Tribalism
We hear a lot these days about how tribalism is increasing–us vs them, reds vs blues, etc. Along with this, we hear calls from governmental leaders, including the president of the United States, to...
Category: Uncategorized
Happy Holidays, Y’all
So, with the election of Donald Trump, people are saying that we can finally say “Merry Christmas” again. Like, we couldn’t before? Of course you can say “Merry Christmas”–to people who actually celebrate the...
Moral Imagination
There is a beautiful article in the Opinion section of the New York Times that never uses the word empathy, but is all about it. Jennifer Finney Boylan talks movingly, and personally, about how...
Empathy can hurt
Let’s be honest. It’s hard to deliberately subject yourself to pain. Which is what you’re doing if you’re an empathetic person, and you chose to go to a movie about a child who is...
Empathy for animals
A reader of the last blog post commented that empathy for animals is equally as important as empathy for humans. Is this true? Do animals really “count for” as much as humans? To put...
Empathy for a bird
That’s right, for a bird. One tiny, meaningless little gull provoked a great deal of empathy among a group of strangers walking around a lake the other day, as Gail Rosenblum related the story...
Roll a Mile in Someone Else’s Shoes
An article in the Star Tribune by a student named Kate Ross is a reminder that the best way to experience empathy for another person is to actually experience what that person is experiencing....
The One-Fourth, Three-Fourths Empathy Symbol
I’m glad people like the empathy symbol. But to be perfectly honest, perhaps sometimes it should be drawn with the line dividing the two sides, not down the middle, but over to the side....
There but for the grace of fate go I
Apparently, Scrooge is alive and well these days. He’s not just a relic from Dickens’ time, not just a character in a play we watch during the holidays. Witness these modern-day Scrooges, who say...
The Age of Empathy?
My son Zack just shared this article with me. It’s fascinating and thought-provoking, and highly recommended. It’s called, Six Habits of Highly Empathetic People, by Roman Krznaric. He is a founding faculty member of The...