Cultivating Empathy

Arianna Huffington
President and Editor-in-Chief, The Huffington Post

empathy

‘‘The ability to identify with another person’s feelings.’’ That is how Mary Gordon’s organization, Roots of Empathy, defines the elemental but elusive human quality that gives the group its name. Empathy is a simple concept, which is actually why it has such potential to change the world.

Last year, I became captivated by Jeremy Rifkin’s book The Empathic Civilization, in which he explains that empathy is not a quaint behavior to be trotted out during intermittent holiday visits to a food bank or during a post-disaster telethon. Instead, it lies at the very core of human existence. What Rifkin articulates—and backs up with scientific evidence—is something I’ve long believed.

Indeed, I wrote a book dedicated to exploring what I called the Fourth Instinct—the instinct that compels us to go beyond our impulses for survival, sex, and power and drives us to expand the boundaries of our caring to include our communities and the world around us.

And in the years since I wrote my book, the role empathy plays in our lives has only grown more important. In fact, in this time of economic hardship, political instability, and rapid technological change, empathy is the one quality we most need if we’re going to survive and flourish in the
twenty-first century.

Just before he died, Jonas Salk defined the transitional period we’re in as moving from Epoch A (based on survival and competition) to Epoch B (based on collaboration and meaning). And technological advances, including the advent of social media, have enabled us to collaborate in ways that would have been unimaginable only a decade ago. As Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, puts it, ‘‘Twitter is not a triumph of tech; it’s a triumph of humanity.’’

When people used to offer to join Mother Teresa in her work with the needy of Calcutta, she would often respond: ‘‘Find your own Calcutta.’’ That is, care for those in need where you are. Thousands are doing this, all across America, in ways that illustrate and even amplify the possibilities of Salk’s Epoch B. People like Eric Jirgens, an interior designer in Detroit who found himself getting a lot fewer jobs than he used to in his recession-ravaged city. So he put his underutilized skills to work transforming a women’s shelter into a beautiful and more welcoming space for the women who have to temporarily call it home. And Jacqueline Novogratz, who, as head of the Acumen Fund, has combined her expertise in finance with her gift for empathy, investing from Kenya to Karachi and Dubai in start-ups that help improve the lives of those unable to do so on their own.

And Cheryl Jacobs, who along with her work as a torts lawyer at a big firm had been doing pro bono work with the highly successful Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Program in Philadelphia, which helps homeowners facing foreclosure navigate the legal process. After being laid off, Jacobs took on even more foreclosure cases, eventually opening her own practice dedicated to helping people keep their homes.

I have been lucky enough, in the course of my travels around the country and around the world, to meet and work with many people who have bolstered my faith in our collective ability to confront the crises we face. And I am increasingly convinced that the solutions to our problems are not going to come from the political, media, and financial institutions that continue to fail us. The solutions are going to come from each of us doing our part—making a personal commitment and taking action. And to summon our better angels, there are two essential ingredients we’ll need: innovation nurtured by an entrepreneurial spirit, and empathy nurtured by a strong civil society.

The individuals and organizations described in “Rippling” are inspiring illustrations of both. They have mastered the gift of identifying with other people’s feelings. In spite of the challenges ahead, when I read their stories I am reminded of the combustible creativity that results when empathy meets imagination, and I am filled with hope.

Reprinted by permission of the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., from Rippling: How Social Entrepreneurs Spread Innovation Throughout the World by Beverly Schwartz. Copyright (c) 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

David Stoker

Stories to experiences

It seems to me that media, whether news, books, video,etc., is such a powerful mechanism to build empathy across groups of people or at least expose people to someone else’s perspective, yet these stories are not regularly the most popular articles, best sellers or top at the box office. How came empathy be taught and increased by influencing the content that is popular?

