Abnormally Suasive

[Hairog]

Prologue

Human history is full of unexplained events and choices. Some human events defy logic. People make choices that are diametrically opposed to their well-being, along with the odd selection that leads to some great discovery.

In so-called, “free market” societies, almost all decisions can be traced back to getting more. Something was done or made, or not made, so that someone could gather more, more power, and wealth.

In dictatorships, it remains the same, but only a select few can choose. The people in power in both are either trying to stay in power or striving to gain more.

Luckily there are some rare individuals in our societies who look out for us…us being the common man or the proletariat. They reject MORE for themselves and choose to have less. These few, who put aside the human lust for more, are true heroes. In this era of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, I would argue, that they are the ones who have kept the human race in existence.

 

[Hairog]

Abnormally Suasive

(Our Altered History Explained}

This is a tale of a father and son, two generations of men who had an extraordinary gift. The father was born in 1868 and lived to the ripe old age of 90, dying in 1958. The son was born in 1908 and almost reached 90 years old, dying in January, 1998.

Both live on, long past their terrestrial years, through their deeds and actions. Both men left an indelible mark on the history of the world, and both abused their power before reaching enlightenment.

These two men defined and shaped the nineteenth and twentieth century like no others.

That being said, let’s begin.

 

[Hairog]

Chapter 1

This story will involve a lot of history, copious amounts of facts, and I probably will not skimp on statistics as well. In order to keep you engaged and reading further, I should reveal Richard and his son, Mark’s talent.

It’s straightforward really. They were the two most suasive men humankind has ever known. The word suasive may not be familiar to you. It certainly wasn’t for me. Yet once I discovered it, I feel it describes the two Kelly men perfectly.

If you wish, you can interchange the word persuasive if that makes it more accessible. But there is a subtle distinction.

Suasive is a stative verb and is one that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are static or unchanging throughout their entire duration. In contrast, dynamic verbs describe processes that entail change over time.

Now, this extraordinary ability doesn’t sound very exciting on the surface. Our two heroes didn’t have bulging muscles, x-ray vision or could travel faster than the speed of light, etc. No, nothing as exciting as that. Neither was particularly handsome, tall, or remarkable in any other way. In fact, most people consider both father and son, very dull.

This is disappointing news for some of you, I’m sure. I can imagine you sitting in your chair reading this novel and at this juncture, thinking sarcastically to yourself… Their superpower is PERSUASION!?!?! You could even be about to put the book down in disgust and decide to a challenging game of Scrabble with your 12-year-old daughter. I would encourage you to take advantage of such an opportunity, but in the absence of such an excellent activity, please bear with me and continue reading.

I’ll try and set the scene that you might be imagining…

The tableau is a villa in southern Italy. The maiden of our dreams is sitting in front of a mirror, leisurely combing her long dark hair.

Suddenly a dastardly villain reveals his presence with an evil laugh coming from behind the curtains of her balcony.

The maiden screams in fright and dashes for the door. Dastardly Dan intercepts her and throws her on the bed. The bulge in his pants makes it evident that he is going to attempt to defile her.

Suddenly the door to the hallway swings open.

Enter stage right: our hero walks in and announces.

“STAND BACK, I AM PERSUASIVE MAN, and I have come to save the day.”

He then proceeds to explain to Dastardly Dan why he should not rape and pillage.

I know, I know, it is much more satisfying to have our hero smack around the villain and put him in jail, where he will spend a few years. Unfortunately, the reality is that while incarcerated, Dastardly will not receive any counseling. He will finish his sentence and once again roam the streets with a chip on his penis.

How much better would it be to have our hero arrive on the scene, use his powers of suasion to convince the rapists to desist in performing his heinous act ever again, and then take him to jail.

By using his powers of suasion, our hero would force the rapist to realize that rape is a terrible crime.

Persuasion is much more potent than violence in deterring recidivism. Consequently, even though Dastardly Dan would receive no counseling, he would reenter society (as they all do), knowing what he did was very wrong. If he were indeed persuaded, he would not repeat his disgusting acts of violence and seek counseling on his own.

