A page from The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why by Amanda Ripley
I guess it’s not exactly surprising, but it seems to explain a lot of things I’m witnessing in my later adulthood. I’ve always felt deeply impressed by selfless heroes, but I never really pondered the profile of heroism.
I had asshole impatient parents (two of them), and I was like that. After I moved out, I had to learn empathy.
Ive been in a few emergency situations at- and outside-of work, and I’m always told that I’m a great leader who is calm and quick to act effectively.
My point is that empathy and leadership isnt dependent on parents.
Not entirely, and you did a great job of overcoming that. But learning empathy and really anything is easiest as a child and the parents are the best avenue for that.
What kinds of things did you consciousnessly and intentionally do to train yourself into a healthier and more empathic frame of mind? Did you naturally gravitate toward a vocation requiring calm decisiveness under pressure in dynamic and unpredictable situations?
I can’t say it was intentional. I never set out to become more empathetic. It was just that, as I began to navigate the world on my own, I realized how selfish and wrong was my thinking about the world and the people i met.
I learned that eating animals was a major cause of the climate catastrophe shortly after moving from my patents house, and so I became vegetarian and many of my friends were vegan. My initial motivation for this was mostly still selfish, since its still in my personal interest to avoid climate catastrophe. But obviously many of my peers were veg for more empathetic reasons.
Also at Uni many of my friends were poorer than me. So being exposed to poor vegan friends showed me a lot of what I wasn’t taught by my parents (empathy).
And then I went traveling, and I was amazed at how kind most strangers I met were. We’re taught to live in fear and that others want to hurt us, but I found most strangers wanted to help. And those who have less generally give more than rich folks.
As for work, I’ve worked as a sysadmin. It can be high stress when things break and you’re called-in to fix it. Its important to have a cool head. I’ve also done a lot of trekking, sometimes in sketchy situation. I think the leader attribute might be more my nature, whereas empathy was learned (or, maybe, being a selfish asshole was unlearned)