Problems
What are personal and social problems (or unmet needs) that people have and that empathy can help address?
Obama - empathy deficit
Hillary - social divisions and lack of meaning
Edwin - every problem is a need for empathy.
Erosion of democracy and rise of authoritarianism.
Growing divisions, alienation, apathy.
John Kinyon - Global warming and human survival
Dave - polarization, nuclear weapons and the ability to destroy ourselves, our past learned tribal primitive fight or flight type of responses will destroy us, climate change and ecological destruction
Barack Obama - Empathy Deficit
He says the country has a Empathy Deficit. Which means;
Social divisions of race, class, politics
Cynicism for positive empathic change
It seems like we got an empathy shortage, an empathy deficit. More serious than the federal budget deficit. We've become so cynical that it almost seems naive to believe that we can understand each other across the gulf of race, or class or region or religion..." Barack Obama
Self-righteousness
"An empathy shortage. That's what the principle of empathy does, its calls us all to task. The heartless conservative, the patronizing liberal, the powerful and the powerless. The oppressed and the oppressor. No one is exempt from finding common ground, because when no one is exempt it forces all of us to examine our own actions, our own belief systems. It shakes us out of our complacency and protects us from our own blindness our own self-righteousness. Our own fanaticism." Barack Obama
Self-centeredness, selfishness - get so caught up in "us
"One of the values that I think men in particular have to pass on is the value of empathy. Not sympathy, empathy. And what that means is standing in somebody else's shoes, being able to look through their eyes. You know, sometimes we get so caught up in "us" that it's hard to see that there are other people and that your behavior has an impact on them. And sometimes brothers in particular don't like to feel empathy, don't like to think in terms of "How does this affect other people?" because we think that's being soft. There's a culture in our society that says we can't show weakness and we can't, therefore, show kindness. That we can't be considerate because sometimes that makes us look weak." Barack Obama
"The world doesn't just revolve around you. There's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit." Barack Obama
"Not only that - we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses." Barack Obama
"The world doesn't just revolve around you. There's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit." Barack Obama
conflict, the war, the cruelties
"And that strikes me as the most important quality that we need in America right now and around the world right now If you think about so much of the conflict, the war, the cruelties that we have been witnessing, so much of if it seems to have to do with the inability of people to recognize themselves in somebody else. " Barack Obama
"It’s the lack of empathy that makes it very easy for us to plunge into wars. It's the lack of empathy that allows us to ignore the homeless on the streets. And obviously central to my Christian faith is a belief in treating others as I’d have them treat me. And what’s I think created so much love and excitement for His Holiness has been that he seems to live this, and shows that joy continuously." Barack Obama
we don't see our common humanity
"I'm talking about a moral deficit. I'm talking about an empathy deficit. I'm taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother's keeper; we are our sister's keeper;" Barack Obama
lack of peace
"Ultimately, peace is just not about politics. It’s about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don’t exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation. And I know, because America, we, too, have had to work hard over the decades, slowly, gradually, sometimes painfully, in fits and starts, to keep perfecting our union." Barack Obama
indifference
"And none of the tragedies that we see today may rise to the full horror of the Holocaust -- the individuals who are the victims of such unspeakable cruelty, they make a claim on our conscience. They demand our attention, that we not turn away, that we choose empathy over indifference and that our empathy leads to action. And that's not always easy. One of the powerful things about Schindler’s story was recognizing that we have to act even where there is sometimes ambiguity; even when the path is not always clearly lit, we have to try." Barack Obama
people are struggeling
"But we must expand our moral imaginations to understand and empathize with all people who are struggling, not just black folks who are struggling -- the refugee, the immigrant, the rural poor, the transgender person, and yes, the middle-aged white guy who you may think has all the advantages, but over the last several decades has seen his world upended by economic and cultural and technological change, and feels powerless to stop it. You got to get in his head, too." Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton
Social Divisions - race, class, and politics
"And, practicing "radical empathy" means more than trying to reach across divides of race, class, and politics, and building bridges between communities. We have to fill the emotional voids that have opened up within communities, within families, and within ourselves as individuals."- Hillary Clinton
We have a term for it, which I love: empowerment through empathy. I think more empathy is exactly what we need right now. In my book, What Happened, I called for radical empathy. People have got to start listening to one another and not treating each other as though we were somehow off limits because we have different skin color or a different religion or sexual orientation or whatever it might be."- Hillary Clinton
"In my recent book What Happened I write about the need for what I call radical empathy, an urgent imperative to recapture a sense of common humanity."- Hillary Clinton
"But 2017 showed us how important is to try to recapture a sense of common humanity; to try to walk in the shoes of people who don’t see the world the way we do." - Hillary Clinton
Emotional voids - lack of meaning
"And, practicing "radical empathy" means more than trying to reach across divides of race, class, and politics, and building bridges between communities. We have to fill the emotional voids that have opened up within communities, within families, and within ourselves as individuals."- Hillary Clinton
greed-based economic system
"I see one common thread behind all this insanity—the basic flaw in our greed-based economic system. To address this once and for all we must redesign our existing unsustainable economic system putting our human values of empathy, sharing, and caring, at the centre of all our activities —economic, political and social - and create a new civilization based on those values. If we don’t do that, it is not unlikely that we - all of humankind - would disappear within a century. " Muhammad Yunus