WEBVTT - The Empathy Wall 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:17.480 Yeah. You enter a crowded elevator, you walk down the street, 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:21.520 or you navigate a busy airport, passing by a blur 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:26.439 of faces, sometimes hundreds and mere seconds. You scan the crowd, 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:30.600 and the subconscious borders go up, pushing against the tide 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:42.880 of humanity. You might see traces of anxiety, anger, or sadness, 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:46.560 but you blot out these recognitions. You have your own 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:49.920 emotions to deal with, You have places to go. You 0:00:49.960 --> 0:01:05.399 are you and they are they. If you could scan 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:09.080 the contours of your life, all the places where people intersect, 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:12.440 whether you know them or not, who or what would 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:21.200 be outside of your empathetic borders and why? This is 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:23.880 the stuff of life? And I'm your host Julie Douglas. 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:27.040 In this episode, we look at how to grow empathy 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:31.760 through simple acts like reading fiction. You get involved with 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:35.840 the story and suddenly you're living this other life, um 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:38.160 from this other person's point of view, the main point 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:41.720 of view, character's life is happening sort of inside your head. 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:45.959 And we turned to a psychologist to help us understand 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:49.640 the tricky business of empathy. You say, you put yourself 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:53.040 in someone else's shoes, feel what they're feeling, but it's 0:01:53.080 --> 0:02:02.200 sometimes that's almost impossible. But first we'll ponder the place 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:09.880 where empathy begins in kids. Some people will not change, 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:14.800 but if we give us a better education, I think 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:21.239 people who have a wided range of thinking an empathy 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:28.119 will be the majority. That's Aisha, a retired neurologist originally 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:30.680 from Turkey who has lived in the United States for 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:33.520 the past forty years. We met her at the Women's 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:36.640 March in Washington, d C. The sign she held said 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:42.680 nasty Muslim woman. I am getting overwhelming reaction to this sign, 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:47.000 which made me cry. People come and hug me. I 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:49.720 shall echoed a common concern about the uptake and acts 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:54.480 of anger and aggression towards immigrants and schools. From day one, 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:59.160 we have to teach our kids about empathy, about debate, 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:05.040 about arguing in a positive way, discussing, learning that there 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:25.120 are many different approaches looks. The PS twenty two Chorus 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:28.360 is an elementary school chorus from Public School twenty two 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:33.959 in Graniteville, Staten Island. Here they sing alternate routes, nothing more. 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:38.280 It's also the school song for Oakhurst Elementary Indicator, Georgia. 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:51.640 Yeah Yeah, In fact, the line we are how we 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.560 treat each other and nothing more. Underscores one of the 0:03:54.680 --> 0:04:00.360 key design principles empathy and caring, something Oakhurst Elementary School 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:04.640 counselor Laura Demming is acutely aware of given recent politics. 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:08.760 I think there are two things that made me the 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:12.760 most sad about the results of the election. Number one 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:19.839 was just the message that that women, Muslim Americans, Latin Americans, 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:24.760 African Americans um not just the message that they may 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:27.520 have gotten, but but the sort of the carte blanche 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:32.520 for people to treat them as unequal. And then, for me, 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:37.359 even more powerful than that was the message that kids 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:42.400 could be getting. This video of seventh guader's chanting build 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:47.000 a Wall of catapulted Royal Oaks Middle School into the 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:51.000 national spotlight the day after Donald Trump won the election. 