Wanted: Empathy
This essay was first published on the original Empathy Symbol website many years ago. It still applies. Remember the old song, “What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love?” Remember John Lennon’s song...
Category: Uncategorized
Empathy in the Time of Coronavirus
Has the pandemic increased or decreased empathy in our lives and our world? As usual, the answer seems to be, both. At the local level, within our own neighborhoods and communities, we are seeing...
Mr. Rogers and My Father
I recently saw the movie, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Also, I have been living through the last weeks of life for my 92-year-old father, who has terminal cancer. These things turn out...
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...
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....