'Can you hurt for another'

Aiming

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
As the expression 'hurt for another' doesn't leave me alone I thought to bring it here rather than further disrupting Chachazoom's intro post (What's on your mind/hello-autism+organic portals?).

I asked what 'Can you hurt for another' actually means.

Los said:
It's asking if you can feel pain for another person suffering.

Laura said:
And not just physical pain, but emotional pain or soul pain.

I found this when I typed 'define:hurt' into google:

ache: be the source of pain
give trouble or pain to; "This exercise will hurt your back"
injury: any physical damage to the body caused by violence or accident or fracture etc.
pain: cause emotional anguish or make miserable; "It pains me to see my children not being taught well in school"
distress: psychological suffering; "the death of his wife caused him great distress"
cause damage or affect negatively; "Our business was hurt by the new competition"
hurt the feelings of; "She hurt me when she did not include me among her guests"; "This remark really bruised my ego"
suffering: feelings of mental or physical pain
suffering from physical injury especially that suffered in battle; "nursing his wounded arm"; "ambulances...for the hurt men and women"
detriment: a damage or loss
feel physical pain; "Were you hurting after the accident?"
damaged inanimate objects or their value
damage: the act of damaging something or someone
suffer: feel pain or be in pain
(wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn)

Didn't find anything however when I typed 'hurt for another'.

Now my trouble here is, you see all those meanings for 'to hurt'. But the context of 'hurt for another' is new to me and I couldn't even translate it. It seems so strangely apllied.
eg: When I translated it I came down to 'Can you hurt sb on behalf of another'. Now sure thing it couldn't make any sense whatsoever.

So what's up with this expression? Is it colloquial? How come it's applied in a way that (to me) seems so out of the ordinary?
I'd appreciate your comments.
 
When I translated it I came down to 'Can you hurt sb on behalf of another'
no, that is mis-translated. What language are you translating into? maybe someone here could word it?

It's not a colloquial expression, it just means empathy, or: "can you feel someone else's pain?" - you see or read about someone in pain, and you share the feeling of that pain because you have a connection, an empathy with that person. You hurt because they hurt. It's a very core human concept so it is weird if it doesn't translate. I'm using the verb hurt to mean 'feel pain oneself' rather than 'inflict pain on another' - it is the same word for both, maybe that is the source of confusion?
 
Nomad said:
When I translated it I came down to 'Can you hurt sb on behalf of another'
no, that is mis-translated. What language are you translating into? maybe someone here could word it?

If you still do not understand what it means after the explanation of Nomad, tell us your native tongue, and surely someone will be pleased to translate it for you.
 
try translating "feel the pain of another" to your native language, that will give you a better match to the original expression than "can you hurt on behalf of another". The key element is feeling another's pain as your own, like Nomad said.
 
Nomad said:
You hurt because they hurt. It's a very core human concept so it is weird if it doesn't translate. I'm using the verb hurt to mean 'feel pain oneself' rather than 'inflict pain on another' - it is the same word for both, maybe that is the source of confusion?
(my emphasis)

Yeah, that's exactly the source of confusion!! Don't know how come but I didn't know about 'to hurt' meaning 'feel pain oneself', thought all it means was 'to inflict pain'.
My native language is German, 'to hurt sb' would be translated into 'jemanden verletzen'. With this new bit of meaning the German term would be 'sich verletzt fühlen' = 'to feel hurt', but it still doesn't exactly fit.. well, anyway, I understand the meaning now and maybe I need nothing more than a night's sleep to find the right term in my language.

Thank you all for the clarification! :)

post scriptum:
I find it astonishing that 'to hurt' describes like two sides of a coin, like two polarities in one word.. !
As in STO and STS orientation: both might use the same word but their meaning is detrimentally opposed because of their orientation! Astonishing!
On the other hand: Gurdjieff teaches us that -as long as we are mechanical- we cannot be sure that we understand one another, using the same words while it is more often than not the case that each person has their personal, differing associations (subjectivity) and never has a clue that there's a world beyond it (objectivity).
fwiw



(edit: spelling)
 
but I didn't know about 'to hurt' meaning 'feel pain oneself', thought all it means was 'to inflict pain'.

to inflict pain is "to hurt another"

to feel another's pain is "to hurt FOR another", as in, in their place. A preposition "FOR" makes all the difference. This must have been what was confusing you.
 
Hildegarda said:
to inflict pain is "to hurt another"

to feel another's pain is "to hurt FOR another", as in, in their place. A preposition "FOR" makes all the difference. This must have been what was confusing you.

Yes, the two different meanings of the same word, that are 'coming or going' with a simple preposition. Thank you!

And fwiw in case there might be trodding along just another German not knowing the translation:
I slept over it and finally found the German term for 'to hurt for another' = 'mitfühlen/mit jm mitfühlen'.

Many thanks! :)
 
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