ANSWERS: 1
  • At times, it is easy to be cynical and see only the worst in our fellow humans. However, there are active steps you can take to recognize the good qualities in other people. To do this, you must be able to use your experience to understand what others are feeling, a quality called empathy, and to feel compassion for others even when you don't fully understand their perspective, a quality called sympathy. Once you understand the needs and motivations of others, it becomes easier to recognize good qualities in other people.

    Empathy and Sympathy

    Empathy and sympathy are similar qualities, and both are essential to the task of recognizing good qualities in other people. Empathy comes to us naturally. If you have lost a parent, for example, you are able to understand what a friend feels when he loses a parent. Sympathy is more complicated, as it involves imagining a situation you have not actually experienced so that you may understand what another person feels. In order to recognize the good qualities in people, develop your skills at sympathizing, or imagining the perspective of others. If you cannot understand why a person acts as she does, you will never understand why certain of her qualities in acting so may actually be positive.

    Talking It Over

    One impediment to finding the good qualities in people is the inability to see past disagreements. You may disagree, for instance, on the proper way to raise a child. You may think that spanking a child is inappropriate, or even cruel. But it might help to talk about the issue with the parent involved, who act based on what she honestly feels are good reasons. If you disagree with someone politically, it's often useful to have a calm, civilized discussion about what each of you believes. People often have differing ideas about what's right, but those ideas often come from good and constructive qualities, and once you're aware of those qualities, and get to know the person better, it's difficult to view him so negatively.

    Good Intentions

    It is not always possible to question somebody with whom you disagree. That is why you sometimes must use your imagination to understand why they do what they do, which is how you sympathize with their situation. Sympathy, as the philosopher Adam Smith has noted, is what makes us human. When you begin to humanize even your worst enemies, recognition of their good qualities will become quite easy. This does not mean you must accept that all of a person's actions are moral or correct. It just means that you recognize that good intentions are often behind even the worst actions. Good intentions indicate a good quality. Once you are able to recognize the good qualities in even the worst people, simply by asking yourself "Why?", recognizing good qualities in average people will become easy. Once you're able to recognize a good quality in a person, you can often encourage her to employ that quality more often, which can lead to the recognition of other good qualities.

    Source:

    "Theory of Moral Sentiments," Adam Smith: sympathy

    Resource:

    recognizing legitimacy in others' faiths

    when good people do bad things

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