Ryan Lobo has traveled the world, taking photographs that tell stories of unusual human lives. In this haunting talk, he reframes controversial subjects with empathy, so that we see the pain of a Liberian war criminal, the quiet strength of UN women peacekeepers and the perseverance of Delhi’s underappreciated firefighters.
Posts Tagged ‘peace’
From TED- Ryan Lobo: Photographing the hidden story
December 27th, 2009Obama, Empathy and Supreme Court Judges
December 13th, 2009Early in 2009 President Obama stated that he would use ‘empathy’ as one criterion for selecting a candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court, sparking a controversy in the media. At the press conference where he made the original announcement, he gave his criteria as: sharp and independent mind; honours the constitution; respects the judicial process; and holds the judicial values upon which the country was founded. Then he added a consideration: empathy.
He said, “I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”
In an interview two days later, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (Utah) said that “Usually [empathy] is a code word for an activist judge”. On the same day, radio talk show host Laura Ingraham said on Fox News:
“When we have the president of the United States out there on Friday saying that it’s going to be about empathy and understanding people from different walks of life, that is a singularly loopy idea for a qualification for a justice.”
As I’m writing a book about empathy, I would like to share these reflections:
- Our capacity to empathize is a deeply significant aspect of being human. It’s part of the ‘social glue’ that holds society together (Hoffman, 2000).
- Society has specific labels for people who don’t have the capacity to empathize: they are labelled as psychopathic, autistic etc. In ‘psychopaths’, a lack of empathy enables them to ignore their awareness of their victim’s distress. People who are diagnosed as ‘autistic’ find it difficult to understand and interact with the people around them, and are commonly thought to miss out on some of the richness of human experience.
- Would fairness be compromised in a judge who had the capacity to empathize? For instance, would such a judge favor the poor or ethnic minorities? Whether or not you believe that empathy is a fundamental value in its own right, there is evidence from a variety of sources that empathy is a actually a motive for acting morally/ethically. For example, researcher Martin Hoffman proposes that “Empathic distress functions as a prosocial moral motive” (Hoffman, 2000). Empathy is a motive for fairness, not a hindrance to it.
I wonder if the controversy has arisen as a result of a misunderstanding of the meaning of empathy? If empathy is defined as ‘feeling what the other person is feeling’, then I would be concerned about Obama using empathy as a criterion. Like Orrin Hatch and Laura Ingraham, I would be concerned about a lack of impartiality. However, I do not define empathy in this way, and I believe that Obama doesn’t either. I define empathy as sensing the other’s feelings and their deeper motivations, their ‘needs’.
Extracted from ‘Empathy: From the Buddha to Obama’, by Chris Warren(Shantigarbha), forthcoming.
Reference:
Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Empathy and Moral Development. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION (NVC)
Training – Mediation – Facilitation – Coaching
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Website: seedofpeace.org
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Contagious Love Experiment
December 11th, 2009When two Iraq Vets found out that love conquers fear and hate, they began to spread it by journeying across the country….
The anti-war movement continues! Josh Steiber (Army Veteran of Iraq) and Connor Curran (Marine Veteran of Iraq) set out on a bold journey across the United States. With only the money they made in Iraq in their pockets and the kindness of friends, family, and strangers, they embark on a crusade to awaken those threatened by fear and anger. By promoting a message of love and forgiveness they hope to have an impact and learn a great deal from encounters with locals across the country as they continue to walk and bike.
This is a film of their more recent visits to Lawrence, Kansas where they spoke with people at the public library. Josh finds himself in the same State (Fort Riley, Kansas) that he served in when deployed to Iraq. There he declared conscientious objector status soon after he returned from his tour of duty in 06′. He began rethinking the things that he was raised to believed in the context of several new life experiences.
Albert Einstein on Peace
September 30th, 2009“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
—Albert Einstein
Editor’s Note: One look at Afghanistan, and it’s clear that Einstein had a point. Peace cannot be kept by force. The more difficult to trust statement is the second one. Achieving peace through understanding requires trust in human nature, it requires openness and vulnerability, it requires empathy– the willingess to listen deeply to another. The way of peace is largely untested on a national level, those of us who use it daily on a personal level know it can succeed.
Empathy Labyrinth Creator to Appear on CBS
September 25th, 2009
The Empathy Labyrinth creator, Marc Weiner, is scheduled to appear briefly on the CBS Morning News show on Thursday morning October 1, 2009 sometime between 7:00 and 9:00 AM. He will be promoting the Empathy Labyrinth, The International Day for Empathic Action, and NVC. We are very thankful to CBS for this wonderful opportunity to spread our message of the power of empathy.