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:58.560 Kids can be as cruel or as kind as we 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:01.520 encourage them to be. They have an appetite for both, 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:06.000 so it's up to us to cultivate kindness in them. 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:11.480 The kids are really eat up any lessons or games 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:19.279 or opportunities to um to understand empathy. I used to 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:23.960 think that, well, you really can't teach children what empathy 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:27.080 is until they're seven or eight or so because they're 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:31.160 so ecocentric. You know, young young kids are really just 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:34.960 all about taking care of their own needs. But I 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:38.039 don't feel that way so much anymore. Um. I think 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:42.520 that all people, unless they've had like a really rough 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:47.280 couple of first years, we are we are programmed to connect. 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:52.800 Our neurons and synapses all get strengthened and fired up 0:05:52.839 --> 0:06:04.320 and excited by connecting with other people. If the youngest 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:07.240 of kids aren't quite ready to perspective take, then the 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:10.880 concept of empathy is simply broken down as I care 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:14.720 for others. Oakurst Elementary also has a school wide agreement 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:18.120 which is be kind and be respectful. And this sort 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:21.839 of messaging is deeply important because without at school, the 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.000 place where kids spend the majority of their time, can 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:29.120 become a place of misery. You know, kids not being 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:32.599 ready to learn because they're worrying about is it going 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:34.960 to be safe for me in my classroom today? Is 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:37.800 that person is going to mistreat me again? Who can 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:41.160 I turn to? What what should I do? And I 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:45.520 really when I talked to classes classrooms about bullying, I 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:49.880 try to emphasize the power of the bystander, and we 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:53.599 talk about how can you safely turn from a bystander 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:57.440 to an upstander. How can you either, um, you know, 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:00.120 speak directly to the person who's being a bully. If 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:03.880 you feel like that's safe, um, ask an adult and 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:06.600 you know, go get an adult to help. Or most 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:09.400 powerful of all, and this is where empathy comes in, 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:13.200 just being a friend to the person who's being targeted. 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:25.800 Demming has her own first hand experience with the power 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:28.800 of empathy. She was a shy kid whose father was 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:31.200 in the Air Force, with the family frequently moving and 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:37.360 Deming attending several schools early on and sixth grade, I 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:41.520 moved to a new school again, and every girl in 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:45.720 my class followed the lead of this one popular girl, 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:51.360 and in retrospect, must have had some pretty serious problems herself. 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:55.040 But they she decided she didn't want anyone else to 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:57.640 be my friend, and they all followed along. And it 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:02.520 was miserable, miserable year. And there was one girl who 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:06.240 decided she was not going to follow along, and she 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:10.720 was going to befriend me and literally in this may 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:12.920 sound overly dramatic, but I feel like she kind of 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:17.000 saved my life, or she saved me from many more 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:22.040 years of misery. That was a huge act of kindness 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:25.120 and and I think showed a lot of empathy because 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:28.280 she could have just as easily gone along and really 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:32.640 had an easier time herself. Um, but she decided to 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:36.199 be brave and caring and reach out to me, And 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:40.320 it was that was an epiphany, that was a it's 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:53.360 very significant thing. These kinds of epiphanies can usher in bold, 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:58.880 lifelong changes. But empathy works on other subconscious levels, especially 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:03.720 when it comes to not exercising it. For instance, the 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.559 two thousand and one study The Girl who Cried Pain 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:09.520 shows that doctors tend to treat complaints of pain from 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:13.920 men with medication and complaints of pain and women with sedatives. 