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 holiday. But it’s not a national holiday that everyone celebrates, like July 4th. It’s a religious holiday. I am so tired […]
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 we need to bring back Edmund Burke’s concept of “moral imagination”. It is, she says, “the idea that our ethics should […]
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 abducted and murdered; or you read an in-depth article about the victims of a natural disaster or a terrorist attack; or […]
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 it in a version of that classic question, would you rescue a drowning dog before a drowning human? Or perhaps, is […]
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 in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. A gull was hanging from a lamppost, tangled in fishing line, frantically trying to escape. And […]
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. While there are many important and useful ways to increase our empathy–talking to other people, reading about other people, watching films […]
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. Maybe 1/4, 3/4. Because quite often, while we say that two sides should “reach out and open up to understand each […]
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 “Bah, humbug” in 21st Century language: Congresspeople who want to cut SNAP benefits, inexplicably wanting to save the government money by […]
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 School of Life in London and empathy advisor to organizations including Oxfam and the United Nations. Mr. Krznaric contends that science is […]
Chris Kluwe is the former Minnesota Vikings punter who became famous when he published an enraged response on Deadspin to a Maryland state legislator’s demand to the Baltimore Ravens that they silence their player who had expressed support for same-sex marriage. His well-argued open letter, full of colorful and persuasive language, propelled him into working […]