Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Rafael Thundercat]

Society if Fakery and No Empathy no God are interesting to make a meta analysis. Reading both together and reflecting on the paradoxes between both. I am still in process of doing it. Using AI do built the argument, but recommend people here to contemplate and question personally. 

I mean, the writing is great, but still one can see some paradoxes. 

[Yimpa]

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I will not because my health is not good.

me too bud 🫶🏼

[Extreme Z7]

The video embed on the Victor Ostrovsky post is clearly wrong. It instead links to another wilderness survival video.

[Leo Gura]

27 minutes ago, Extreme Z7 said:

The video embed on the Victor Ostrovsky post is clearly wrong. It instead links to another wilderness survival video.

It is right, try refreshing your browser.

[Extreme Z7]

25 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

It is right, try refreshing your browser.

Ahh it works now. While I have been having internet problems lately, this is still a bug I've never seen before.

[Nemra]

It sometimes happens on my side as well.

Refreshing the browser helps.

Edited 2 hours ago by Nemra

[Rafael Thundercat]

On Empathy

I think the Blog post is open for reflection. 

How much empathy you show can depend on whether you expect it to cost you something.

Research on motivated empathy found that people regulate empathic effort based on perceived cost. Psychologist Jamil Zaki's research challenges the idea that empathy is a fixed trait some people have more of than others — people chose to avoid empathy-inducing situations when the cost felt too high, and leaned in when it felt manageable.

Motivated Empathy: Empathy runs through active regulation, rather than an unlimited, automatic supply. It gets weighed against expected effort and expected payoff before it even fully engages. The brain's empathic-response regions are gated by prefrontal cost-benefit appraisal, a kind of upstream filter deciding how much engagement is worth allocating to the moment.

This is why you can feel deeply empathetic with one friend and strangely distant with another going through something similar. It doesn't mean you actually care less about the second person.

Someone avoids checking in on a friend going through a hard breakup, rather than from indifference, because part of them expects the conversation to be emotionally costly. The avoidance isn't coldness. It's cost-avoidance wearing a colder face than it deserves.

People in caregiving roles — nurses, parents, therapists — often show reduced empathy over time. It's rarely because they've stopped caring. The perceived cost of full engagement has simply become unsustainable. Chronic high-cost empathizing without relief is one clear route to burnout. The system was never built to run at full engagement indefinitely.

Lowering the perceived cost of empathizing, rather than forcing more empathy through sheer effort, is what actually restores engagement. Support, rest, and boundaries change the cost side of the equation more effectively than willpower does.

Name the cost honestly before a hard conversation instead: "I want to be here for this, and I need ten minutes first." That beats pushing straight in while already running on empty. That honesty protects both people. It keeps you engaged instead of quietly checked out while technically present in the conversation.

What you actually want is to show up for people without it costing you everything you have left. Sustainable empathy, rather than maximum empathy, is what actually keeps you present for the people who need you.

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Also, what if empathy could be seen with spectrums like any other trait. Of course it can reach God Love levels, what we know most of the humans cant reach, or lower levels where a being have no empathy or just say he dont care for it. 

I found this in my research: 

EMPATH ARCHETYPES
Which one did your survival build?
1. THE OPEN EMPATH
You feel the room before you feel yourself. You absorb moods, track every shift, and call it intuition. You give too much. You over-explain. You make yourself easier to bear.
Your shadow:
You call it empathy when it's really self-abandonment.
You don't just read the room... you disappear into it, or get crushed by it.
2. THE EMBODIED EMPATH
You can feel someone without becoming responsible for them. You recognize what's yours, what's theirs, and where you end. You don't need to rescue someone to prove you care.
Your shadow:
Boundaries can turn into armor.
Discernment can turn into distance.
You can become so committed to protecting your peace that no one is allowed close enough to disturb it.
3. THE SHADOW EMPATH
You've lived through the fire and learned how fire moves. You recognize manipulation, power games, and the people who feed on access to others. You know how to disarm an energy vampire, expose a narcissistic dynamic, and hold your ground without begging to be understood. You're powerful because you can walk into the dark without losing your sight. You see what others avoid. You protect fiercely, confront cleanly, and refuse to let harm hide behind charm.
With discernment comes the strongest shadow.
You may be drawn to conflict, because the battle is where you feel strongest. Your hunger for justice can turn into punishment. You can crush someone while convincing yourself you're protecting everyone else.
And when strength becomes your only language, loneliness follows.
No one comes close, because no one feels strong enough to stand beside you.
You know how to fight monsters, but your work is to remember that you don't have to fight alone.

So, if everything is survival, empathy levels may be different depending of what certain people had to face during their development. Like @Emeraldsaid in another post about being stoic. I relate with that because when experiences we have may harden us for being empathizing with everyone, since it is energy draining and biologicaly, nervous system wise we may not have capacity to care about all suffering of everyone. Sometimes is just lack of capacity. 

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On Capacity:

The deepest feelers don't need to learn how to feel less.
But we do need the capacity to feel deeply without disappearing into everything we feel.
Sensitivity without a deeply rooted connection to yourself can make every emotion, interaction, and change in someone else feel like something you must carry and experience inside of yourself.
Emotional capacity isn't how much you can tolerate and carry before you finally collapse.
And it isn't how many people's emotions you can hold while continuing to function.
Capacity inside of sensitivity is your ability to remain in relationship with yourself while something moves through you.
To feel deeply without automatically absorbing, merging, fixing, managing, pushing or abandoning yourself.
When you're highly sensitive, you may notice the slightest shift in someone's voice.
Feel tension before anyone names it.
Sense disappointment, fear, or grief that isn't being spoken.
Your attunement is probably absolutely extraordinary.
But without energetic differentiation, what you perceive in another person can quickly become what you carry for them.
Your sensitivity doesn't need to become smaller. It's not something to have shame around.
But your relationship with yourself needs to become strong enough to remain present inside everything you feel.
That way you can recognizing what is moving through you, but doesn't actually belong to you...
I can feel you without becoming you.
I can experience your disappointment without feeling like a disappointment.
I can care deeply without carrying all your pain.
I can stay connected to you without leaving myself behind.
 

Edited 1 hour ago by Rafael Thundercat

[Clarence]

@Leo Gura What do you enjoy about watching survival videos?

[Leo Gura]

46 minutes ago, Extreme Z7 said:

this is still a bug I've never seen before.

It just requires a refresh. It is not a bug.