Gonna forget about myself for a while,
gonna go out and see what others need
∼Bob Dylan
One of the convictions this site was founded on is the cultural imperative for art that allows us to compassionately experience the lives of others. Earlier this week, RSA Animate, that “invariably excellent”* series that melds the public lecture with the graphic novel, posted this video in which cultural historian Roman Krznaric argues for exactly this level of engaged receptivity, via a process of “radical empathy” he calls outrospection.
If the 20th century spawned a “therapy culture” that encouraged us “to look inside of ourselves, to gaze at our own navels,” the needs of the 21st century demand something different. “Instead of the age of introspection, we need to shift to the age of outrospection,” insists Krznaric, “the idea of discovering who you are and what to do with your life by stepping outside of yourself, discovering the lives of other people and other civilizations.”
The “ultimate artform” of the new age, he says, is empathy. Expanding “empathic potential” is good for us personally and good for the world:
“Empathy can be part of the art of living, a philosophy of life. Empathy isn’t something that just expands your moral universe. Empathy is something that can make you a more creative thinker, improve your relationships, can create the human bonds that make life worth living. But more than that, empathy is about social change, radical social change. A lot of people think of empathy as a nice, soft, fluffy concept. I think it’s anything but that; it’s actually quite dangerous. Empathy can create revolution . . . a revolution of human relationships.”
I'd have highlighted this vid simply for that robust stand on the power of empathy, but in its ten minutes Krznaric introduces several compelling ideas. He describes two related but distinct forms of empathy, “affected empathy,” when one individual mirrors another's pain, joy, etc., and “cognitive empathy,” the perspective shifting that Native Americans describe as “walking a mile in another man's moccasins.” As inspiration for expanding our empathic potential, Krznaric cites the work of George Orwell, not as chronicler of distopian futures, but as the immersive author of Down and Out in Paris and London. He could as well have mentioned the peasant paintings of Van Gogh, the New Deal photographs of Russell Lee, or the documentaries of Agnès Varda, among countless examples. He also reminds us that empathy can powerfully transform society, as it did in the English anti-slavery campaigns of the 1820s and U.S. Abolitionist movement forty years later.
The animated lecture condenses a longer talk delivered at the RSA in February, titled “The Six Habits of Empathic People.” (The singularly British RSA, the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, is an “enlightenment organization” founded in 1754 “in a coffee shop in Covent Garden.”) Krznaric concludes by urging us to cultivate empathy not just around the globe, as when a natural disaster ravages a far-off country, but across time as well: “We are failing to empathize through time, with future generations. We need to learn to expand our empathic imaginations forward through time, as well as across space.”
Here again, his words echo Native American ethics, which insist that all collective decisions contribute to the welfare of the seventh generation to come. The Great Binding Law, the constitution of the Iroquois Nation, which scholars say may date back to 1100 or earlier, expresses the idea unflinchingly:
“In all of your deliberations in the Confederate Council, in your efforts at law making, in all your official acts, self-interest shall be cast into oblivion. Cast not over your shoulder behind you the warnings of the nephews and nieces should they chide you for any error or wrong you may do, but return to the way of the Great Law which is just and right. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground—the unborn of the future Nation.”
“Empathy can be part of the art of living, a philosophy of life. Empathy isn’t something that just expands your moral universe. Empathy is something that can make you a more creative thinker, improve your relationships, can create the human bonds that make life worth living. But more than that, empathy is about social change, radical social change. A lot of people think of empathy as a nice, soft, fluffy concept. I think it’s anything but that; it’s actually quite dangerous. Empathy can create revolution . . . a revolution of human relationships.”
I'd have highlighted this vid simply for that robust stand on the power of empathy, but in its ten minutes Krznaric introduces several compelling ideas. He describes two related but distinct forms of empathy, “affected empathy,” when one individual mirrors another's pain, joy, etc., and “cognitive empathy,” the perspective shifting that Native Americans describe as “walking a mile in another man's moccasins.” As inspiration for expanding our empathic potential, Krznaric cites the work of George Orwell, not as chronicler of distopian futures, but as the immersive author of Down and Out in Paris and London. He could as well have mentioned the peasant paintings of Van Gogh, the New Deal photographs of Russell Lee, or the documentaries of Agnès Varda, among countless examples. He also reminds us that empathy can powerfully transform society, as it did in the English anti-slavery campaigns of the 1820s and U.S. Abolitionist movement forty years later.
Here again, his words echo Native American ethics, which insist that all collective decisions contribute to the welfare of the seventh generation to come. The Great Binding Law, the constitution of the Iroquois Nation, which scholars say may date back to 1100 or earlier, expresses the idea unflinchingly:
“In all of your deliberations in the Confederate Council, in your efforts at law making, in all your official acts, self-interest shall be cast into oblivion. Cast not over your shoulder behind you the warnings of the nephews and nieces should they chide you for any error or wrong you may do, but return to the way of the Great Law which is just and right. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground—the unborn of the future Nation.”
* In the words of Maria Popova (herself "invariably excellent"), who posted this video on her must-read daily omnibus Brain Pickings
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