Another element in the equation I see is that reading or seeing the story of someone else can only get you so far, at some point a person has to experience being in someone else’s shoes. Reading about poverty is less motivating to action than walking, smelling, or experiencing life in a slum. If we want to increase our political will to get out of Afghanistan for example how do we translate Beyond the Battlefield into a experience that leads to solutions? How can our society celebrate and award the solutions with as much prestige as we celebrate the journalists that shine light on the problem?
Jill Finlayson

Empathy lets you see the “invisible forces”

People talk about teaching kids empathy and that is important. However, adults can also use a refresher course in empathy as well. This TED talk is interesting – I especially like the idea that empathy lets you see the "invisible forces" that shape "the way in which human beings are shaped by the things they do not see."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IgOVOPLTYI
Jeff Mowatt

Empathy or Compassion

I’m reminded of something my colleague Terry wrote just after Bill Gates had suggested a more creative capitalism.

‘The corporations involved in this almost fantastical deployment of the machines and communications infrastructure that we now rely on profited for themselves and their shareholders, and certainly produced social and economic benefit around the world. Those efforts were and are so profound in influence as to transform human civilization itself. That is the Information Revolution, and it is nothing short of astonishing.

So it is safe to say that all these players in the Information Revolution — the enterprises that created it — have engendered almost immeasurable social benefit by way of connecting people of the world together and giving us opportunity to communicate with each other, begin to understand each other, and if we want, try to help each other.

It is that last phrase — "try to help each other" — which is what the phrase "social enterprise" is getting at. As Bill Gates said in 2000, "poor people don’t need computers." and rejected a business approach to alleviating poverty. That statement served to mark the clear distinction between what traditional capitalism did and did not do. Gates’ aim at that time was to profit from people who could afford his company’s products, while those who couldn’t were largely or completely ignored. That has been the accepted limit of traditional capitalism. It has been a marvelous means of social benefit and economic advancement for many people. Nevertheless, those excluded are just left out.

The term "social enterprise" in the various but similar forms in which it is being used today — 2008 — refers to enterprises created specifically to help those people that traditional capitalism and for profit enterprise don’t address for the simple reason that poor or insufficiently affluent people haven’t enough money to be of concern or interest. Put another way, social enterprise aims specifically to help and assist people who fall through the cracks. Allowing that some people do not matter, as things are turning out, allows that other people do not matter and those cracks are widening to swallow up more and more people. Social enterprise is the first concerted effort in the Information Age to at least attempt to rectify that problem, if only because letting it get worse and worse threatens more and more of us. Growing numbers of people are coming to understand that "them" might equal "me." Call it compassion, or call it enlightened and increasingly impassioned self-interest. Either way, we are all in this together, and we will each have to decide for ourselves what it means to ignore someone to death, or not.’

In his own paper advocating a prople-centered approach to economics he’d concluded in the core argument that:

‘Economics, and indeed human civilization, can only be measured and calibrated in terms of human beings. Everything in economics has to be adjusted for people, first, and abandoning the illusory numerical analyses that inevitably put numbers ahead of people, capitalism ahead of democracy, and degradation ahead of compassion.

Each of us who have a choice can choose what we want to do to help or not. It is free-will, our choice, as human beings.’

It was the cause of children in Eastern European institutions for the imperfect that was to dominate his remaining years following his article ‘Death Camps for Children’, describing a place called Torez. It would feature 5 years later in a Sunday Times article.

Friends on the ground recalled his determination, publishing an extract of his fax to USAID and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, from Feb. 2008, calling for their support.

‘On his death bed he was speaking only of his mission – rescuing of these unlucky kids. His dream was to get them new homes filled with care and love. His quest would be continued as he wished.’

http://tinyurl.com/3ehs5mq

Unfortunately as one who walked the talk, to mainstream media he became invisible.
DanielBassill

Building bridges – teaching empathy

I’ve a deep commitment to organized, on-going, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs because they can connect people who don’t live in poverty with young people and families who struggle with poverty every day. Over time, these connections enable some volunteers to begin to understand poverty through the eyes and experiences of the kids the form bonds with.

This "walk a mile in my shoes" process does not happen without an infrastructure of empathetic people who already have been on this journey. One of my interns created an animation that shows the growth of a volunteer over a four year or longer cycle with a tutor/mentor program. http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/…/177-volunteersleaders

I think this strategy for increasing the number of empathetic people who are personally engaged with a cause is essential to dramatically increasing the number of people in the world who provide talent, time, resources and a life long commitment to some of the complex problems we face.

