In her first televised interview since declaring her presidential candidacy, Michele Bachmann accused President Obama of having a “shocking" lack of empathy toward Americans victimized by the struggling economy...
her decision to address Obama’s purported lack of empathy is notable—largely because Bachmann emerged into public notoriety as a vanguard of the slash-and-burn “tea party” movement, which largely took a mistrustful view of government in any context. Moreover, the term “empathy” is one that has long been derided by conservatives.
Feeling sorry for others with sympathy and pity isn't helpful, but rising up to a spiritual perspective of empathy and compassion lifts ours spirits and sheds light on other's problems.
When I let go of sympathy or apathy towards another’s dilemma and rise up to the perspective of empathy and compassion I feel instant relief. I no longer have to worry or take on the other’s pain. I feel spacious and light, with a hint of joy and amusement thrown in. I emanate loving care for the other, but I see how big they are and how this is an experience they have chosen, perhaps on a soul level, to go through for healing, growth and expansion.
As part of Ashoka’s new Empathy Initiative, we will begin posting periodic empathy news round-ups. Please feel free to send tips or contribute to this exciting new endeavor to build a world in which every child masters empathy
Texting teens aren’t learning empathy skills, according to psychologist Gary Small, who spoke at a Hechinger Institute seminar on digital learning in California.
“The teenage brain is not fully formed,” Small said . . . “I’m concerned that kids aren’t learning empathy skills. They’re not learning complex reasoning skills.
The point of seeing a play like The Persians today is to help expand our empathic imaginations – to encourage us to look at the world through other eyes. But if Greek tragedy isn’t to your tastes, you might consider watching a film which similarly attempts to depict war from the perspective of enemies, or which otherwise has a strong empathy angle. Where should you begin? Here’s my top five:
Colin: I think compassion focused therapy (CFT) is still relatively little known across the wider therapy world and no one is going to object to greater compassion. But in what way might the focus on compassion improve therapies that already place emphasis on unconditional positive regard and empathy? Brian Thorne, for example, has written quite a bit about tenderness in person-centred therapy.
Paul: Rogers had real insight into the importance of the therapeutic relationship based on empathy and positive regard, but compassion focused therapy integrates this in a totally different approach. Please bear in mind when reading my answers that this approach was developed for people with chronic and severe mental health difficulties – particularly with high levels of shame/self-criticism.
Empathy is unusual in the animal kingdom, so empathy must have had some major survival benefits for it to have evolved. What might those benefits have been?
Empathy seems to have evolved in three major steps. First, among vertebrates, birds and mammals developed ways of rearing their young, as well as forms of pair bonding -- sometimes for life.
It’s such an amazingly simple act, yet apparently not exactly hardwired into our automatic behavior. Letting someone know that they have been at a minimum heard and accepted (and maybe even understood, when possible) can be a critical first step towards positive change, or desired outcomes. I’ve been trying it more and more lately, and watch tension and frustration diffuse before my eyes. A simple example:
The Pride Empathy Line provides empathy, support, and resources to the LGBTQI community. We are currently in need of more phone line volunteers.
The line is transferred to your phone which means you don't even have to leave your home. Just be available during your shift for calls. Training is provided.
Book Review: Kathleen Barry’s “How Empathy Can Reshape Our Politics, Our Soldiers and Ourselves.”
If empathy is putting oneself in another’s shoes, the indissoluble combination of core masculinity with brainwashing, degradation, and stripping away any sense of self aims to foreclose this response.
Further, there is general agreement in the literature that sociopathy is defined as the lack of empathy. Barry contends that by replacing empathy with desensitized callousness, the military is creating sociopathic characteristics, that the military itself is a sociopathogenic institution. That is, the task of the military is to “normalize amorality for soldiers . . . the same amorality found in sociopaths.”
About the functioning of the brain. Empathy and mirror neurons are first mentioned around 6 minute mark. and throughout the first quarter of the video.
BACHMANN: And we are not hearing from the president that he even begins to understand this horrific situation that a lot of Americans are in. It is really shocking Sean, the lack of empathy that this president has. I talk to people. I care about people. I'm in my district. I've gone into restaurants for instance, where restaurants owners are cutting back their number of employees because they know Obamacare is about to come in to place. And they have 60 employees, but they are firing 10, so they come under 50 employees because they don't want to come under Obamacare.
HANNITY: Yes.
BACHMANN: And the president has no understanding of what is happening in real people's lives.
"It is really shocking...the lack of empathy that this president has," she said.
Bachmann's allegation is outrageous on its face, but it is particularly contemptible given the congresswoman's own recent history of disregarding how policies affect actual people. In the past six months alone, Bachmann's pursuit of a right-wing agenda has led to her support of policies that would harm the unemployed, 9/11 first responders, and veterans — and that's on top of a GOP agenda that would already be detrimental to the most vulnerable members of society...
There's no doubt that some politicians don't have enough compassion for Americans fighting through tough times. But if Bachmann is really concerned about addressing the problem, she should start by looking in the mirror.