Perhaps it would help if we took a look at the words persuasion and suasion. They are very powerful words.

Definition

To cause (someone) to do something through reasoning or argument.

Or

“To cause (someone) to believe something, especially after a sustained effort; convince.”

Now, after reading the definitions, I think you’ll agree with me that “persuasion” is a strong word. Imagine having the ability to alter someone’s very thoughts and beliefs based on facts and logic.

The strong can always issue orders and edicts to the weak. Sometimes they will use force for short term compliance, but very rarely does this bring long-term submission. When you genuinely persuade somebody to take action, they feel good about the choices they’ve made. Likely as not, they then feel good about themselves. They are rewarded doubly. Once for doing the right thing. And twice for knowing it’s the right thing to do.

I would argue that persuading someone to join you in an endeavor is much more powerful than ordering them to comply with your wishes. With both, you’ll usually achieve your goal.

However, with even the threat of coercion, you add a layer of negativity. With persuasion, you get a sense of “doing what is right.

And as any kindergartner knows, “doing what is right” is what it’s all about

 

[Miranda Brawner]

This sounds intriguing. Looking forward to seeing what these individuals will do with their remarkable powers.

 

[Hairog]

Chapter 2:

The father, Richard Gardiner Kelly, was born on Apr. 15, 1868. By all surface accounts, his life was boringly normal.

He was, however, dilatory in learning to speak. In fact, he was excessively late. The probable cause was his ability to communicate quite extraordinary by facial expression and body language alone.

There really was no need for him to learn to speak as he could easily convey a whole sentence with just a shrug for a raised eyebrow. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, the toddler, Richard Kelly, could communicate quite well using his body to illustrate exactly what he needed.

Then came the sounds. He could mimic to perfection any sound he heard. So once again, he did not need words. He would just combine the sounds with body language, and everyone knew what he meant or wanted.

If he was hungry, he might make the sound of a stomach growling, gesture towards his mouth and look pleadingly into your eyes. If he wanted a wooden train for his birthday, he might make the sound of a woodcarver or lath combined with train sounds, a newborn baby crying, and once again that irresistible look in his eyes.

The whole process reminded one of the modern American Sign Language
with the addition of incredibly realistic sound effects. Anyone, no matter what language they spoke, instantly knew what the toddler wanted, or was trying to convey.

This ability would be of considerable use later on in his endeavors.

His parents were not overly concerned until he reached the age of 4 and was about to enter school. In 1875 there was no such thing as special education or mainstreaming. If you didn’t talk, you simply did not attend school. When his mother pleaded with him and explained the importance of speaking, he did. Within a day, he was using the vocabulary of a 12-year-old. It was pretty impressive for a four-year-old, and he was admitted into a public school with no further complications.

His preteen years were pretty much picture perfect. He got high marks in school and got along exceedingly well with his classmates. He did have one failing, and it was math. His brain simply did not grasp anything beyond the basics of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

He was helpless when it came to Algebra and Geometry. Luckily, he was able to grasp other scientific concepts and logical thinking. He did not excel but was above average. This ability to think logically, possibly saved humanity. This will become evident as we delve even further into his considerable impact on society and, therefore, on the entire planet.

The little boy who grows up to become Mr. Kelly does not realize that he has a talent until the sixth grade. It might have had something to do with the onset of puberty. He works his magic on Jackie Mobley, the most beautiful girl in the world…or at least in Mrs. Northrup’s 6th-grade class.

A little holding of hands, a peck on the check was all that was involved for Richard knew of nothing else. There were no sex education classes, and in 1880 proper families did not discuss the subject at any time. This meant that either you found out from a professional or you had a horrible honeymoon. Neither of which would be experienced by a 12-year boy in Springfield, MA.

That’s right; I forgot to mention the particulars of Richard’s childhood up till now. The Gardiner side of the family came over on the Mayflower and was one of the few to survive. His name was Richard Gardiner, and he had a few daughters. Some say six, and some say seven but we are only interested in one; her name was Mabel Grace.

