Planetary Human
Living the Eleven PLANETARY HUMAN VISION-KEYS: in Thought - Feeling - Action - Presence
Key 3 - An Empathic Civilization
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."
- Lao Tzu
Your part to Play in Building An Empathic Civilisation
"EMPATHY is the art of stepping imaginatively into the shoes of another person, understanding their feelings
and perspectives, and using that understanding to guide your actions."
~ Roman Krznaric, Empathy: Why It Matters, & How to Get It
PLANETARY HUMAN promotes both awareness and practice of the human capacity for empathy that leads into the broader field of compassion. In these times of immense turning, empathy is an essential element that needs to be called forth from each individual's intrinsic nature. The most accurate understanding now emerging through the sciences is that empathy is a built-in feature of the human nervous system. Empathy is natural for human beings, and especially in these times of chaos and planetary transition, absolutely necessary. Individuals and groups of individuals thrive on empathy and compassion.
Social psychologist Daniel Batson, formerly of the University of Kansas, conducted some 25 studies in the area of empathy and altruism, as described in Lynne McTaggart's paradigm-shifting book, The Bond: The Power of Connection. Batson's research illuminated important distinctions in our understanding of just what empathy is and how it motivates us toward much needed altruistic responses.
Using fMRI to monitor the brain activity of subjects as they watched footage of people in excruciatingly painful circumstances, it became clear that if his subjects imagined themselves in that same horrible situation they experienced stressful reactions.
However, when they imagined empathically what it would feel like to be the other person in that painful situation, they experienced diminished stress reactions and were prompted from within to respond in altruistic ways.
Growing evidence from the neuroscience community confirms that human beings are wired for empathy. We now know about the 'mirror neurons' in the brain that make up a significant part of an inbuilt system that inclines human beings more toward cooperation and compassion, as differing from the outdated and inaccurate 'belief' in "survival of the fittest." The present day scientific disciplines of biology, psychology, social psychology and neuroscience have ever-expanding bodies of evidence that symbiosis, cooperation and altruism together form the deeper and abiding rule about how human beings are set up to function.
VIEDO: RSA Animate: The empathic civilisation
PLANETARY HUMAN teaches practical methods to rediscover one's innate capacity for empathy and compassion, for 'feeling with and being with the other.' By developing this capacity we further restore our inclination for responding altruistically to the challenges and plights of our fellow human beings.
Video: The Emotional World of Farm Animals
PLANETARY HUMAN suggests that empathy and compassion also extend to the non-human community comprising all the living beings that make up the planetary biosphere, including farm animals.
Empathy and compassion bring out the best in humanity. They powerfully and positively change the lives of individuals, and enhance the dynamics within all kinds of groups to create and engender lasting, life-affirming transformations. Life within collectives of human beings works better with empathy and compassion.
"Compassion is not to pity but to suffer with, to understand, to empathize,
to feel, to be with and for. I am on your side. I am like you,
and you are like me. We are one. We both suffer.
We both desire happiness and the relief of suffering.
I vow to help relieve your suffering. Compassion."
- Robertson Work
author of - A Compassionate Civilization
- from homo sapiens to homo empathicus -
A Process to Cultivate Empathy
Empathy is activated through one's conscious intention and imagination.
It is a direct and simple imagination-process initiated easily enough through the use of a hypothetical question structured in a very specific format
known in some psycho-therapeutic communities as 'the implied directive'.
Here are the 3 steps:
1. Become more deeply aware of the situation that the other is encountering; be it stressful, painful, or just different.
2. Knowing only what you truly know of that other person and holding that in mind, ask this question to yourself over and over:
"If I were this person in that situation, how would it feel?"
3. Feel into your body and notice what sensations seem to emerge with this question. Notice any inner shifts that occur in relation to
the behaviors, values and perspectives of the other.
Do these sensations, feelings and shifts inform and foster
new responses and behaviors within you?
Do any new categories of awareness and understanding
assist you in letting go of egoic-posturing?
Become familiar with these 2 simple steps along with the sensations and informed orientations they engender, and see if you can consciously, consistently invoke empathic/compassionate states.
This will raise your resonance so that you can
'Be the Change' human civilization so desperately needs.
"Civilization is civil, civility, about the citizen, the one who belongs.
It has many dimensions—cultural, social, political, economic, and environmental.
What if everyone were to belong to this emerging civilization,
all people and all life-forms—an Earth community, the biosphere,
the noosphere (the layer of consciousness enveloping our planet),
human society as part of great nature?"
- Robertson Work
author of - A Compassionate Civilization
Video: The Egg - a powerful metaphor to engender empathy
"Even now, a compassionate civilization is emerging. We have come thus far
over these billions, millions, thousands, hundreds of years.
Will we yet go further, further than ever before?
Will we, you and I, embrace all, everyone, as a sister and fellow citizen of Earth society?
Will we suffer together? Relieve our suffering together? Laugh together?
Be happy together? Realize our full potential together?
It is possible, you know. And it has become an utter necessity.
Will we make it together or not make it at all?"
"The choice is ours.
Would we not rather angle toward a compassionate civilization?
Let’s go together."
- Robertson Work
author of - A Compassionate Civilization
LINKS & RESOURCES
To continue expanding your understanding of the power and necessity of empathy within human civilization:
Books:
The Bond: The Power of Connection - by Lynne McTaggart
Empathy: Why It Matters, and How To Get It - by Roman Krznaric
The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life's Most Essential Skill - by Karla McLaren
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined - by Stephen Pinker
Videos:
Empathy is a Verb with Michele Borba: TEDx Traverse City
The Power of Empathy with Anita Bowak: TEDx Montreal
The Power of Empathy with Helen Riess: TEDx Middlebury