By Spencer Kornhaber — 2015
Be kind, show understanding, do good—but, some scientists say, don’t try to feel others’ pain.
Read on www.theatlantic.com
CLEAR ALL
It’s a spiritual truism that trading places with the less fortunate, psychologically if not literally, can be a powerful motive for doing unto others as you’d have them do unto you.
More and more, we live in bubbles. Most of us are surrounded by people who look like us, vote like us, earn like us, spend money like us, have educations like us and worship like us. The result is an empathy deficit, and it’s at the root of many of our biggest problems.
Building Bridges for Peace brings together young people from Palestine and Israel.
You always knew demonstrating empathy is positive for people, but new research demonstrates its importance for everything from innovation to retention.
There’s a dark side to feeling the emotions of other people. In some cases, it can even lead to cruelty, aggression, and distress.
Compassion research is at a tipping point: Overwhelming evidence suggests compassion is good for our health and good for the world.
2
Research has found that incorporating compassion into your leadership strategy can increase productivity and happiness.
In man’s world, animals often bear the worst of our dark side, suffering under the stresses of cruelty and ruthlessness, however, being compassionate towards animals may actually be good for your health and well-being, perhaps even prolonging your life.
Empathy is divided into cognitive, emotional and applied empathy, all of which are valuable. For empathy to truly be useful to the human condition, our kids must have applied empathy, or compassion.
1
Considering how to make the children in our lives better people helps us reflect on how we ourselves can be more compassionate.