I’m not going to bore you with all two hundred years of the family heritage, even though it was well known. It suffices to say that until Richard was born, everyone was farmers and lived within spitting distance of Springfield, MA,16+, and therefore each other.

There were many progenies and many deaths among those offspring as well. The death rate for children under the age of 4 was close to 50% during those centuries. If you could, you had a lot of children because you knew only half would reach the age were, they could give you the gift of grandchildren.

The church advocated for large families to fill its pews. The government wanted more and more citizens for its armies and to pay taxes, and parents wanted large families as a form of social security. The cynic would say, the more boys you had, the more boys you had to work the farm when you could no longer do the tasks required. The more girls you had, the more girls you had to take care of you when you became old and ill.

Back to Mr. Richard Gardiner. He bequeathed his most prized possession to his daughter Mable who passed it on to one of her surviving children who passed it on…This family heirloom happened to be a small cast iron pot that came over on the Mayflower with Mr. Gardiner and helped to keep him alive through that first few dreadful winters.

As tradition would have it, the fabled pot would come into the possession of the oldest son named Richard Gardiner Kelly. Along with the pot came a pseudo-ceremony developed during the intervening 200 years. The ceremony was very nice and innocuous, involving remembering past generations and cooking a meal in the pot.

The current Richard Gardiner Kelly was actually Richard Gardiner Kelly the Fourteenth. As you can see, the pot was taken very seriously, that is, until Richard’s mother, commandeered it.

The sacred pot was sitting near the fireplace, in the Kelly home, filled with wood. This is not the worst of it, in the opinion of the Mayflower’s descendants. The worst part is the ceremony has not been conducted in over 20 years. And according to the same descendants everything that has plagued the house of Kelly during the last 20 years, can be blamed on this fact.

But all this talk of pot has us getting sidetracked.

As was tradition, the family lived on a farm outside of Springfield, Massachusetts. Unlike tradition, they did not make their living by being farmers. They had a much more unique revenue stream.

It seems that there were thousands of fossils located throughout the 40 acres that made up the farmstead. The World’s dinosaur fascination started in the 1870s.

It was fueled in part by the much-publicized feud between Othneil Charles Marsh of Yale and Edward Drinker Cope, the Academy of Natural Sciences. The feud dominated the newspapers for a few months. This led to a public fascination with anything pertaining to dinosaurs. The farm was blessed with thousands of dinosaur tracks and fossils. Tours were given thrice daily at the princely sum of one copper penny. With 20 people taking a tour, this added up to a handsome annual income for the Kelly’s.

Poppa Kelly and occasionally mama, Kelly, gave the tours throughout the seven months of clement weather. This, of course, was another bone of contention (pun intended) between the Kellys and the rest of the clan who did not consider being a tour guide an honorable profession.

Another source of income, during the three-month leading up to Christmas, was the harvesting and transportation of small pine trees. This crop was gathered from the surrounding farms at pennies per tree and transported to the city, the borough of Brooklyn, to be exact. There they were sold to small entrepreneurs and sold on every… and I mean every corner in the Big Apple. They had a loyal clientele, and year after year, they bought their trees wholesale from the Kellys.

Which brings me to a story about Irv.

 

[Hairog]

Irv was a shrewd Yankee trader and a good mechanic who could do most anything he put his hand to. Irv sort of caught the “Christmas tree bug” from the Kellys and decided to drive his truck up to Vermont and pick up a load of retail trees at the source. Arriving in tree country, he stopped to ask the price of a stack of loose trees in a farmyard. “I’ll take $150 for the lot,” said the farmer.

“Seems a little too high,” said Irv, “I have to think about it.”

“All right, think away. I’ve got a run over to town and be back in an hour or so.”

Minutes later, another trucker came along. “What do you want for the trees, Mister?”

“I’ll take $200 for the lot,” said Irv.

