Empathy can be weaponized when it becomes so extreme that individuals sabotage their own interests to uphold what they perceive to be the needs or failings of others. Though morally driven, this self-sacrificial impulse harms the empathizer as they attempt to level the community: to balance for equality.
The paradox is that at the extreme, we self-sabotage our survival instinct (by over-indexing empathy until it is socially symbolic) AND our ability to engage in conflict for reasonable solutions rationally. We become ideologically simple emotional zealots: saving others at your own cost will not save you; it will martyr you.
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