Empathy Movement Magazine

Mary Gordon from Roots of Empathy is working to create a world where every person has the chance to develop their emotional literacy. At a panel called “Empathy Leadership” at the Skoll World Forum, she shared that she didn’t believe that empathy could be taught, but that it “could be caught”, and she’s hoping to make it a pandemic.

Presenting with her was Bill Drayton who is often credited with being the father of “social enterprise,” which means he‘s a staple figure at the Skoll World Forum. His efforts in founding and building Ashoka for the last thirty years have been integral in finding, connecting, funding, and celebrating global changemakers, and the current iteration of Ashoka’s work is focused on empathy. In fact, over 700 Ashoka Fellows do work focusing on youth education and empathy development, and his team is looking to support even more leadership in this area over the next few years.

Twitter Tweets from Lady Gaga

Anger creates a domino affect, let empathy take its place

The culture of students must gravitate towards empathy, not aggression. Compassion is the water to put out a angry fire.

Breeding compassion in the student body is the way toward saving lives...

http://bit.ly/HihpYg

What Bastiat described in 19th century France is still seen today. He describes the demonization of those who oppose coercive force by those who are deemed as compassionate and caring. The dominant culture tells us that if something is good, then we must use the government to mandate it. Since government is force, they are saying that we must force people to do what we think is good and if you oppose this use of force, you are an enemy of the good.

by Todd Hollenbeck

With an increasing reliance on technological advances to solve the world's problems, humanity also seeks the reassurance that only a spiritual quest can answer," said a March 29 statement by John M. Templeton Jr., foundation president and chairman.

"The Dalai Lama offers a universal voice of compassion underpinned by a love and respect for spiritually relevant scientific research that centers on every single human being."

Several studies have tried to test whether 'yawn contagion' can spread from humans to our beloved canines -- and whether that means the dogs feel empathy.

This story starts with a 2008 paper in Biology Letters titled rather wonderfully, "Dogs catch human yawns." Well, actually it started when my cat yawned and then I yawned and I wondered if animals could pass a yawn to me like a fellow human could. Spoiler: there's no evidence that cats can cause you to yawn. My alternative yawn hypothesis for yesterday's false yawn contagion is that sleeping five hours a night causes me to yawn frequently and being a kitten causes my kitten to yawn frequently. Therefore, it is not surprising that we yawned in quick succession.

Even though she criticizes religious leaders for turning their backs on compassion, famed author Karen Armstrong stood up for Buddha, Jesus, Confucius and other luminaries during her extended visit to Metro Vancouver.

The author of many best-selling books, including The History of God, responded to complaints religion has been a source of violence by telling a Simon Fraser University audience this week to not forget secular movements have also been destructive.

“Let me put in a word for religion,” Armstrong said. Both Buddha and Jesus, she explained, responded to their chaotic times by bearing “witness to a different way of living” – to an ethos that counters selfishnes

Did you ever have that sensation where you’re watching someone do something—serve a tennis ball, say, or get pricked by a needle—and you can just feel exactly what they must be feeling, as if you were in their shoes?

Scientists have long wondered why we get that feeling, and more than two decades ago, a team of Italian researchers thought they stumbled on an answer. While observing monkeys’ brains, they noticed that certain cells activated both when a monkey performed an action and when that monkey watched another monkey perform the same action. “Mirror neurons” were discovered.

 By Jason Marsh

More about V.S. Ramachandran
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Obama's preference for “judicial empathy” means appointments to the Supreme Court should favour, “Someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book … It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives — whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.”

... And the Pres defines those folks as a coalition of the downtrodden and oppressed who all need a little governmental activism in their lives: the real people, the little people, the people with whom judges should have empathy...

In short, Obama opposes judicial activism where he deems it to contradict the will of the people, but calls it judicial empathy and endorses it when it upholds his point of view. The only “empathy” he wants to see are decisions that accord with his agenda – often liberal, sometimes not – which he feels is mandated by his 2008 presidential election, despite the fact that public opinion has actually turned against much of his platform.

by Tim Stanley

When I was an FTO teaching new correction officers how to do their job in the jail I always gave them a lesson on empathy and sympathy because I sincerely believe that officers must know what those terms are and why they are so important in corrections and law enforcement.

Empathy simply stated is understanding what causes and inmate to be in jail or prison in the first place and to know where they are coming from when they are talking about issues to you as an officer.