“I’ll take them.” They had just completed the loading when the farmer return. Before the farmer could speak, Irv went up to him and said, “I decided to take your trees, Mister. Here’s your $150.”[1]

​

[1] - retold from the book "80 – odd years" by Harry Burton Kellogg the First

 

[Hairog]

Richard was not a part of any of these endeavors and was free to grow up as a child should. A good number of his contemporaries had to quit school and join the labor force by the age of eight. Child labor was rampant on the eastern seaboard in the 1870s. Not quite as bad as the coal mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia but still quite pervasive. Richard’s situation was rare, and he was vaguely aware of it.

Many of his friends and family were significantly affected by the Long Depression, which was caused by the Panic of 1873. The Long Depression lasted for six years, unemployment was high, and wagers were being constantly slashed. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was a result of 3 wage decreases in a year.

An estimated 100 people were killed nationwide as the railroads hired goons to attack the strikers, and a few state militia and National Guard units joined in the violence. The workers retaliated, and things soon got out of hand with Americans killing Americans once more.

All this mayhem was not lost on the young Richard Kelly. Two of his school mates’ fathers were killed and another severely beaten in faraway West Virginia. They couldn’t have a proper funeral because the bodies were buried where they were slain. He was affected very deeply by one father’s death in particular, as the fellow used to bounce Richard on his knee during the few times he traveled home from laying tracks out west.

Here was a man he knew and liked dead because of a difference of pennies. It just seemed to Richard that there had to be a better way to resolve such disputes. Now, this was heady stuff for a 12-year-old to be contemplating. In economically hard times, you had to grow up fast.

Luckily the rich kept coming to follow dinosaur tracks and still bought enough Christmas trees to keep the family fed and healthy, which brings me to another story.

 

[Heldenhammer]

Quite enjoy this so far. Love your writing style and the general set up so far. A smooth-talking, smart man is a dangerous one.

 

[Hairog]

Mom and dad Kelly used to lead the tours which would include following an unusually long track of a man-sized dinosaur. The tracks would angle off to the northwest and intersect a fence and then continue on into a wooded area. Invariably Ma or Pa Kelly would attempt the same joke.

The guide would come to a fence and tell the tale of how the dinosaur was first walking and then started to run, and then just before the fence, they would say, “and this is where the dinosaur jumped the fence.” About 10% of the following groups would get the joke, which hopefully I do not have to explain but will give you a hint. Wooden fences did not last 66 million years.

 

[Rolen Keng]

I quite love what you have done with the story, so thank you and I'll always be waiting.

 

[Hairog]

Slow but sure Rolen. Just like World War III 1946

Glad you like it so far.

 

[Hairog]

Another factor in how the Kelly’s made ends meet, was the fact that Mrs. Eloise Bose Kelly had a knack for getting the best prices on anything she bought. From the basic commodities the family needed, to a few luxury items like horehound candy. Possibly the father and son’s gift stemmed from their mother / grandmother, and then multiplied tenfold. Or perhaps Mrs. Kelly had the ability as well, but since she was a woman of her time, did not have the opportunities available to her male offspring. Unfortunately, we will never know. And now back to the story.

 

[Hairog]

Until age 12, Richard led a pretty idyllic childhood for his day and age. Then things changed when he developed empathy, empathy for a friend who lost their father, which grew into empathy for the children in his class who were forced to quit school. The families were so poor that they sold their six-year-olds into virtual slavery. They were forced to work in the mines and factories, and sometimes they were even shipped across state lines.

This was before child labor laws, before the weekend, before the 40-hour week, and some would say that this was before civilization.

Like the words suasive and persuasive, we may have a word you are not familiar with. Empathy and sympathy are very often interchanged. Yet they have different meanings.

The difference in meaning is usually explained with some variation of the following: sympathy is when you share the feelings of another; empathy is when you understand the feelings of another but do not necessarily share them.

If Richard had been sympathetic to his friends, he probably would not have been spurred into action. He may have been paralyzed with grief or, worse yet, dehumanized by the need for revenge.

By being empathetic, he was able to act effectively when faced with injustice. Being empathetic also means that you can see both sides of a dispute. You can, with minimal effort, empathize with both parties, but it is virtually impossible to sympathize with both.

