Hermione's Hypocrisy?(long)

[madorganization]

No: HPFGUIDX 129488

Mira:
> To add my own few knuts to the debate, I think
> Hermione is far from being unsympathetic. During the
> last three books she is always the one who explains to
> Ron and even to Harry the reason behind how others
> react. She is able not only to put herself in Cho's
> position, and realise that she would probably allow
> Harry much more space and his own approach to a
> relationship and also try to understand him more, but
> she is also able to identify correctly the reasons why
> Cho is behaving in a different manner, asking for
> protection and romance (because her previous boyfriend
> has died and so on). I think she is as sympathetic as
> she is intelligent, and the only instances when she
> doesn't behave in a sympathetic way are in book 3,
> when she was overworked and stressed.
> 
Alisha:
Although I agree with the idea that Hermione is learning empathy, I 
wanted to point out that empathy and sympathy are not the same 
thing.  Sympathy is feeling along with another person.  Empathy is 
feeling the same thing as the other person.  If you broke your leg, 
I would be sympathetic to your pain, but I would not be in pain.  
This is what Hermione needs to work on.  She is definitely 
sympathetic to the house elves' plight.  She feels badly for them 
because they are enslaved.  But she does not feel the same things 
that they feel.  It's the difference between step 1 and step 3 in 
learning empathy.
To give a little better example:
If you were forced to live with your parents long after you came of 
age (always having to follow their rules and deal with all their 
strangeness), I would feel bad for you.  That's sympathy.  However 
if you really love your parents, love spending time with them and 
get along with them very well, you wouldn't see this as a bad 
thing.  In order for me to be empathizing with you, I would need to 
see, not how I would feel in your place, but how you actually feel, 
in which case I wouldn't feel bad for you at all.  I'd probably be 
happy for you.
Hermione is very good at recognizing how she would feel in someone 
else's place, but she's not always very good at seeing how they feel 
in their own place.

-Alisha
Who's coming a little late to the conversation, but wanted to put in 
her thoughts.