I recall that Ghandi encouraged volunteering as a way to build empathy and did a web search to try to find a specific reference. Instead I found this site with many videos of people talking about empathy. http://cultureofempathy.com/

If we want to expand the number of people on this journey we must find ways to put stories in media on a daily basis, but we also must then include in those stories links to places where people can learn more about issues, learn more about ways to volunteer time, talent and dollars, and learn more about why they need to stay consistently involved in a cause for many years, not just while the cause is a fad.
- Arianna Huffington
  
  Building bridges – teaching empathy
  
  Daniel, I agree. And I love the idea of an infrastructure of empathetic people. I often speak about the idea of critical mass. To a physicist a critical mass is the amount of radioactive material that must be present for a nuclear reaction to become self-sustaining. For the service movement a critical mass is when the service habit hits enough people so that it can begin to spread spontaneously around the county. Like an outbreak of a positive infection, where everyone is a carrier. What we need to do is go out and carry this positive infection, so that together we can reach that critical mass.
  
  And thank you for introducing me to the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy!
  - Jeff Mowatt
    
    Building bridges – teaching empathy
    
    Arinna, There’s a very powerful example of 1970s television to be found in Jacob Bronowski’s Ascent of Man. In the concluding broadcast, he observes how the advance of scientific knowledge in the 1930s went step by step with the ‘principle of monstrous certainty’.
    
    He describes his friendship with Leo Szillard, the man who first conceived the nuclear chain reaction and how Szillard had later failed in his efforts to reach President Roosevelt and persuade him to abandon his plans for a nuclear attack on Japan.
    
    In the final scene, standing in the ash pond at Auschwitz, alluding to Milgram’s experiments, he says "We have close the distance between the push button order and the human act. We have to touch people"
    
    http://youtu.be/j7br6ibK8ic
    
    In 1950 a Russian scientist by the name of Oleg Lavrentyev wrote to Krushchev announcing that he knew how to make a hydrogen bomb. The Ukrainian city of Kharkiv was where it was developed. By chance, it was also the place an American peace activist decided to spend the rest of his life in pursuit of his cause. Both men died last year
    
    http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=171777
    
    The call on US government to support social enterprise development on a national scale ends thus:
    
    "Thank you for your time and attention to this. I and others will look forward to hearing from you. I hope we continue to realize ever more fully that outside the box and inside the box have only a box in the way. We outside the box know quite a bit of what’s going on, many times in exquisite detail, perhaps in ways that those inside the box can’t quite as easily access if at all. We are grossly underfunded in favor of missiles, bombs, and ordnance, which is about 100% backwards. Now, with even the US Pentagon stating that they’ve learned their lesson in Iraq and realize (so says top US general in Iraq ten days or so ago) that winning hearts and minds is the best option, I and others shall continue to think positive and look for aid budgets and funding spigots to be opened much more for people and NGOs in silos, foxholes and trenches, insisting on better than ordnance, and who understand things and how to fix them. We can do that. We can even do it cost-effectively and with far better efficiency than the ordnance route. Welcome to our brave new world. Except it’s not so new: learn to love and respect each other first, especially the weakest, most defenseless, most voiceless among us, then figure out the rest. There aren’t other more important things to do first. This message has been around for at least two thousand years. How difficult is it for us to understand?"
  - DanielBassill
    
    Building bridges – teaching empathy
    
    Building that critical mass will take the consistent effort of many people over many years. However, because of your own success with the Huffington Post you have the ability to be a catalyst for such network-building. I encourage you to take a look at this essay on collaboration. http://www.scribd.com/danie…-Tutor-Mentor-Programs-Grow
    
    Look at the graphic of "the world’s biggest ping pong ball table" which illustrates how the message posted by one person can circulate around the world.
    
    Then look at the four quarterly time frames which are critical to the cycle of education, mentoring and tutoring. If you launch articles in the post during these time frames and encourage higher profile people to write their own articles, and at the same time point to databases of youth serving programs in every city, as well as libraries showing why tutor/mentor programs are needed and where they are most needed because of high poverty, the growing attention can lead to a duplication of your efforts in other sectors such as business, religion, entertainment, etc.
    
