How Does One Become empAθos?
The short answer is that one doesn't become empAθos unless one is born empAθos. But, empAθos people are never as simple as that.
Marriage is thought to be and entrée to becoming empAθos, but marriage to an empAθos person, will not make one empAθos. It may be a prelude to being adopted, but if one marries an empAθos individual with the intent of being adopted, one is marrying for all the wrong reasons, and will soon be discovered. empAθos people view marriage in different ways than Non-empAθos People, and to understand the subtleties and nuances of empAθos marriage may create difficulties for the average Non-empAθos person. If one marries an empAθos individual one should do so because one truly loves the individual, not because one is interested in becoming empAθos. We do not view intercultural marriage as being necessarily a bad thing. We do guard against such marriages becoming a disruption in our culture, but we realize that one cannot legislate matters of the heart, and if one of our children desires to marry outside of the community, but remain attached to the empAθos way of life, we must make accommodation.
Children who are born of such a marriage are not considered empAθos unless:
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Their mother is empAθos,
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They have been raised entirely within empAθos culture,
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They exhibit a truly innate, and well ingrained empathic sense,
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They truly desire to remain part of the empAθos community, as a fully empAθos individual.
Any empAθos child is given the choice of remaining empAθos or seeking an alternative, as no one is required to be what they don't want to be. If any child finds Non-empAθos ways more attractive than empAθos ways, then they are free to go and embrace them, rather than be forced to stay and become a disruption to the community. However, once the decision to leave has been made, it cannot be reversed without a great deal of effort and consideration. In the case of such a child returning, they would have to be adopted back into the community, a process which may take as many as twenty years.
One may be adopted into the empAθos community if one has a well developed empathic sense, and one can divest oneself of the violent aggressive emotional context of Non-empAθos People and seek to follow, and stay within the empAθos way of life without any expectations that it will be altered to accommodate oneself. This demand isn't simply a stricture meant to impose a way of life upon an individual, but it's a protection for empAθos people meant to preserve our way of life. If you desire to be empAθos, then you must accept, entirely, the ways of empAθos people. Otherwise, you aren't empAθos.
A case for this is drawn from people seeking to convert Jewish communities from within. Christian's have attempted to do this very thing with their "Jews for Jesus", and their "Messianic Jews" movements. Entering Jewish communities, and seeking to proselytize Jewish populations only causes disruption, and is covertly intended to destroy Judaism from within. You can't be a Jew, and be a Christian also. Two thousand years of Christian persecution and murder of Jews with just this aim of making Christians of Jews and destroying Judaism, has drawn a line between Christians and Jews that never can be erased. Christians who have no respect for Jews continue to cross this line, and Jews with no respect for Jews continue to step over this line. However, Christians who do respect Jews, also respect the line because they see in Judaism the unique beauty and understanding that comes with our civilization. Jews who respect their civilization also respect, and maintain the line, because they seek to protect our unique beauty and understanding from genocidal efforts arrayed against it. This similarly, carries over into empAθos culture, not only as a part of the Jewish Civilization, but also because of the sense of respect that we have for ourselves and our culture as empAθos people, and the respect that we have for other cultures and their uniqueness. If the lines are blurred, and we all become the same, we will have nothing to learn from each other.
Therefore, adoption into empAθos culture is view with extreme care and deliberation.
If one asks to be adopted into the empAθos family, one will first be refused. One must first show an interest and seek to learn all aspects of what it means to be empAθos, and seek to understand the realities of empAθos life. These things are not simply something one can learn by studying empAθos literature, or by having an empAθos person explain them. These are things which must be lived. Learning the "rules" is an important part of an adoptee's development, but the primary trait, the empathic sense, which cannot be faked, must first be developed. This process takes years, and without it, one has no means of communicating or properly interacting in empAθos society.
Most Non-empAθos People have the rudimentary foundations of an empathic sense, but Non-empAθos societies are designed to suppress it. Once gone, it is very difficult to retrieve. The hippocampus, which carries the wiring for the necessary empathic relays, is difficult, and usually impossible, to rewire in adulthood. In the rare case, in which the rudimentary foundations of the empathic sense have not been suppressed, there are possibilities of bring this into play in such a manner as to induce an empathic response. It's extremely rare, but it's possible.
empAθos culture is designed to develop empathic connections in the brain. It works well with infants and very young children, and especially well if engaged while the mother is still early in her pregnancy with the child. (For this reason, having an empAθos mother is one of the criteria for children of intercultural marriage to be considered empAθos.) For adults, it's an uphill effort that must take years of retraining, reparenting, and eliminating the damage that has been done by the violence and aggression and competition that is required for survival in Non-empAθos societies.
For this reason, Non-empAθos People are almost never adopted into empAθos culture.
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