I thought I had empathy, I now know that I dont. I have sympathy based on logic. IE I know that it must be terrible to live in Iraq and have your family destroyed, however I cannot 'feel' that horror.
I realised the other day that I have had ONE experience of true empathy, a situation involving my partner where whenever I think about it I feel the remorse she must have felt, this feeling has nothing to do with me, and is definitely not sympathy.
The difference between empathy and sympathy is a feeling. Empathy involves 'feeling' the wrong, sympathy is knowing the wrong via logic.
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"Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand" Karl Marx