    Since it takes many years for great programs or schools to develop in a neighborhood, then it takes at least 12 years for a first grader to go through high school, support for constantly improving programs helping kids through school would need to be sustained by this critical mass for many decades.
    
    That can happen if enough leaders take ownership of their role as a catalyst and intermediary in this journey.
  - Edwin Rutsch
    
    Building bridges – teaching empathy
    
    hi Arianna, I’m Edwin Rutsch, the director of the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy. I’ve been interviewing many ‘empathy experts’ via Skype about how to build a culture of empathy. I would love to interview you as well. You’ve done such wonderful work at promoting empathy in HuffingtonPost and spoken a lot about it. More about doing an interview http://bit.ly/y8WS7V
    
    Warmly
    
    Edwin
    
    EdwinRutsch@gmail.com
  - Sara Potler
    
    Building bridges – teaching empathy
    
    Arianna, on the note of critical mass, when do you think we will have reached it? What will determine whether or not we’ve succeeded in inspiring a culture of empathy?
- Edwin Rutsch
  
  Building bridges – teaching empathy
  
  Daniel Bassill, thanks for mentioning the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy. We are doing a lot of interviews and panel discussions on empathy with the goal of building an empathy movement to transform society.
jo davidson

imagination and love

Hi Arianna, I agree empathy plays a profound role in social and emotional learning as a forgotten instinct and as a gift that enables us ‘to tap into the timeless to solve the urgent’ it requires another skill too, listening. Heraclitus knew about this paradox when ‘change alone is unchanging, even sleepers are workers and collaborators in what goes on in the universe.’ That’s why we need to tap into the timeless, right?

One reason empathy grows our imaginations too is that along with listening it allows us to care about people we haven’t met, or even more so for people we have because like Einstein had said ‘imagination is a preview of life’s coming attractions’ so we have to be open to it and like empathy and change 2.0 with imagination neither are constrained by conformity, in working as a law of gestation.

And as a mechanism for mass liberation, empathy has the ability to overturn medieval thinking (that turns into industrial thinking,) through emotional intelligence. I think as a general society we have been socialized into a flawed model though. One way to cultivate empathy and put it back at the core of society is if boys were taught to show feelings as much as girls are encouraged, a lot of dyfunctional behaviors that develop later on would disappear, from bulling to murders etc.

As Rifkin’s central question asks ‘can we reach global empathy in time to avoid the collapse of civilization and save the earth’ – by changing the structure of how humans work together – with open kaleidoscope global collaborations? I think yes. Just like the way the 3 instincts connect, or like a trinity in western religion connects, or when truth freedom and justice act as a superpower, it empowers the 4th, so when all 4 instincts join forces and unite to build cross-cosmic connections with empathy as a driver a 5th instinct emerges… Kind of like the way 4 segments are divided in a circle, all of the qualities become more than the sum of their parts eh.

Do you agree there is a 5th instinct?
- Arianna Huffington
  
  imagination and love
  
  Jo, I love that you describe empathy as a “forgotten instinct,” implying that empathy is within us all — maybe we don’t need to learn it from scratch so much as remember that it’s already there.
  
  As for a 5th instinct, it very well may exist (though I think we have so much work to do tapping into the 4th that I hesitate to move on to the 5th just yet!). What do you think is our 5th instinct?
Jill Vialet

Empathy Through Play

I’m glad others are raising the importance of teaching kids empathy and the role of social and emotional learning. Ashoka’s empathy initiative is doing good work on this as well: empathy.ashoka.org. I agree with Jill Finlayson’s comment that adults could use a refresher on empathy too — especially when we think about how to improve our schools. If we were in the ones in school, what would we want school to look like in order to get a rigorous education that truly engaged us?

Look at the enthusiasm kids bring to playing games, the "voluntary attempt to tackle an unnecessary challenge." There is so much learning that happens in games: teamwork, problem-solving, leadership. Kids are in control over what happens in games and it creates an essential and safe opportunity "to identify with another person’s feelings". Imagine if our schools harnessed kids’ enthusiasm to tackle the challenge of learning new things. If our schools placed academic rigor at the center and gave kids the room to have control over how to tackle that challenge while receiving constant feedback from peers and teachers.