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:16.840 You could say that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:20.680 hormones and psychology. You could say that women are expected 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:24.040 to endure pain given the conditions of childbirth and menstruation. 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:27.760 But you could also say that the physicians are short 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:32.959 circuiting their empathy in favor of convenient stereotypes, which brings 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:36.320 us to the problem of perspective taking, cutting through the 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:41.040 subconscious layers that make up our ideas about people. If 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:45.840 you're completely opposite of someone else in circumstances, gender, geographic location. 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:49.840 How do you bridge the distance? How do you connect? 0:09:50.720 --> 0:09:53.480 You pick up a book, give any other form of 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:58.520 culture of the art where you are able to stand 0:09:58.640 --> 0:10:04.640 in somebody else's choose so completely. A bibliotherapist is someone 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:08.599 who uses specific text to help heal. Susan Elderkin is 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:11.959 a writer am bibliotherapist who co wrote a novel Cure 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:15.600 in a to Z of literary Remedies. Many of these 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:18.600 remedies were drawn from her work with the School of Life, 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:23.959 which seeks to instruct through philosophy and art. The School 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:26.320 of Life was set up in two thousands and eight 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:30.640 by the British philosopher Alan Botton, and the idea behind 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:35.360 it was that, unlike regular universities, which teach you academic 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:38.360 subjects and prepare you for a life of work, I 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:43.720 guess um, the School of of Life was about learning 0:10:43.720 --> 0:11:01.839 how to live a happy and productive life. Bibliotherapy isn't 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:05.440 a new fangled approach to therapy. The term was coined 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:10.200 in nineteen six by Unitarian minister and essays Daniel McCord Crowthers, 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:13.280 and the idea itself has been around since the Greeks. 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:17.319 The word itself obviously comes from the Greek for healing 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:20.360 and the Greek for books, and the concept very much 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:23.520 does go back, I think to the ancient Greek says. 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:27.240 I've wrote about a library and ancient dvs where the 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:30.240 inscription over the door was healing plays for the souls, 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:32.760 So I think the Greeks had that mission, that books 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:41.160 were there to help our souls, help us spiritually. Bibliotherapy 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:46.160 was even used after the Second World War. Some veterans 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:48.920 returning with shell shock were given Jane Austen to read, 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:51.680 which makes a lot of sense to me. There's a 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:56.160 calmness and um an order about Jane Austen's pro style, 0:11:56.200 --> 0:12:03.439 which I find very calming to read. The thing about 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:05.360 reading is that it does something to you on a 0:12:05.360 --> 0:12:09.400 subconscious level. When it comes to empathy. Psychologists Raymond mar 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:13.240 Rights researchers have repeatedly found that reader attitudes shift to 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:17.880 become more congruent with the ideas expressed in a fictional narrative. 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:21.840 Suddenly you see through the eyes of someone who is 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:27.360 thousands of miles away from you geographically and socio economically. 