Bestselling author, political adviser and social ethicist Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society. Beautifully animated by the RSA.
Posts Tagged ‘science’
The Empathic Civilization: Animated!
June 4th, 2010Today’s College Students Lack Empathy
June 2nd, 2010From LiveScience Managing Editor Jeanna Bryner:
College students today are less likely to “get” the emotions of others than their counterparts 20 and 30 years ago, a new review study suggests.
Specifically, today’s students scored 40 percent lower on a measure of empathy than their elders did.
The findings are based on a review of 72 studies of 14,000 American college students overall conducted between 1979 and 2009.
Empathy Blogs for February 13th, 2010
February 13th, 2010Here is an interesting cross-section of bloggers talking about empathy from various perspectives over the past few days…
From the HuffPost:
‘The Empathic Civilization’: Can Limbaugh and Obama Both Be Right?
In this post, Robbie Vorhaus attempts to compare Preident Obama to Rush Limbaugh. Good luck with that!
From the Feeleez blog:
toys for children in Haiti
The makers of an empathy game for children are looking for help getting their game to Haiti. (I admit I thought, let’s get food there first! I’m sure the people suffering in Haiti can use all the help they can get.)
Love and BLogic
Why leading with empathy works
A proponent of “love and logic” offers us a “neurological” reason to lead with empathy.
The Evolution of Empathy
January 27th, 2010
I’ve been posting a lot of Frans de Waal writings and video lately. I’m fascinated by the fact that empathy seems to have an instinctive basis. That its not purely a learned skill. In this article in Greater Good Magazine, de Waal explains that not only are humans innately empathic, but that empathy is not solely a human trait. From Greater Good:
Over the last several decades, we’ve seen increasing evidence of empathy in other species. One piece of evidence came unintentionally out of a study on human development. Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, a research psychologist at the National Institute of Mental Health, visited people’s homes to find out how young children respond to family members’ emotions. She instructed people to pretend to sob, cry, or choke, and found that some household pets seemed as worried as the children were by the feigned distress of the family members. The pets hovered nearby and put their heads in their owners’ laps.”
‘The Empathic Civilization’: Rethinking Human Nature in the Biosphere Era
January 12th, 2010From Jeremy Rifkin at the HuffPost, Author of ‘The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis
Two spectacular failures, separated by only 18 months, marked the end of the modern era. In July 2008, the price of oil on world markets peaked at $147/ barrel, inflation soared, the price of everything from food to gasoline skyrocketed, and the global economic engine shut off. Growing demand in the developed nations, as well as in China, India, and other emerging economies, for diminishing fossil fuels precipitated the crisis. Purchasing power plummeted and the global economy collapsed. That was the earthquake that tore asunder the industrial age built on and propelled by fossil fuels. The failure of the financial markets two months later was merely the aftershock. The fossil fuel energies that make up the industrial way of life are sunsetting and the industrial infrastructure is now on life support.
In December 2009, world leaders from 192 countries assembled in Copenhagen to address the question of how to handle the accumulated entropy bill of the fossil fuel based industrial revolution-the spent C0? that is heating up the planet and careening the earth into a catastrophic shift in climate. After years of preparation, the negotiations broke down and world leaders were unable to reach a formal accord.
Dominic Barter on Empathy (part 2)
December 16th, 2009Dominic Barter has studied the interface between societal and personal change, and the role of conflict, since the 1980s. Since 2004 he has worked as consultant and training program director for the Brazilian Restorative Justice pilot projects, in collaboration with the UN Development Program, UNESCO, the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Education and Special Secretariat for Human Rights. Dominic coordinates the Restorative Justice Project for the international Center for Nonviolent Communication.
Video Interview: Frans de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy
December 7th, 2009From the Book Lounge: Biologist Frans de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy presents an argument for empathy in a world focused on competition.
