I tried to write about the Boston Marathon bombings a week ago and got one sentence written before I was stuck; I sat there staring at the screen for some time before I gave up. This is a very difficult thing to write about in regard to empathy. Of course, we have empathy for the […]
President Barack Obama recently gave a brilliant speech to the citizens of Israeli, asking them to consider how things are from the perspective of their adversary, the Palestinians. He said that the only way to get to peace between their two peoples is to have empathy for one another. He spoke very forthrightly and directly […]
I just finished listening to a broadcast of a fascinating radio show about empathy, from a scientific viewpoint, that aired on January 16th on WUNC from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. You can listen to the show first, and then join our discussion here in this blog. Or read the high points here first, and then […]
Michele Norris of NPR has created an elegant, brilliant way to get the conversation on race kick-started again. It’s called The Race Card Project. It started out simply, when she was on a book tour for her new book about race, The Grace of Silence: A Memoir. She handed out 200 postcards and asked people […]
A devoted reader sent me a link to an interesting article in the New York Times about the science of compassion: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/opinion/sunday/the-science-of-compassion.html?_r=2&hp& The article reported on a study that found that inducing a compassionate feeling for someone leads the person to feel compassion for others as well, even when they might not “deserve it.” Another […]
Social media offers an amazing opportunity for the growth of empathy. In particular, blogs give people the chance to connect with and understand others’ experiences and feelings on a vastly larger scale than ever before. When I was growing up in the mid-20th Century, there were 2 avenues for increasing empathy: personal experience, or the […]
The empathy symbol is defined by the line between the two halves of the symbol, portraying two groups who would benefit by reaching out to each other and opening up to understand one another. The reaching-out and opening-up aspects of empathy are defined by the two Y’s in the symbol, lines that pass through the […]
A friend sent me a very interesting link to a report about empathy in rats. I was interested for 2 reasons–1) the question of whether animals as well as humans can feel empathy is very intriguing, and 2) I really like rats. They’re one of my favorite animals. Please check out the video on YouTube. […]
I said back in May that the next book I would be reading was “The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty” by Simon Baron-Cohen. It took me till mid-August to get the book from the library, because there were so many holds on it–which is good, that people are interested in […]
A faithful supporter recently sent me an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education in which the writer asks the question: should empathy be taught to college students? The author, Richard Kahlenberg, asks: “In higher education, should colleges affirmatively seek to teach students empathy or is doing so inappropriate because it is unrelated to […]