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:33.560 You get to its taste the things they're tasting, and 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:36.959 see the things they're seeing and hear the things they're hearing, 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:41.240 and have the emotional response and be there for their 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:46.079 emotional response. So it is an extraordinary way to live 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:50.600 vicariously and to experience what it's like being another human being, 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:54.079 could be of a different gender, could be somebody who 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:56.280 lives in the country you can never get to, or 0:12:56.360 --> 0:13:00.520 we'll never get to somebody who lived two years ago, 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:02.920 you know, I mean, that's it. It allows you to 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:06.840 travel in time and in place, uh and in gender 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:10.120 in a way that normal life can never enable us 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:25.240 to do. In the preface of The Portrait of a Lady, 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:29.040 Henry James writes, the house of fiction has, in short, 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:32.880 not one window, but a million, a number of possible 0:13:32.920 --> 0:13:36.480 windows not to be reckoned. Rather, every one of which 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:40.000 has been pierced or is still pierceable in its vast 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:43.360 front by the need of the individual vision and by 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:48.600 the pressure of the individual will. These apertures of dissimilar 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:52.120 shape and size hang so all together over the human 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:54.560 scene that we might have expected of them a greater 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:59.040 sameness of report than we find. They are but windows 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:03.200 at the best mirror, holes in a dead wall, disconnected, 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:08.720 perched aloft. They are not hinged doors opening straight upon life. 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:11.880 But they have this mark of their own that at 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:14.640 each of them stands a figure with a pair of eyes, 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:17.920 or at least with a field glass which warms again 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:22.000 and again for observation, a unique instrument, ensuring to the 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:25.840 person making use of it, an impression distinct from every other. 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:32.160 What Henry James describes requires not just concentration but intense scrutiny. 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:35.040 And I recall my English professor once saying that the 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:38.520 number of people James observed outside of his window during 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:42.120 his entire nineteenth century life is but a fraction of 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:45.040 the people we passed by on a day to day basis. 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:48.880 The catch, then, is who do we pay attention to 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:59.480 and why empathy requires attention. We have to focus on 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:02.280 other people, you know, what's going on with them. So 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:08.000 when that attention is divided between online interactions and realized situations, 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:14.400 empathy naturally suffers. My name is Christine Rosacrantz. My research 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:17.800 is in the Communication department at Stanford and it focuses 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:23.040 on media psychology, specifically human computer interaction or h CI. 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:26.760 So we've probably all been to a lunch where most 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:28.800 of the people at the table are on their phones, 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:32.320 surfing social media, not paying attention to the other people 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:34.840 at the table, And this used to be rude, but 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:43.560 now it's kind of commonplace. And one of the reasons 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:46.240 being is we don't think it's that harmful, but it 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:49.200 is because we used to get a lot of emotional 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:52.640 information about how people's lives were just from talking with 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:55.720 them over lunch or having these social outings. But now 0:15:55.760 --> 0:15:58.160 if we're instead focusing on how many legs we've got 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:02.840 on our social media site, ironically, empathy is suffering both 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:07.600 online and in person. So this fragmentation is something that 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:11.800 we see, especially with these high level media multitaskers, um 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:21.840 they're always thinking about something else. With smartphones and computers, 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:24.920 the number of windows we can peer out of our endless, 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:28.920 except that these windows typically act as mirrors, further separating 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:33.880 ourselves from the people in front of us. People are 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:36.400 going to be using these technologies, how can they do 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:39.240 it in a responsible way and how can they