We’re creating this shift through the program I founded 15 years ago, called Playworks (www.playworks.org), by bringing more play into the school day and improving the overall school climate. Among the things we’ve seen in the schools we partner with is reduced bullying, and we believe this is a direct result of leveraging play as a tool for promoting empathy.
Adjoa Acquaah-Harrison

Empathy and “There but for the Grace of God, go I”

When I became aware many years ago, how distinctly opposite the word empathy is from sympathy, I promised myself never to forget because just like I would prefer that no one ever feels sympathy for me, I would try to share my stories that would convey experiential understanding. "I know what you mean," or, "That was me six years ago, and I, like you, was stuck," Comments like these are more inclined to heal even if they do not solve another’s problems.

I believe that empathy is more creative and thoughtful. Empathy also creates the space for non-judgmental sharing and co-creating especially when the global north and south commingle ideas and solutions. The lines between the real and imaginary Calcutta is increasingly blurred also as political, media and financial institutions continue to fail us. Experiences that bring our common human experiences to the table make it easier to digest the meager repast served for everyone’s consumption. I agree with Arianna that political instability and the rapid changes in technologies are transformations economies and ordinary lives, as we know it. Empathy is a great baseline for transformative conversations.

Even the field of economics is exploring this issue through the study of Moral Economics, dealing with questions of poverty, wealth, and wellbeing. The McKeever Institute has taken on the debate to explore the Relation of Some Economic Theories to Various Moral Perspectives – http://www.mkeever.com/moral.html.

In his book, A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink indicates that the future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn’t. Drawing on research from around the world, Pink outlines the six fundamentally human abilities that are absolute essentials for professional success and personal fulfillment-and reveals how to master them. A Whole New Mind takes readers to a daring new place, and a provocative and necessary new way of thinking about a future that’s already here.

It seems that true empathy also makes it easy to bear another’s burden naturally, and in so doing, acts of kindnesses are automatic and bears no expectations in return. Solutions can be small and they can be breathtakingly big and beautiful, traversing geographical boundaries, as evidenced by Mark Johnson’s Playing for Change. Please have your hankies and headphones ready and prepare to be moved by Bill Moyers’ interview with Mark Johnson, a Grammy-winning filmmaker and co-producer of “Playing for Change.”

This is a simple story that begins in a New York subway and spreads into schools, changing lives in the slums of South Africa. Time for your headphone, enjoy a heartwarming experience that I hope would inspire you to hope and pass this on. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10242008/watch3.html

Finally, I want to thank Arianna and the many brilliant minds who continue to ponder, write, raise consciousness, and invest their energies to shine a light on the relevance of old-fashioned virtues such as empathy, kindness, and hope. Seemingly intangible, these powerful qualities of humanity are the building blocks for shaping tomorrow’s economic paradigm. Here is my personal story on kindness, which I consider a close relative of empathy – http://africaunbound.com/…/sweet-milk-of-human-kindness.html

Adjoa
Wendy Yallowitz

SEL

As others in this discussion have noted, cultivating a culture of empathy contributes to building a more compassionate society capable of addressing some of our world’s most urgent needs. I also believe that in addition to these societal benefits, cultivating empathy also helps individuals in their own personal growth and development.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — where I am a program officer — is currently working with others to explore the policies and programs that can help us accelerate and sustain the integration of social and emotional learning skill development into every child’s educational experience.

For example, according to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, developing social and emotional skills like empathy enables young people to establish positive relationships, make responsible decisions, and handle challenging situations constructively and ethically. And there is link between these skills and educational success. The George Washington University Center for Health and Health Care in Schools cites multiple studies which show that students participating in social and emotional learning programs demonstrate significant gains in education outcomes such as grades, test scores and attendance.

