Author Archives: Roman Krznaric

How to be a Muslim, a Hindu, a Christian and a Jew

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 5 October 2011

There is an intriguing thesis at the heart of Steven Pinker’s new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. The Harvard psychologist argues – contrary to popular opinion – that humankind has become progressively less violent over the past few thousand years. We might feel surrounded by terrorism, civil wars and gun crime today, but [...]

Posted in empathy through conversation, empathy through experience, ethics, history, peace building, philosophy, politics, religion | 2 Comments

Dissecting the empathic brain: An interview with Christian Keysers

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 21 July 2011

Why do we shudder when we watch a tarantula crawling across James Bond’s chest in a 007 movie? And what can looking into a monkey’s brain tell us about our capacity to share in the emotional experiences of other people? Answers to these questions appear in The Empathic Brain: How the Discovery of Mirror Neurons [...]

Posted in ethics, interviews, measuring empathy, nature, psychology, reviews, science | 3 Comments

Empathy with the enemy

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 16 June 2011

In the spring of 472 BC the people of Athens queued up to see the latest play written by Aeschylus, the founder of Greek tragedy. The Persians was an unusual production, and not only because it was based on an historical event rather than the usual legends of the gods. What must have really shocked [...]

Posted in art, empathy through education, ethics, film, history, literature, peace building, politics | 1 Comment

Podcast: Empathy, mutual aid and the anarchist prince

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 19 April 2011

Peter Kropotkin was one of the greatest thinkers of the nineteenth century, who managed to multi-task as a Russian prince, renowned geographer and revolutionary anarchist. In this interview with Phonic FM, a wonderful community radio station based in Exeter, I discuss how Kropotkin’s ideas about ‘mutual aid’ relate to my own work on empathy, and why Kropotkin is a prophet for the art of living in the twenty-first century. The interview lasts around 50 minutes.

Posted in ethics, history, interviews, peace building, philosophy, podcasts, politics, science | 1 Comment

Marilyn Monroe and the dangerous science of empathy

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 6 April 2011

Empathy is becoming a science. That was the message of a recent article in The Observer newspaper by Cambridge psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, based on his new book, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty. Our brains, he argues, contain an ‘empathy circuit’. But if empathy is wired into us, does that leave any scope for expanding our empathic potential?

Posted in measuring empathy, psychology, science | 4 Comments

Helen Keller and the seeing hand

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 11 February 2011

After being out of print for nearly a century, Helen Keller’s sensational collection of essays, The World I Live In, has recently reappeared in a variety of editions. Although her life is often remembered as an uplifting tale of personal triumph over extreme physical adversity, it is just as much an inspiration for how to expand our imaginations. By taking us on a journey into her dark and soundless world, her writings can help us rethink the nature of perception itself.

Posted in empathy through experience, film, history, literature, nature | Leave a comment

Solstice Short Story Special: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 18 December 2010

To celebrate the Winter Solstice – or Christmas if that is your festival of choice – I invite you to read one of the most moving pieces of empathic fiction ever written. It is a short story by Ursula Le Guin, ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’, first published in 1973. Le Guin says she based her psychomyth parable on an idea from the philosopher William James where he imagined a world in which millions of people could be kept permanently happy on the single condition ‘that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment’. Here is the story in full.

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Why every city needs an Empathy Museum

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 28 November 2010

Just as the world’s major cities now have Holocaust Museums, it is time they all established Empathy Museums too. Their purpose would be nothing less than generating a new global culture of empathy by creating adventure spaces where you can explore how to view life from the perspective of other people.

A typical Empathy Museum would not house dusty exhibits inside glass cases. Instead, it would be an exciting and intriguing playground rivalling the finest galleries and tourist attractions that the city has to offer. On rainy Sunday afternoons you might wander through the Empathy Museum with a few friends or your mother-in-law. During the week it is likely to be filled with children on school excursions and inquisitive visitors from countries where the ideal of empathy remains embryonic. The Empathy Museum will ignite the imagination just like the first public museums in the seventeenth century, whose collections of curiosities revealed the wonders of nature and human civilization for the first time.

Posted in art, design, empathy through conversation, empathy through education, empathy through experience, nature, public policy, travel | 1 Comment

Is kindness good for you?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 14 November 2010

Just in case you missed it, yesterday – November 13 – was World Kindness Day. As part of the global festivities, I was interviewed in the latest issue of Psychologies Magazine about the relationship between kindness and empathy. As I point out, kindness is not without it’s problems:

‘It can sometimes be a little too easy to describe actions as “kind”. If a wealthy individual gives away some money to a charity, how valuable is their gift if it hasn’t involved much of a personal sacrifice?’

Posted in ethics, interviews, philosophy | Leave a comment

The day empathy saved the world

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 24 October 2010

If you’ve ever sat up late wondering if empathy can save the world, I have good news for you. It can. Well, that is according to Robert McNamara, US Secretary of State from 1961 to 1968. In the Academy Award winning documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, the former bigwig in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations – who died last year aged 93 – reveals what he learned about war and foreign policy during his political career. The surprising first lesson is this: ‘empathize with your enemy’.

Posted in empathy through education, ethics, film, history, interviews, politics, public policy | Leave a comment

  • Welcome to OUTROSPECTION, my blog on empathy and the art of living. You'll find articles, interviews and news on the fundamental questions of how to live, with an emphasis on outrospection, which is about discovering who we are by stepping outside ourselves and exploring the lives of other people and cultures.

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