Richard’s quest to fight injustice started out on a relatively high note. He overheard a conversation between his father and the wealthy landowner named George Darby. It seems that Mr. Darby was about to start a private school for boys just outside of Springfield Massachusetts. The initial enrollment would be 60 boys. Richard currently had six childhood friends who were either about to be sent away to work or were already working in near-by factories.

He began to wonder and ponder on ways to save his friends from the fates they were destined to incur. His pre-teenage mind started to fantasize and hatch fantastical schemes. The one that clearly stood out, and seemed to be the most reasonable, was to find some way to enroll his half a dozen friends into the new private school that was to be started by Mr. Darby.

But how, he thought, could he help their families at the same time make up for the lost income that the child laborers would have created. A simple, childish solution came to mind. Not only would they attend Mr. Darby's school, but someone would pay their families as well. It solved the problem of keeping his friends from the factory and mines yet provided the income needed for their families.

Richard happened to know where Mr. Darby lived and decided, on his own initiative, to visit him the next day.

Richard was allowed to wander the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts, almost at will when he was not in school. During this period in history, it was a small town, and that was the way things were done.

On a typical non-school day, he would get up in the morning, eat breakfast and then join his friends who would migrate all over town playing games and generally enjoying life. These same friends were the ones that were being sent to workhouses and mines.

The end result was that on this fine summer day in 1883, Richard had ample opportunity to visit Mr. Darby during the day. Mr. Darby’s mansion was not far away from the trolley car stop near the edge of town. As usual, Richard talks his way into riding the trolley for free with the added bonus of assisting the conductor by ringing the bell. This was standard practice for Richard and was probably his first demonstration of his suasive powers.

Nobody, including Richard, recognized anything unusual in his ability to get free rides and gain favor with the conductor. He was an appealing and handsome boy, who at this point in his life, was adept at engaging adults in small talk. Most people would not even notice him currying favor with another individual. Only the person Richard was concentrating on seemed to be affected by his body language and physical presence more than the actual words he was saying to them.

If anybody were to overhear the conversation, it would sound like a normal little boy asking for a small favor. However, if you were the object of Richard’s focus, you would find yourself profoundly affected. Richard did not persuade people using flowery rhetoric or indisputable logic. His power lay in the unspoken.

Richard hopped off the trolley and proceeded to walk up the hill to Mr. Darby’s estate. After a beautiful five-minute walk on a magnificent tree-lined avenue leading up to the manor, he strode up to the door and was just able to reach the appropriately ornate door knocker. The stable boy had dutifully forewarned the house staff that a visitor was imminent and that he was a small boy.

The head Butler, Mr. Edwards himself, answered the door, intent on turning this young man away, for there could be no practical purpose for this visitation other than to solicit funds for some charity or possibly even to beg for food. Richard was, after all, wearing his play clothes.

Mr. Edwards opened the door and possibly uttered at the most three words before he was struck by Richards's physical presence and promptly ushered him inside. The housemaid, stable boy, and a scullery maid were within earshot and were amazed at Mr. Edwards's actions. For they had only heard the conversation and had not experienced the full force of Richard’s suasiveness.

Perplexed, the maid followed Mr. Edwards orders and ushered a small boy into the waiting room. Meanwhile, Mr. Edwards rushed up the stairs to locate and inform Mr. Darby that he had a visitor waiting to see him. Mr. Darby was not at all amused at being awoken from a catnap in his favorite chair and would have reprimanded Mr. Edwards had the head, Butler, not been so insistent.

Mr. Darby collected himself and usually walked down the stairs to the waiting room, where he was amazed to find the son of Mr. Gardener, waiting expectantly for him. Being a gentleman, he did not immediately start to dress the boy down for interrupting is reverie.

Richard stood up, walked over to Mr. Darby, shook his hand, and that was the end of all resistance by Mr. Darby. Once again, I want to reiterate that the words are not what mattered in Richard’s presentation. So there is no need to recount what was said Word for Word. It is suffice to say that the words were adequate to convey what Richard’s desires were.

