If you have empathy, you do both.

That doesn't mean that your sympathy for each is equal.

EDIT: But, the measure in the article doesn't measure empathy, which is independent of position, it measures whether one frames virtue through victimization narratives. People who agree with that wouldn't empathize with both, they'd empathize with the one that they see as the slave, which would all too often be driven by confirmation bias and tribal victimization narratives within their in group. I mean, we live in a country where the racial, religious, gender, and political ideology groups (alone and in every combination) having measurably disproportionate social, economic, and political power have equally strong or stronger (within their own communities) victimization narratives to the groups that are objectively disadvantaged. It's very easy for people to answer yes to the question that supposedly measures empathic concern when they in reality have no empathy for those outside of their identity group, which they perceive as disadvantaged and their only “empathic” concern is for those within their in-group that they identify as even greater victims of the same injustice that they themselves are victimized by.

Empathizing with the master is difficult for many people. Not realizing that a person, born into the lucky privilege of being the master, doesn't see what they do as victimizing to a slave. It's just how life works for them.

Tim Minchin did an interesting bit on empathy a while back. Discussing the nature of empathizing with the shooter, as well as the shooter's victims, in incidents of mass shootings. The podcast is available here if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGrPkI4xkWA

Based on what you're saying, it's immoral to send the shooter to prison or punish him in any way since he had no control over his actions and therefore was not guilty of assault or murder. Bet that theory goes right out the window when it's someone you know lying dead in a pool of blood. Does this apply to all actions? In that case mortality simply doesn't exist and there cannot be good or bad things. How far do you take this delusion is what I'm curious about?

> Based on what you're saying, it's immoral to send the shooter to prison or punish him in any way since he had no control over his actions and therefore was not guilty of assault or murder.

No, it's not; determinism applies to the punisher as much as the punished, so if the fact of determinism negates any moral culpability for the act being punished, then it likewise does so for the punishment.

Moral & immoral are just words for sharing human expression from one to another. In a sense the words are nonsensical when understanding determinism. Now with the foregoing communicated, humans should strive for improving life and understanding the current system is deeply flawed.

> How far do you take this delusion is what I'm curious about?

The delusion is assuming people have control over their actions. Yes it's wrong that we punish people that didn't have control over the life they were born into and what happens without any control because the universe made it so. Yes of course it applies to all actions humans are forced to do in life.

So if someone murdered your whole family, you'd have no issues with it because it was predetermined. Got it.

Determinism doesn't preclude the notion that I would be determinedly upset if that happened. In fact, the opposite is true. I would be very upset, because I like my family (most of the time).

This is where the phrases "don't poke the bear" and "don't grab a snake by its tail" come from. People have determined that it is likely to lead to a not-so-fun outcome.

Determinism, essentially, is empathy with nature. It is understanding that living creatures have needs, and when those needs are not met, bad things happen.

To use a light-hearted example. A parent might notice a deterministic pattern, whereby their child begins to cry when it is hungry. Feeding the child to prevent the crying is empathizing with that child.

"Empathizing with the shooter" is a matter of learning what lead the shooter to become a shooter so that you can try and prevent it from happening again. It doesn't mean that the shooting doesn't bother you, or that if someone is about to attack your family that you write it off as "predetermined".

Edit: A better example might be empathizing with an asteroid that is about to destroy the planet. Is being angry that it is on its current path helpful? Not really. Would you be upset if it crashed into Earth? Probably (albeit briefly).

Determinism = Understanding that the asteroid obeys the laws of physics, and looking out for situations that cause an asteroid to begin flying at the Earth so that it's damage can be mitigated, or prevented.

The blame would be at whatever created the universe. Since everything is chained backwards to that moment. You seem to not understand how things happen in reality if you're asking this question.

#nondualism

The master and slave are part of the same whole; one cannot exist without the other, and more generally, everyone is a flawed or incomplete person in one way or another. Having empathy for one without having empathy for the other is to misunderstand the universe.

Wouldn't #dualism be more appropriate with that explanation?

Because it would ascribe fundamental different properties to master and slave as beings that just might have been different opportunities at one point? I would think so, because the same "whole" seems arbitrary.

This sounds inspired by Hegel's dialectic of the master and the slave.

Would you seriously argue that in 1864?

Let's do an 1864 argument.

Have empathy for the slave. He is endowed with dignity by the Divine. Jesus Christ paid a price in blood to set him free from the bonds of sin. What God has freed, let no man return into bondage.

Have empathy for the master. Jesus died not only for the upright, not only for the oppressed, but for tax collecting thugs, prostitutes — even the murderer crucified beside him. He raised a saint from Saul of Tarsus. He died for the slave's master. Oh, yes, the master is undeserving, but none of us are deserving. If thou, O Lord, wilt mark iniquities, how should I stand?

But know what shape this empathy for the master takes. You must fear for his soul. If it is consumed by sin, he will be cast into perdition. He must well and truly repent, and his sin is grave.

As a bald statement explicit empathy would (perhaps correctly in a political context) be confused for endorsement. That does not imply a lack of empathy: https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2009/5/18/732785/-

(Ignore the partisan commentary please, I am only linking for the quotes which do demonstrate this.)

I certainly would. A little more empathy for slaveowners (that is, the ability to see things from their point of view) would have enabled the US to abolish slavery without the bloody civil war.

Every country in the western henisphere abolished slavery around about the same time, but only in the US did it cause a civil war.

No, it wouldn't have. The South's entire way of life was centered around the in involatile, unassailable idea that human beings are property.

The difference is that in no other Western country were slaveowners ready to resort to violence to defend that idea.