Toxic-Sympathy

Theory of Self-Relativity defines “Toxic-Sympathy” as “Intentionally nurturing victimhood in order to manipulate and win over the weak and the susceptible.”

Increasingly, especially in motivational and leadership teachings, there have been entities and individuals who try to win over quantities of followers by engaging in what Theory of Self-Relativity has termed and defined as toxic-sympathy. They do so through philosophies and ideologies disguised as being sympathetic not because they have genuine sympathy for the people, but they do so for their own agenda. They do so by appealing to people’s emotions in order to persuade the masses to support their ideology and their agenda. An appeal to emotion is a logical-fallacy that one deploys by manipulating the recipient’s emotions in order to persuade or win an argument in the absence of factual-evidence. Appeal to emotions become stronger and wider accepted as more people get manipulated and persuaded to subscribe to and support the fallacy or the ideology.

One of the main ways that toxic-sympathy wins so many people over so quickly is by nurturing victimhood and blame-shifting by sympathizing with the intended targets that the causes of their life’s mishaps and negativities are other-people, for example their leaders/employers. They portray the world as being unfair by implying that for example leaders/employers are unfairly and without care enjoying their success at the expense of their followers/employees. They further portray the followers/employees as vulnerable, courageous and they often analogize these people’s lives as a suffering. These manipulators quickly win over large numbers of employees/followers because they helped the employees/followers self-deceive via toxic-sympathy and by shifting responsibility for improving their own lives to other imaginary causes/people that have nothing to do with their life’s difficulties and setbacks.

This is why Theory of Self-Relativity advocates factual-thinking; because if we can’t evaluate thoughts and intents with facts, we could easily fall for ill-intent that is cleverly disguised to benefit the manipulator at the expense of our own self. Those who deploy toxic-sympathy end up causing a great deal of damage to susceptible-people in the long-run; because what is being fallaciously advocated, is not how reality is.