Category Archives: ethics

The Six Habits of Highly Empathic People

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 1 April 2012

This is the video of a talk I gave at the Royal Society of the Arts, which describes six ways to expand our empathic potential, drawing on everything from the empathy experiments of George Orwell to developments in industrial design, from the struggle against slavery in the eighteenth century to the Middle East crisis today. Discover [...]

Also posted in background, belief, climate change, conversation, empathy, empathy through conversation, empathy through education, empathy through experience, history, literature, podcasts, politics, psychology, public policy, science | 2 Comments

The greatest meeting of strangers in history

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 21 March 2012

  I am in the midst of a long-term project to document instances when empathy has flowered on a mass scale and shifted the course of human history. While empathy has periodically collapsed on a collective scale – just think of colonialism in Latin America or the Holocaust – there have also been moments when [...]

Also posted in conversation, empathy, empathy through conversation, empathy through experience, family, history, politics, public policy | 3 Comments

Why George Orwell is my empathy hero

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 12 February 2012

I was recently interviewed by The Browser – a fabulous site which compiles quality writing from around the web - about my five top books on the art of living. In the following extract I discuss George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, a book which has been a major inspiration for all my work [...]

Also posted in background, conversation, empathy, empathy through conversation, empathy through experience, history, interviews, literature, politics | 2 Comments

The lost history of the househusband

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 21 January 2012

The following article originally appeared in The Guardian. The great tragedy of modern parenting is that we’ve forgotten its history – and mothers are paying the price. Contrary to popular belief, the superdad who takes on a serious share of childcare and housework is not a new invention. Before the industrial revolution – a mere couple of [...]

Also posted in belief, family, history, love, work | 2 Comments

Is social media killing the art of conversation?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 2 January 2012

Ready for a digital diet in 2012? In this article just published in the Independent on Sunday – and based on my new book The Wonderbox: Curious Histories of How to Live – I argue why we need less electro-chatter and more thoughtful, face-to-face conversation. (You’ll also find out why Dr Samuel Johnson is the most disastrous conversationalist [...]

Also posted in conversation, empathy through conversation, history | 1 Comment

New Book! THE WONDERBOX by Roman Krznaric

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 16 December 2011

My new book, THE WONDERBOX: CURIOUS HISTORIES OF HOW TO LIVE (Profile Books), will be in bookshops from December 22 –  just in time for a last-minute Christmas stocking filler. It’s about what the last three thousand years of human history can tell us about better living, and explores twelve universal topics, from work and love to [...]

Also posted in climate change, empathy through collaboration, empathy through conversation, empathy through education, empathy through experience, general, history, nature, philosophy, religion, travel | 2 Comments

The radical origins of compassion

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 3 November 2011

So you think compassion means being nice to people? Sure, its Latin root literally means ‘to suffer with another’, which is pretty close to the psychological concept of ‘affective empathy’, where you share in or mirror someone else’s emotional state. When I feel your pain or suffering, I may well do something to help you [...]

Also posted in art, empathy through experience, film, history, religion | 1 Comment

To smack or not to smack? An interview with Christopher Wakling

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 13 October 2011

Christopher Wakling’s new novel, What I Did, is a brilliant, dark and often excruciatingly funny journey into a family nightmare. Narrated by a six-year-old boy obsessed with the animal kingdom, it has been the recipient of scintillating reviews, was nominated for the Booker Prize and is fast becoming a book club favourite. I talked to the author [...]

Also posted in interviews, literature, public policy, reviews | 1 Comment

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 [...]

Also posted in empathy through conversation, empathy through experience, 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 [...]

Also posted in interviews, measuring empathy, nature, psychology, reviews, science | 3 Comments

  • 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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