The Toxicity of Toxicity: The Too Frequently Used Qualifier is Taking our Sacred Values off of the Table After reading last week’s piece in the Atlantic, Why Empathy Is Now ‘Toxic,’it gave me pause. Now, we can add one of the most important traits and values that we hold dear, empathy, to the list of words that we have to be careful of, and that we have to qualify, before embracing. We already know that “toxic” is making its way around. There can be toxic productivity, when your preoccupation with being productive, there can be toxic positivity, when your positive outlook is damaging and there can also be toxic masculinity, where traits such as strength and bravery, toughness, ambition and power can be damaging. This idea is not new. Long before our time, although he did not use the word toxic, Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics, talked about the dangers of extremes. He wrote: "Every virtue carried to the extreme, is a vice and "Virtue is the g...
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