afford 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:41.640 empathy three these interactions? So it might just be that 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:47.280 empathy is evolving. We might not be able necessarily to 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:50.040 have face to face interactions that would be rich enough 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:53.440 to afford empathy, but maybe these social media networks are 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:56.480 going to develop their levels of richness where they can 0:16:56.520 --> 0:17:00.160 engender empathy and compassion for these especially for people who 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:04.479 aren't already in your social circle. But before we can 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:08.199 try to solve the empathetic distance that technology places between us, 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:11.959 Rosacrans urges us to figure out what empathy means to 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:14.400 us in the first place, how do we engage with it, 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:18.080 and how does compassion fit in. So I've been studying 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:22.200 components of both compassion empathy for about the last ten years, 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:26.520 and I think of compassion especially in terms of society 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:29.800 simply meaning groups of people being kind to each other 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:35.000 despite their differences. In more specific terms, this often relies 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:38.960 on recognizing that someone else's suffering and then wanting to 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:42.480 help them in some way. And empathy is usually thought 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:45.920 of as either um feeling what someone else is feeling, 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:50.240 and we call this aspective or emotional empathy, or understanding 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:55.080 someone else's thoughts and their particular situation, which is called 0:17:55.240 --> 0:18:04.199 cognitive empathy. So compassion is often thought of as a 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:07.480 kind of tool for action when inspired by empathy, but 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:11.800 that all depends on what kind of empathy were exercising. 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:15.639 If effective or emotional, it can be biased, meaning we 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:17.919 feel empathy for those who we connect with or we 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:21.639 just have similarities with, and this doesn't always lead to 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:26.399 rational acts or thoughts, but cognitive empathy can give us 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:30.680 more clarity, perhaps even more integrity. Paul Bloom just put 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:33.040 out a book called Against Empathy that I would recommend 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:36.720 everyone read, and it argues that logic might be a 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:40.960 more effective way of ensuring truly moral actions and judgments, 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:55.240 whereas empathy can sometimes be used for negative outcomes. Seems counterintuitive, right, 0:18:55.600 --> 0:18:59.080 Seems like if you're more emotionally compelled to take someone's perspective, 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:02.800 you'd be in the empathetic striking zone. And this may 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:06.639 be because we're drawing on old ideas of perspective taking. 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:12.080 So in older laboratory studies that they did in psychology specifically, 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:15.480 they were able to use a specific individual that was 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:18.240 sort of this idealized person and they would say, here, 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:20.920 you empathize with Katie, and they would put people in 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:23.399 the high empathy group or you know, people in the 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:27.040 don't empathize with Katie group, And they found people in 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:29.240 the high empathy group would give more money to Katie. 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:31.600 And it seems like it's a very natural thing but 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:34.800 if we try to force this on people in outside 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:38.960 the laboratory conditions, we can end up kind of skewing 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:42.800 our view of reality. So, for example, on social media, 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:46.560 if the highlight of the day is um, you know, 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:50.280 black Lives Matter, we might see that people support Black 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:53.439 Lives Matter, but then they end up hating other groups 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.160 who they see as being against that group. So then 0:19:56.200 --> 0:19:59.160 you put people in two categories. It's like Black Lives 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:03.040 Matter supportive versus police supporters, and that's sort of a 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:06.520 it's it ends up being a really emotional distinction that 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:09.440 people are making as opposed to relying on rationale and 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:13.160 reading statistics and coming up with their conclusions leased on that. 