The upshot being that Mr. Darby should enroll Richards's six friends in his new school and, in addition, pay their families for the privilege of educating their children. Mr. Darby readily agreed, and they shook hands.

This time Mr. Edwards was listening in on the conversation through an air duct, and he was amazed that Mr. Darby readily acquiesced to the young man’s wishes. For he was not physically present in the focus of Richards suasive ways.

Richard was then served some tea, given a cookie, then another cookie as he watched Mr. Darby start the process of enrolling his friends. Satisfied that all was as he wished, Richard bid adieu to Mr. Darby, then Mr. Edwards, and finally the stable boy and walked down the avenue towards the trolley stop.

Richard had also asked Mr. Darby not to confide in his father about their visit, which Mr. Darby readily agreed to abide by his wishes.

The trolley came, Richard boarded, ring the bell, sat down, and was taken home.

 

[The Professor]

Minor nitpick. Empathy is the stronger word not sympathy. Sympathy is where you feel concern but not necessarily share the emotions: I care about your hurt (sympathy) vs I feel your hurt (empathy). Sympathy is essentially a synonym for compassion.
Or to put another way, sympathy understands, empathy feels.
This is much more evident with nonhumans where, for example, one can sympathise with a lion for missing a kill but not be able to empathise for that.

 

[Hairog]

I have a nitpick to your nitpick, Professor. I go with Mirriam Webster's explanation of the differences.

" sympathy is when you share the feelings of another; empathy is when you understand the feelings of another but do not necessarily share them."

A sympathetic person has to choose sides in a conflict. They cannot be sympathetic to both or more sides.

An empathetic person can feel empathy for all sides.

"The act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings of another is known as sympathy. Empathy, on the other hand, not only is an identification of sorts but also connotes an awareness of one's separateness from the observed. One of the most difficult tasks put upon man is reflective commitment to another's problem while maintaining his own identity.
—Journal of the American Medical Association, 24 May 1958"

 

[Hairog]

If you may recall your preteen years, for the most part, you were pretty confident of, well, everything. You considered yourself worldly and wise and able to do almost anything your mind could conceive. No obstacle seems too great or challenges impossible to conquer.

My epiphany occurred when a attempted to build a treehouse without assistance from any knowledgeable adult. After all, I had seen many a TV show and movie, where Spanky and the gang made all sorts of Rube Goldberg devices that work like a charm. My children were brought up on films such as The Goonies or ET. In this genre, the adults were in the way and very often wrong concerning the actual situation. Only the kids knew what was truly going on.

My particular awakening was thankfully non-life threatening and only involved a slow collapse of a very poorly built structure in a tree during the first windy day following the cessation of construction.

I was, of course, crestfallen but unharmed as I climbed out of the muddy puddle into which I had fallen. The next day my dad and neighbor raised what was left, salvaged the wood, and together we three built a treehouse that lasted ten years and into my teenage years, and at one point provided a raccoon family, a safe place to live out the summer.

My point being that Richard never thought twice about what he had just done. To his way of thinking, he had just presented the facts and explained the opportunity that Mr. Darby could avail himself of. The concept of a scholarship was not unheard of by any means. Of course, the major twist was paying the families of the lost wages while their children attended school. To Richard, this concept was not unusual and made perfect sense.

His friends would get a good education and hopefully use it to their advantage and climb the corporate ladder and become future Mr. Darbys, which was exactly the outcome Mr. Darby hoped for.

Like any other non-school day, Richard came home, played for a while with his toy soldiers, and about 1:30, his best friend, Sam, showed up, and they went out and played baseball until supper.

Richard had just changed the fates of six little boys from Springfield, Massachusetts. All but one would go on to very successful careers and positively affect the future of the world. Unfortunately, the one little boy who did not, died in the carriage accident before he could attend school.

Alfred H. Samuels died at the age of nine years old when his family carriage collided with a delivery wagon, and plunged down the hill. His death may have influenced the young Richard into finding an alternate mode of transportation. He developed a keen interest in motorcars shortly after his friend’s death.