Thank you, Arianna, as well as the others who have posted here. We’re intrigued by the conversation and look forward to seeing how it continues to unfold.
DanielBassill

Empathy vs Sympathy

Last weekend I viewed this video discussion of Richard Sennett talking to a group at Harvard. I think you’ll all find his talk relevant. http://thescienceofdestruction.wordpress.com/…/
Katy Vanoni

Empathy and Sharing Wisdom

I wish the older generations had more of an opportunity to share wisdom they have with children, especially children they know and watched grow up. I’m not sure if this exactly fits in with this discussion, but that kind of sharing is going away (and being replaced by therapists maybe?). We’re less connected and losing roots to guide us. I started a company that allows people to create books of wisdom from their peers for someone younger than them. What do people here think?

http://www.mdesignandmore.com/index_cw.html
Katy Vanoni

Teachers

Great ideas for educators here. I am an elementary (currently K) school teacher, and I use Gordon Neufeld’s ideas for collecting students to redirect them, and I love how it works (comes naturally to me). But remember, asking teachers to take on yet again, another task that either family or society needs to do, is asking a lot. Most teachers I see do incorporate empathy, conflict resoultion, etc. where they can.

Also, thanks Arianna for this delightful topic!
Sara Potler

Empathy at the forefront of classroom learning

I could not be more excited to see the level of passionate engagement on the topic of empathy. Thanks to all who have commented and validated the importance of social and emotional learning, both among youth and adults. I love the discussion surrounding the value of critical mass in inspiring a culture of empathy. I am the Founder of Dance 4 Peace (www.dance4peace.org), a global peace education nonprofit using dance to promote empathetic behavior and reduce violence, conflict and bullying in schools and community centers. We have worked with over 4,700 youth in 8 cities on 4 continents since I authored the curriculum during my Fulbright Scholarship in Bogota, Colombia.

Our theory of change is that an increase in empathy among students, teachers, school administrators and parents leads to a reduction in bullying and violence. We know that this is not just a problem our students face in NYC, or in Colombia, or in Washington DC, or in the Philippines. The importance and need for increased empathy is globally relevant, which is why at Dance 4 Peace we are working to build a global movement to bring empathy to the forefront of learning, using a language we all speak, dance.

Students in each of our hubs around the world dance the dances that students in other hubs created. This activity teaches students that finding common ground transcends countries and cultures. This program enables all Dance 4 Peace youth, even in the most isolated and lowest income areas, to become internationally engaged, civic leaders. They know that they are not alone at their school in the Bronx or in NYC working to build a culture of peace, but that they are a part of a global family working to inspire empathy.

As we train more educators, parents, youth and social rights activists on our movement-based curriculum, we aim to build that critical mass we so need for the cultivation of empathy to occur. We can be that paradigm shift to bring peace education back to the forefront of classroom learning in a way that is dynamic, creative, physical and global.

Sara

http://www.dance4peace.org

http://www.facebook.com/dance4peace

http://www.twitter.com/dance4peacenow
Danielle Goldstone

Prioritizing Empathy

Thank you, Arianna and all for the great discussion. I work with Bill Drayton, Mary Gordon, Jill Vialet (who has joined this conversation), and many other social entrepreneurs on Ashoka’s Empathy Initiative, http://empathy.ashoka.org. We’re collaborating to build a world committed and equipped to ensure that all children grow up learning and practicing empathy. From Ashoka’s work with social entrepreneurs over 30 years, we’ve identified empathy as an essential skill we all need to develop at a high level in order to participate effectively in a world where change is rapid and getting faster, where we’re working in more collaborative ways, where flat networks are replacing hierarchies, where information and rules are becoming increasingly ambiguous. In this world, we need to be able to solve problems faster than we create them, and if we are unable to connect and empathize with others whether or not we agree with them—especially if not!—our prospects for doing so are pretty slim.

As you have said, Arianna, we need empathy to survive and flourish. And yet, as a society, we don’t treat it with that degree of urgency. If we did, Jill and Playworks wouldn’t have to convince people that recess matters because everyone would recognize group play as being as important as math class for kids. Same with Roots of Empathy or the various other great programs mentioned in this discussion. We’ve had the pleasure of getting to know some schools that are modeling what prioritizing empathy looks like and the impact it has, so we, too, are hopeful.

But we want to think together with all of you… How do we help people see how urgent this is?
DanielBassill

Connecting efforts

As a result of meeting Edwin Rutsch who leads the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy during this discussion, Edwin interviewed me and posted the interview on his web site at http://cultureofempathy.com/…/Daniel-Bassill.htm

I think this is one example of how we all might work collectively to "cultivate empathy".