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:21.480 This is one of the reasons why social media is 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:24.600 so polarizing, and in this way, the road to hell 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:29.919 is paved with good intentions. Taking things personally, while it 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:33.240 sounds so colloquial, is actually one of the most detrimental 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.040 things that we can do in these online spaces. And 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:39.240 the problem with the online spaces is it's it's highly personal. 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:42.560 It's hyper personal. So we go through and then everything 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:46.160 is all about us, and it's it's a combination of 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:50.000 us society expectations that are drawn from that and the 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:54.520 computer itself and the the way that the system is designed. 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:57.240 We want to be They want us to be focused 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:00.520 solely on these you know, bright light and stuff that 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:03.760 are coming through um. Kind of like the same mechanisms 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:05.360 that you would use in a video game to get 0:21:05.400 --> 0:21:08.320 someone to keep playing. Those things are in there, and 0:21:08.359 --> 0:21:12.119 we get little rewards, so we get little serotonin boosts 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:14.840 when we get alike, and that keeps us coming back 0:21:14.840 --> 0:21:19.160 from more and dopamine boosts. So it's it's kind of 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:23.800 it's it's like anti compassion anti compassionate Buddhism training. When 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:31.960 you're going online and using a device, it's so easy 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:35.000 for us to see social media these avatars of ourselves 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:38.800 as extensions of us and our devices like extra limbs. 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:42.199 The problem is an outsized image of ourselves that can 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:46.280 arise a kind of narcissism that blots out anything that 0:21:46.320 --> 0:21:49.119 doesn't prop us up. We're not getting the social cues 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:53.600 from other people that normally stop us from being overly narcissistic. 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:56.120 So we can imagine if we were face to face 0:21:56.200 --> 0:21:59.600 with someone else, how if we were talking about ourselves 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:02.520 too much, they might roll their eyes or leave the room. 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:05.879 But online that's not even a possibility. People might un 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:10.159 follow you, but you would probably never know. This doesn't 0:22:10.240 --> 0:22:14.199 mean that you have narcissistic personality disorder. It could just 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:18.320 be that you're a high level multimedium multitasker, which is 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:22.160 fine unless you become so entrenched in your digital life 0:22:22.200 --> 0:22:24.680 that you barely leave it. There's a book out called 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:27.359 Otaku which is about this group of shut ins in 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:31.199 Japan and they're, you know, gamers online and they like 0:22:31.280 --> 0:22:34.600 to read comic books, but they're basically just living through 0:22:34.640 --> 0:22:37.760 that medium and they very rarely go outside, so it's 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:41.680 actually causing a decrease in their birth rate and over time. 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:43.879 You can imagine this would be a huge problem in Japan, 0:22:44.040 --> 0:22:46.040 but it's something that could happen here. We have people 0:22:46.080 --> 0:22:48.679 who are shut ins and rely on this medium to 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:51.560 connect with people, and that, in and of itself, I 0:22:51.560 --> 0:22:55.680 would say is detrimental to both empathy and compassion and 0:22:56.480 --> 0:23:01.000 making those people active members of a civil discourse society. 0:23:01.280 --> 0:23:05.760 And speaking of civil discourse, social media is not really 0:23:05.800 --> 0:23:09.359 a place that is supportive of having a civil discourse 0:23:10.040 --> 0:23:12.680 because you can scream at someone and run away. If 0:23:12.680 --> 0:23:16.040 someone has a really extreme point of view, we find 0:23:16.040 --> 0:23:18.639 it easier to just un follow them or or block 0:23:18.720 --> 0:23:21.800 them instead of engaging in a conversation. That's difficult, so 0:23:21.880 --> 0:23:24.439 it ends up creating these information silos that are just 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:28.439 feeding back into itself. Rosa Crance gives an example with 0:23:28.560 --> 0:23:31.800 Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, of how empathy is 0:23:31.840 --> 0:23:37.640 playing out between Republicans and Democrats. Zuckerberg was quoted and 0:23:37.720 --> 0:23:39.280 I think it was a New York Times op ed 0:23:39.880 --> 0:23:42.639 saying that the movieson that liberals were so surprised by 0:23:42.640 --> 0:23:46.400 the election result was that they had little empathy for conservatives. 