively trying to hurt you.
I think in self defense, I have no problem with
that example. But you know, beating up somebody or wishing
they get hurt, or setting them up to get hurt
because you think they're a terrible person, that's a few

(18:36):
steps too far from me. I think we probably should
have got a psychologist on the show to talk about this.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
I was thinking, or a pastor somebody who can parcel
out I mean, because you're talking about a couple of
different things here. I feel like, because you are talking
about psychology, but then you're also talking about you.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Know, faith as well. Yeah, And I think I do
think faith is the reason we feel the way that
we feel is because of faith. Right, the people who
are actively rooting and cheering that Harvey Weinstein has cancer
and that Shaun Watson tore that his achilles, I would
be hard pressed to find them to be faithful people
if they're posting on social media, thank God Harvey Weinstein's

(19:13):
got cancer, or thank God that Deshaun Watson's tore his achilles.
Well it all.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Maybe I'll sound crazy, but I could even see that.
How that's almost like a biological urge.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
To do that.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, and then again, speaking from faith, and apologies for
people who don't want to hear that, but it's just
that's my experience. I would say, to be christ Like
is to not wrap your identity around all of your
biological urges and to be above that, so I think,
and that's the challenge, right, that's the challenge. And so yeah,
and that's Kevin said. They say that humbly. Kevin said,

(19:43):
this depends on a person's faith. When Jesus says to
love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
it really isn't you doing this, but the Spirit of
God in you. Okay, If the spirit lives in you,
you will pray for them. As the spirit leads. There
is no internal battle. Either the spirit lives in you
or not. All are called to repentance, even the ones
we call evil. I don't know if I could say

(20:05):
better than Kevin did in that email.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
To be honest with you, it's probably articulated better than
anything that we've been able to say over the last
ten minutes. It's a difficult thing. But either inherently in
your home, which i'm your home is your being, if
you will in this example, either inherently you feel like
you want to show empathy to everyone, or inherently you
find joy in bad people getting theirs. And I'm not

(20:29):
sure at the ages that we're at you can relearn that,
like it would take a real effort to relearn your
initial instinct in that regard you and me, our initial
instinct is to show empathy to that person. If the
first instinct for somebody our age is to do the
opposite and cheer that Joshaun Watson tore his achilles, I
don't know how long it would take or what that

(20:49):
person would need to hear to change that behavior. I
think it just inherently that they're going to be that person.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
I don't disagree, but again it again, I'm going to
disagree because of faith.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
Right, But how do you coach somebody who doesn't cite
that as a thing that's important to them. I guess
that would be. The other thing too, is they're just like, Okay,
I don't have faith. I don't believe in the God
that you believe in. And then now all of a
sudden you're trying to talk to them from a completely
different angle because everything that Kevin said here that we
agree on, they just be like, Okay, that means nothing
to me. That doesn't mean they can't be a good person.

(21:20):
It just means that how do you tell them that
they're not being a good person. There's really like, what
consequence is there for them celebrating to Shaun Watson's injury.
It really isn't one