Little did he know that the mayhem caused by the combustion engine would far surpass the accident rate caused by horse-drawn carriages. But such is the power of hindsight.

Unlike the superheroes of fiction, Mr. Kelly and his son could not be in two places each at the same time. Nor could they travel faster than, initially, a train. Another caveat and limitation was the fact that they had to be present to use their aptitudes. It might have had something to do with pheromones, but we will probably never know.

The son, Mark, did try and use his abilities through television media, and it did not work in the least. Our subjects had a series of limitations that prevented them from solving all the world’s problems. To summarize …

1. They could not travel faster than the current modes of transportation allowed

2. They had to present to ply their talents

3. They could only be in one place at one time

4. They had no unique insight as to where the next critical juncture in history would be.

5. They could not time travel

This is why evil on a massive scale still prevailed despite Richard and Mark Kelly's lifelong efforts. They were both were very upset at the rise of Hitler. How could two ordinary men foresee the evil that Nazism or, for that matter, Stalinism could bring to the world? They collectively got it wrong in both of these cases.

Mr. Kelly was in his early sixties in the 1930s, and Mark was in his thirties. Either one could have gotten to Adolf and convinced him to remain a failed painter or kept Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili on the farm.

But such is life.

 

[The Professor]

I have a nitpick to your nitpick, Professor. I go with Mirriam Webster's explanation of the differences.

" sympathy is when you share the feelings of another; empathy is when you understand the feelings of another but do not necessarily share them."

A sympathetic person has to choose sides in a conflict. They cannot be sympathetic to both or more sides.

An empathetic person can feel empathy for all sides.

"The act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings of another is known as sympathy. Empathy, on the other hand, not only is an identification of sorts but also connotes an awareness of one's separateness from the observed. One of the most difficult tasks put upon man is reflective commitment to another's problem while maintaining his own identity.
—Journal of the American Medical Association, 24 May 1958"

Um, you're reinforcing my nitpick with the final paragraph which shows empathy as the stronger emotion.

 

[Hairog]

Huh, really? I just don't see it that way.
An empathetic person would not be moved to get involved on a deeper level. They understand, or try to understand all sides of the situation. They can go home at night because they have no skin in the game.

A sympathetic person would pick sides and could become very involved in advancing the solution they are sympathetic to. They may even put their own safety on the line.

I worked for FEMA and have a very high Emotional Quotiant and am very empathetic. Quite frankly, I would have become a basket case if I didn't. I've seen it happen to many emergency response personnel. The leadership under Obama (not Obama himself, but the director of FEMA) was abysmal, and through his lack of empathy, drove out the exact kind of person who thrived when trying to bring order out of chaos. Many who were short on empathy became sympathetic to more and more cases and couldn't let go. They kept in touch with the survivor long after their deployment was over. Too often it tore them apart.

 

[The Professor]

Huh, really? I just don't see it that way.
An empathetic person would not be moved to get involved on a deeper level. They understand, or try to understand all sides of the situation. They can go home at night because they have no skin in the game.

A sympathetic person would pick sides and could become very involved in advancing the solution they are sympathetic to. They may even put their own safety on the line.

I worked for FEMA and have a very high Emotional Quotiant and am very empathetic. Quite frankly, I would have become a basket case if I didn't. I've seen it happen to many emergency response personnel. The leadership under Obama (not Obama himself, but the director of FEMA) was abysmal, and through his lack of empathy, drove out the exact kind of person who thrived when trying to bring order out of chaos. Many who were short on empathy became sympathetic to more and more cases and couldn't let go. They kept in touch with the survivor long after their deployment was over. Too often it tore them apart.

(Fyi I spot replies quicker if I'm quoted or @)
Think of the difference between like and love, or hate and loathe, the latter or obviously more powerful emotions but the former have broader applicability.

 

[Hairog]

I think I see what you're trying to convey. In the end empathy is more powerful because of all the different situations it can mitigate. Whereas sympathy really limits your options.