Empathy and its Limits

In which John thinks about the limits of empathy, how we conceive of suffering, and how little he knows about being a bird. This video uses a format called The Format.

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[noviatoria]

"Illness is not a moral narrative"
It really helps to be reminded of that, as a disabled person. Thanks john

[ToppyTree]

There's something very soothing about The Format

[levinknox]

“I’m not disabled, you are just temporarily abled.”
- from a wheelchair’d guest speaker at my college architecture 101 course. Always stuck with me.

[ariana.cherise]

John’s deep pondering in the style of The Format is quickly becoming my absolute favourite thing like, ever.

[robinhahnsopran]

"There's nothing invalid about living with illness except that our social order makes it so" - John once again dropping truths about the disabled/chronically ill experience! ✨

[taylorcarmen]

As a professor of disability history thank you for the conversation about disability and illness. We will all become disabled if we live long enough. The best case senario is that you love your disabled life as I do mine.

[sarjulia]

"Illness is not some moral narrative..." so true. And neither is poverty.
Thank you for this wonderful video. It is... here because it is here.

[cheriseking]

I was reflecting on how much I am grateful for the words of John Green when it occurred to me that John is no longer a Chaplain at a hospital, but it's kind of like he expanded from a hospital to the world and he's still standing there helping us all through it. Thank you John.

[Bruh-eqkm]

I love this format. I also forgot there was a whole house that John occupies and not just that little space in front of the bookshelf. He and Sarah have such good taste.

[gopitri]

My mom, after I told her about my most recent issues with insomnia: "Have you tried just going to bed anyway?" I wish so badly that more people would just listen and believe. Thanks John.

[ashnewsam]

“I was very rarely alone, except in my fear and pain where I was always alone”… this. this is what I’ve been trying to explain to people about mental illness, but have never found the words. this whole video hit hard. but that one sentence describes my experiences in psychiatric hospitals all too well.
and I very much agree that listening is one of the most important things we can do for each other. I think society would be a whole lot better if we just did a bit more listening.
thank you john :)

[MarkThePage]

I don't know how you can claim to have insufficient empathy when you knew at 02:31 exactly how long it would take for me to give up and assume you just weren't in that shot at all.

[taniamurilloduran]

"I was very rarely alone, except in my fear and my pain, where i was always alone"- this applies to grief as well. There can be so much grief in disability where I have slowly lost friendships, jobs, opportunities, because I could not function as " i was supposed to" or "normal". Facing other's pain and fear can remind us of our own and I've come to accept that not everyone had the bandwidth to see my disability and see past it to my humanity.

[sierrarobinson]

Being very high risk and trying to still avoid our current plague, this really resonated with how it feels in 2023. While the world moves on, people like me are ignored and also invalidated constantly. That we're insane and overly anxious, that we want attention, that we're virtue signaling. I just want to be as healthy as I possibly can and no one is listening.

[chronic_payne]

As a chronically ill disabled person, thank you for this. Being disabled and therefore low income isn’t a moral failure, but I’m damn sure treated as such.

[ringstadschauffler]

john so clearly lives in a house with an art curator and is yet so frumpled in his dress and i love that leaving the visual contrast be is a key schtick of The Format (at least in my viewing experience of the format, like it speaks a lot to human frailty and my own disatisfaction with how i complete my own ambitions)

[thefollowingisatest]

I'm disabled and was recently kicked out of a home owned by people who promised they were my friends and would keep a place for me, and it made me realize that empathy is often limited by time. Like, having to deal with me could be exhausting at times and as such I isolated myself in the hopes of avoiding the erosion of their empathy, that process where over time you fixate on all the little annoyances and problems with a person until that is what they are, a burden, an annoyance. It can happen in any relationship of any kind, not just one between the disabled and abled. Empathy is work, and for a lot of people so worn down by the work already demanded of them by a callous society, it is too much work.

[meri]

I’ve had a hard time accepting that I am disabled, and now I have a hard time getting other people to accept it. This video hit particularly close to home today.

[danielarthur]

John! What an apt video for Rare Disease Day! We need to listen to chronically ill and disabled people more!

[goldstarsforall]

The Format is such a refreshing thing to watch. It's genuine artistry