I attended and made a short video of the Netroots California Conference. I asked attendees about the role of empathy in their lives and work.
Raven Brooks, Executive Director of Netroots says, "We're here today at Netroots California. One of the primary goals of this was to bring people together from around the state that are working on things. A lot of times I feel like California could be 4 or 5 states and there's not a lot of collaboration across issues or across geography. Our primary goal is reaching out and getting everybody here, meeting each other so that these coalitions that we build during the election, that were successful, don't fall apart"
At future progressive conferences, I'd love to see some workshops or panel sessions on progressive values and especially on empathy as the foundation of those progressive values.
Empathy is really the unifying value, the glue, that connects us and all these different issues. One aspect that's needed is to connect the various progressive issue silos and strategies back to a common core value of empathy, a common foundational morality of standing in each others shoes and looking through each others eyes.
How does empathy relate to Health Care, Education, War, Environment, Economy and Jobs, Global Warming, Death Penalty, Immigration, etc. etc? How can each and every issue be connected back to this foundational value? How can progressives learn to empathize with conservatives and vice versa? How does fear, judgments, coercion, domination, analysis, correcting, ignoring, etc. etc, get in the way of deeper empathy and connection? We need to start a dialog about how can we build a culture of empathy?
I invite you to visit our website which has the largest compilation of resources about empathy.
The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
A portal for resources and information about the values of empathy and compassion. I hope you'll support our work by liking our Facebook page and joining our Facebook Cause. Here's a couple of videos which give an overview of the role of empathy.
Animated Overview of The Empathic Civilization
A very popular video animation from Jeremy Rifkin on how we are not just driven by fear, materialism, selfishness and greed, but by empathy and cooperation.
Empathy As the foundation of a New 21st Century Enlightenment from Matthew Taylor
Shows how a new Enlightenment is being developed and one of the foundations is the value of empathy. After an explanation of 18th Century Enlightenment, the empathy part starts about half way into the video.
Empathy Team: Building a Culture of Empathy in a Conflicted World
Some of our work at bringing empathy to the Tea Party and to various conflict zones.
Here's a question: How can we Build a Culture of Empathy and what actions are you doing to create that culture?
Edwin Rutsch