Pity

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I used to hate pity,found it as being treated as less human,but if you see it in the other scope,at least they really have positive feelings for you.Agree?

Not in the least.
Pity is contempt by another name. Pity is gladness or thankfulness on the part of the person pitying.
What they mean when they say “oh what a shame” is “thank goodness it’s not me”

It depends on how and when it's expressed. If I'm having a bad episode I'll take any kind of support I can get. Most of the time I'd prefer to be just treated as another human being.

To be clear we're talking about the same thing...

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pity

You see i used to hate pity,from a point of view and i was right.I used to think they treated me as less.But it has some positive too.They really at least empathize.

pity implies tender or sometimes slightly contemptuous sorrow for one in misery or distress

Pity is a wretched emotion.

ruveyn

It can be misplaced sometimes but I disagree with it be inherently contemptuous.

If you saw a starving child such as was in the example in the definition, what would you feel?

I don't think pity is contemptuous, but it is not at all charitable. I think if you take pity on someone you want them to stop being miserable because their misery bothers you, not because you want them to feel better. I also think if you take pity on someone you are inherently disrespecting them, because you are assuming they are incapable of helping themselves.

That said, feeling pity is inevitable, and so is getting it. I think it's very easy to want pity as a means of feeling cared for, but it's really a shallow feeling and rarely appropriate.

@kepheru

Now that I can agree with. (For the most part at least...)

Pity is caused by sympathy. The person showing pity feels the plight of the person pitied. When it leads to aid the person is trying to alleviate their own emotions so no it isn't in a strict sense, charitable. If the person needs the aid though, does it really matter? It's misplaced when the person showing pity doesn't really understand what's going on with the person pitied.



Now this I disagree with. (Kind of...but not completely...) My first thought is that not everyone is capable of helping themselves at all times. I don't feel it's a matter of disrespect to help them, nor do I feel it's wrong to ask for help when needed. In it's less extreme form though, someone who feels pity to someone who is simply in a less fortunate situation and help is probably inappropriate, feeling pity is still a normal human reaction. I don't believe they are trying to disrespect the other person. This kind of pity can be annoying though and is probably why pity is looked at unfavorably.



Probably true.

Feel.... Me, nothing.
But I "know" I ‘should’ feel charitable toward that person and his/her/their situation. I don’t know how pity feels; I do know how people are treated when in a pitiful situation. Rarely, in my experience, is a visible display of compassion involved in the treatment.
I volunteer Thursday evenings with my wife’s church. We do what is called a “soup run” where we drive the streets of Bristol and take food and clothing to the homeless. It is contempt that the majority of the members of the general public exhibit towards us, for handing out food /hot soup, and blankets to people whose lives were so bad that sleeping rough is a better alternative. I see kids and teens that would rather sleep rough than stay another day with abusive parents, and adults who have lost everything including their dignity and survive day to day on handouts.
Few, if any, people who don’t interact with these people (as I do) on a one- to-one, treat them with anything but distain and contempt.
Save the dictionary definitions for the English classroom.

I think it's odd that people sometimes pity me. So what if I have no friends at school, if my dad has been in Afghanistan for the past year, or if I never had (and probably never will have) a girlfriend. Oh boohoo, I've had such a lonely life.

That's completely full of crap. It could be worse. I could have a hundred pounds of battle gear on my back right now, on a stormy Tuesday morning, trying to keep myself afloat in deep, bloody water with bullets being fired at me and my squad mates from machine gun fortifications on Omaha beach. I could be going to work one morning in the world trade center and have the entire skyscraper fall down on top of me, crushing me to death. I could be in a prison somewhere being tortured for information. The possibilities are infinite.

Once again, I find it hard to believe that we're the ones that lack empathy.

Every time someone has expressed pity about me, it showed a particular cluelessness about my circumstances, attitudes, and experiences.

There's no understanding, no sympathy, no empathy, no reaching out, just "Oh, how terrible it must be. No one should have to live like that." Well, whatever. Lots of people do (whatever state or condition is referenced) and it isn't a completely abject, meaningless, horrible state to be in. It doesn't do any good or help to be told that my life is basically worthless in someone else's eyes.

I find pity very belittling. I think it lacks respect and is distant and cold. So I can't stand pity and I could do anything to avoid it even if it means acting like a b****.
I was pitied a lot as a child because I was small, weak, weird and had no friends. I always felt that the pity I got was some sort of confirmation that I can never be as good as others. It made me feel very bad about myself but it also made me angry enough to work my a** off to prove everyone wrong.

Compassion is a different thing. It's sincere and it comes from caring for someone without losing respect for them. Help that comes with compassion is a genuine effort to make someone feel better without making them feel bad about themselves.

Of course in some situations pity is better than nothing but unless I'm in a desperate need I try to avoid that kind of attention.

I see a lot of words being thrown about, "compassion", "charitable". I would suggest that we might be arguing semantics. I see them as essentially the same thing. What do you see the difference between "pity", "compassion", and "charitable"?

Why didn't you say that was from Merriam Webster?



I reserve the right to clarify my position when I realize that I've probably contradicted the opinions of the majority of people on this planet.