Bachmann has presented progressives an opportunity to debate our core values of empathy, personal / social responsibility, and strength. The opportunity to debate our core values is only as good as our wealth in these core values are. <br/><br/>If progressives are rich in the understanding and use of our core values in governance conversation, our response will be free from conservative frames / vision / values as we enter a lively offensive.<br/><br/>I'm not sure progressives are up to this challenge, especially when it appears that empathy could be a contested value IF a conservative is applying it to the "father" of the nation, who is supposed to be "strict," and isn't according to them. If he were strict, he would show a little empathy to those those who produce jobs, i.e. the rich and powerful. Since he's not demonstrating this requisite empathy to the rich and powerful, that empathy is NOT "trickling down" to those who need it the most - the rest of us.<br/><br/>If progressives are not careful, we will start defending the "father," which supports the conservative frame of governance, i.e. it's about the presidency & plutocracy versus the people and democracy.<br/><br/>Afterall, not enough progressives have been asking where the president's so-called empathy is. We had better stay on the empathy bandwagen and make sure the word is framed around our moral world view.
Why are we sometimes moved to tears by someone else’s suffering? What makes us want to risk our lives to save a stranger? How do we experience and acknowledge the feelings of others over our own, and how does this alter our behaviour? What if we can’t do any of these things, and find it difficult to treat others as anything other than objects?
Simon Baron-Cohen, expert in autism and developmental psychopathology, has always wanted to isolate and understand the factors that cause people to treat others as mere objects.
Envisage was founded by a team of five in Singapore based on a Poverty Simulation Kit from the US. It is a comprehensive program where participants will role-play various characters, in which students have the opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of the less fortunate and in turn develop a greater application of their family, education and financial literacy...
I first came across the program through my participation in NTU-SIFE, under the program named Eye Empathy, aimed to educate high school students the importance of financial literacy through empathy for the poor.
Worried about whether you’re evil? Two new books, complete with diagnostic checklists, can help you decide.
For Baron-Cohen, psychopaths are just one population lacking in empathy. There are also narcissists, who care only about themselves, and borderlines — individuals cursed with impulsivity, an inability to control their anger and an extreme fear of abandonment. Baron-Cohen calls these three groups “Zero-Negative” because there is “nothing positive to recommend them” and they are “unequivocally bad for the sufferer and those around them.” He provides a thoughtful discussion of the usual sad tangle of bad genes and bad environments that lead to the creation of these Zero-Negative individuals.
To investigate this trait, Keysers is comparing 'normally' empathic people with those who lack empathy, such as people with autism, and psychopaths. He suspects that psychopaths may be able to recognize emotions in others but that they are also able to disconnect that recognition from their own emotions.
“Our question is: do they do terrible things to other people because, unlike most of us, they do not share the pain they inflict?” says Keysers. His sophisticated trial design is intended to test whether this is the case (see 'Letting fingers do the talking')
Observing another individual acting upon an object triggers cerebral activity well beyond the visual cortex of the observer in areas directly involved in planning and executing actions. This we will call action simulation. Importantly, the brain does not solely simulate the actions of others but also the sensations they feel, and their emotional responses.
These simulation mechanisms are most active in individuals who report being very empathic. Simulation may indeed be instrumental for our understanding of the emotional and mental state of people in our sight, and may contribute heavily to the social interactions with our peers by providing a first-person perspective on their inner feelings.
While we watch a movie, we share the experiences of the actors we observe: our heart for instance starts beating faster while we see an actor slip from the roof of a tall building. Why? Specific brain areas are involved when we perform certain actions or have certain emotions or sensations. Interestingly, some of these areas are also recruited when we simply observe someone else performing similar actions, having similar sensations or having similar emotions.
These areas called 'shared circuits' transform what we see into what we would have done or felt in the same situation. With such brain areas, understanding other people is not an effort of explicit thought but becomes an intuitive sharing of their emotions, sensations and actions. Through the investigation of shared circuits, our lab attempts to understand the neural basis of empathy and its dysfunctions.
What is the Compassionate Action Network? CAN is a network of self-organizing groups who share a common vision for a compassionate world.
Vision: To awaken compassion in our children, ourselves, and our world.
Mission: To build a global network for self-organizing groups to connect, collaborate, and take action to awaken compassion in our children, ourselves, and our world.
How Does CAN Accomplish its Mission? In 2010, CAN launched the Campaign for Compassionate Cities. To find out how one city is implementing the campaign, visit the Compassionate Seattle group. In general, CAN focuses on three areas:
Researchers link empathy to greater sexual satisfaction for both men and women Read more by Ryan Jaslow on CBS News' HealthPop.
"Empathetic individuals are more responsive to a partner's needs, and thus initiate a positive feedback cycle," study co-author Dr. Adena Galinsky, a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School's Center for Adolescent Health, said in a written statement.
Christine King, MA and Jean Morrison, MA are both certified trainers with the global Center for Nonviolent Communication. Listen to a description of habitual reactions and conscious empathetic responses, and the distinction between these and strategies/solutions.
The goal is to prevent bullying, the ugly incidents like a brawl between teenaged girls in Nanaimo posted to Youtube earlier this year, after one of them was lured to the scene. "The $800,000 we're spending today is going to do so much to prevent bullying in the future" says Premier Christy Clark.
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