0:23:46.800 --> 0:23:50.080 For all the Facebook users clamoring for a dislike button, 0:23:50.359 --> 0:23:53.159 know that Mark Zuckerberg and his team have been working 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:56.480 on a solution. According to the Social media Magnate, the 0:23:56.520 --> 0:23:59.840 new feature will not specifically be a dislike button, but 0:24:00.040 --> 0:24:03.320 instead another wording that will allow users to show empathy 0:24:03.359 --> 0:24:08.600 towards one another. So you can take this a couple 0:24:08.680 --> 0:24:11.840 of different ways. Um the fact that you have to 0:24:11.920 --> 0:24:14.400 work towards having empathy for a group is seen as 0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:19.480 emotional labor, and some people don't find that the group 0:24:19.520 --> 0:24:23.240 that you disagree with deserve that amount of work, so 0:24:23.280 --> 0:24:25.919 that's why they don't want to empathize with that group. 0:24:26.400 --> 0:24:28.720 In that way, empathy can be seen as being a 0:24:28.760 --> 0:24:32.760 divisive issue. You're making me put away my own belief 0:24:33.560 --> 0:24:36.080 so I can expand my heart out to people I 0:24:36.119 --> 0:24:43.680 don't even like. Why would I do that? Do you 0:24:43.720 --> 0:24:46.280 feel like it's hard to find political common ground? It's 0:24:46.359 --> 0:24:49.280 not just you. A Pew study finds any one percent 0:24:49.320 --> 0:24:51.840 of voters say they cannot agree with the other side 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:55.479 on basic facts. Now consider that, in addition to the 0:24:55.520 --> 0:24:59.560 emotional labor needed to perspective take, your social media feed 0:24:59.600 --> 0:25:03.040 could be limiting your worldview and what you're exposed to. 0:25:03.480 --> 0:25:06.680 UM it's something that it's one of these unintended consequences 0:25:06.720 --> 0:25:10.320 of their system. But basically, the algorithms used in most 0:25:10.359 --> 0:25:14.560 social media platforms support a homogeneous network be networked with 0:25:14.600 --> 0:25:17.520 the people who are already like us, with similar beliefs 0:25:17.520 --> 0:25:21.040 and perspectives, and usually they start us as friends or coworkers. 0:25:21.119 --> 0:25:23.440 What happens is the things that we um like or 0:25:23.520 --> 0:25:27.000 comment on tell the social media algorithm what we want 0:25:27.119 --> 0:25:30.040 to And it's not only Spacebook, it's also Google. So 0:25:30.160 --> 0:25:32.520 Google does this thing where when you look up articles 0:25:32.560 --> 0:25:34.760 and if all you read our the New York Times 0:25:34.840 --> 0:25:38.359 and um, you know you go online to CNN, that's 0:25:38.440 --> 0:25:40.440 the type of media you're going to see and they 0:25:40.480 --> 0:25:43.240 know that. So if I look for certain information, it's 0:25:43.280 --> 0:25:46.919 gonna get weight in that direction. If someone else who 0:25:46.960 --> 0:25:50.040 has more conservative looks for the city, if they put 0:25:50.080 --> 0:25:57.560 the same exact search, termin they'll get different search results. 0:26:04.200 --> 0:26:06.920 For all these reasons, empathy turns out to be hard 0:26:06.960 --> 0:26:11.359 to recognize and negotiate in our digital existence. So could 0:26:11.359 --> 0:26:15.440 you have a world without empathy? Empathy like when that's 0:26:15.480 --> 0:26:17.960 a society that's maybe less an empathy than it would 0:26:17.960 --> 0:26:22.640 be optimal. I think it could exist, and it's sort 0:26:22.640 --> 0:26:26.560 of this dystopian version of the future. But there's other 0:26:26.720 --> 0:26:30.399 options to empathy, which is kind of, uh, something that 0:26:30.440 --> 0:26:35.199 we're sort of rediscovering from certain Enlightenment scholars. One of 0:26:35.200 --> 0:26:40.240 those being solidarity. Solidarity is not necessarily something where you 0:26:40.280 --> 0:26:44.240 need to feel empathy. It's this recognition of a common humanity, 0:26:44.800 --> 0:26:48.280 and while empathy would help that out, you can sort 0:26:48.320 --> 0:26:55.119 of use logic and other humanistic values too. Have that 0:26:55.200 --> 0:26:57.560 as your baseline where we're just going to treat people 0:26:57.640 --> 0:27:00.439 like people because that's the right thing to do, instead 0:27:00.440 --> 0:27:02.680 of necessarily being able to put yourself in the shoes 0:27:02.720 --> 0:27:22.520 of another person. If you think about it, it's a 0:27:22.560 --> 0:27:25.119 little like what oak Hurst Elementary tries to do with 0:27:25.200 --> 0:27:28.320 the youngest of their students, who can't quite perspective take yet. 0:27:28.920 --> 0:27:33.360 It's that simple idea of I care for others. It's 0:27:33.400 --> 0:27:37.560 the cognitive logical version of empathy. And it takes me 0:27:37.640 --> 0:27:40.240 back to Aisha who we met at the Women's March. 0:27:41.160 --> 0:27:44.560 This is what life is all about, This is what 0:27:44.640 --> 0:27:48.120 religion is all about, This is what God is all about. Love. 0:27:49.040 --> 0:28:01.240 There's nothing else that I can do. You enter a 0:28:01.320 --> 0:28:05.639 crowded elevator, you walk down the street, or you navigate 0:28:05.720 --> 0:28:08.240 a busy airport, pass them by a blur of faces, 0:28:08.359 --> 0:28:12.240 sometimes hundreds in year seconds, you scan the crowd, and 0:28:12.320 --> 0:28:15.840 the subconscious borders of yourself bleed into the tide of 0:28:15.960 --> 0:28:22.320 humanity before you. You recognize traces of anxiety, anger, or sadness. 0:28:23.200 --> 0:28:25.879 You have your own emotions to deal with, you have 0:28:26.040 --> 0:28:30.720 places to go, But you are they and they are you. 0:29:02.760 --> 0:29:05.040 We'd like to thank Susan Elderkin of the School of 0:29:05.120 --> 0:29:08.160 Life for taking us through a literary journey of empathy. 0:29:08.480 --> 0:29:10.720 You can find out more about her work at the 0:29:10.840 --> 0:29:14.120