Empathy can hurt
Let’s be honest. It’s hard to deliberately subject yourself to pain. Which is what you’re doing if you’re an empathetic person, and you chose to go to a movie about a child who is...
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Empathy for animals
A reader of the last blog post commented that empathy for animals is equally as important as empathy for humans. Is this true? Do animals really “count for” as much as humans? To put...
Empathy for a bird
That’s right, for a bird. One tiny, meaningless little gull provoked a great deal of empathy among a group of strangers walking around a lake the other day, as Gail Rosenblum related the story...
Roll a Mile in Someone Else’s Shoes
An article in the Star Tribune by a student named Kate Ross is a reminder that the best way to experience empathy for another person is to actually experience what that person is experiencing....
The One-Fourth, Three-Fourths Empathy Symbol
I’m glad people like the empathy symbol. But to be perfectly honest, perhaps sometimes it should be drawn with the line dividing the two sides, not down the middle, but over to the side....
There but for the grace of fate go I
Apparently, Scrooge is alive and well these days. He’s not just a relic from Dickens’ time, not just a character in a play we watch during the holidays. Witness these modern-day Scrooges, who say...
The Age of Empathy?
My son Zack just shared this article with me. It’s fascinating and thought-provoking, and highly recommended. It’s called, Six Habits of Highly Empathetic People, by Roman Krznaric. He is a founding faculty member of The...
Chris Kluwe: Punter, Pundit and Empathy Promoter
Chris Kluwe is the former Minnesota Vikings punter who became famous when he published an enraged response on Deadspin to a Maryland state legislator’s demand to the Baltimore Ravens that they silence their player...
Empathy and the Boston Marathon Bombing…How?
I tried to write about the Boston Marathon bombings a week ago and got one sentence written before I was stuck; I sat there staring at the screen for some time before I gave...
Obama: Peace starts with Empathy
President Barack Obama recently gave a brilliant speech to the citizens of Israeli, asking them to consider how things are from the perspective of their adversary, the Palestinians. He said that the only way...