Author: Roman Krznaric

Why we need a Climate Futures Museum

When I think about what is likely to result from the global climate change talks taking place in Copenhagen this month, I feel nothing but despair. Why? Because whatever kind of deal is struck is highly unlikely to keep global warming below two degrees. The majority of people in rich countries simply don’t care enough about the issue to pressure their governments into extraordinary action. I believe one of the major reasons for this is the lack of empathy for those who will – or who currently – suffer from the impacts of climate change.

The individuals behind the climate change headlines. Flooding in India, 2009.
The individuals behind the climate change headlines. Flooding in India, 2009.

We should view the problem of tackling climate change not as an environmental issue, or one concerning technology or social justice or markets, but primarily as a problem of empathy. We must learn to see the individuals behind the newspaper headlines about global warming, and imagine ourselves into the uniqueness of their lives, developing an empathetic understanding of their most important experiences, beliefs, fears and hopes. Sound far-fetched, wishy-washy or a little too sandals-and-carrot-juice for your liking? Let me explain myself.
Continue reading →

Posted on by Roman Krznaric 1

Review: The Sacred Made Real at the National Gallery

For over half a millennia Christian art has attempted to use empathy to help people understand the reality and significance of Christ’s suffering on the cross. We are offered paintings and sculptures showing nails piercing flesh, gaping wounds and seeping blood that aim to have us not only see what Christ endured, but also to physically feel his bodily pain. As the art historian Jill Bennett points out in her book Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma and Contemporary Art:

‘The images developed from the late medieval period with the express function of inspiring devotion were not simply the “Bible of the unlettered” in the sense of translating words into images. Rather, they conveyed the essence of Christ’s sacrifice, the meaning of suffering, by promoting and facilitating an empathetic imitation of Christ.’
Continue reading →

Posted on by Roman Krznaric

You are, therefore I am

Thich Nhat Hanh: 'Don't just do something; sit there.'
Thich Nhat Hanh: 'You are, therefore I am.' Another of his sayings is, 'Don't just do something; sit there.'

A recent report by Human Rights Watch has highlighted the persecution in Vietnam of followers of the Zen Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh. Now in his eighties and author of books that have sold over a million copies, Thich Nhat Hanh is known as one of the founders of ‘engaged Buddhism’, which seeks to apply Buddhist ideas to help tackle social, economic and environmental injustice. He first came to public attention in the 1960s when nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King for his opposition to the Vietnam War. He has now been making headlines for criticising the Vietnamese government for its failure to ensure religious freedom.
Continue reading →

Posted on by Roman Krznaric 5

In search of our inner ape: An interview with Frans de Waal

de waal portraitIn an exclusive interview for OUTROSPECTION, I speak to the renowned Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal about his new book, The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society. De Waal, voted by Time Magazine as one of the 100 World’s Most Influential People Today, is Professor of Primate Behaviour at Emory University in the US. Author of numerous books on social cooperation in primates, he is famous for arguing that empathy is a natural trait in humans and many animal species.

Roman Krznaric: What is the central argument of your new book, The Age of Empathy, and why do you think empathy is such an important idea in today’s world?

Frans de Waal: The evolution of empathy has been an interest of mine since my 1996 book Good Natured. Since then, so many studies have been conducted both by others and by my own team on human and animal empathy that it is getting hard to keep up. The field is blooming, especially in human neuroscience, but increasingly also with regard to animals. There are now empathy studies on mice, monkeys, apes, elephants, et cetera. Since the general public knows little about these developments, they beg to be summarized, which is what I have set out to do in this book, exploring the origins of empathy through all disciplines, from human psychology to animal behavior, and from brain imaging to the evolution of sociality.
Continue reading →

Posted on by Roman Krznaric 2

Using babies to teach empathy in schools

I’m delighted to see that one of the great pioneers of empathy education, Mary Gordon, has just had her book Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child By Child, published in the UK. It’s about time. The programme she founded in Canada in 1995, also called Roots of Empathy (ROE), has revolutionised how empathy skills are taught in the classroom. ROE has now reached over a quarter of a million Canadian school kids – including aboriginal children – and has spread to New Zealand, the United States and the Isle of Man. The originality of ROE is this: the teacher is a baby.
Continue reading →

Posted on by Roman Krznaric 0

How an industrial designer discovered the elderly

There is a long tradition of developing empathy through direct experience of other people’s lives. Much of it has been aimed at understanding the lives of those living in poverty.  In the late 1920s George Orwell dressed up as a tramp and wandered the streets of East London with vagabonds and beggars, a period of his life described in his book Down and Out in Paris and London. More recently, the British journalist Polly Toynbee wrote about her time trying out a variety of minimum wage jobs (Hard Work: Life in Low-Pay Britain), a path also followed by the American social commentator Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America).

These examples are well known. So I would like to tell you about one of the most extraordinary forgotten instances of experiential empathetic adventuring. It happened exactly forty years ago.
Continue reading →

Posted on by Roman Krznaric 9

Tackling the empathy deficit

Welcome to my new blog about empathy – the art of stepping into the shoes of other people and seeing the world from their perspective.

I believe that empathy can help us escape from the narrow confines of our own existence and guide us towards more adventurous and fulfilling lives. Empathy is also a radical tool for social transformation that has the potential to bring about change not through new laws, policies or institutions, but through a revolution of human relationships. Barack Obama has said the most fundamental problem in modern society is ‘the empathy deficit’. Harnessing the transformative power of empathy is the great challenge of the twenty-first century.

This weekly blog will contain my own thoughts on empathy, the stories of empathetic adventurers, interviews with key empathy activists and thinkers, and act as a global portal for empathy news from around the world. I also hope it becomes a place where people can share their personal experiences of looking at life through they eyes of others.

I would like to launch this blog with a story that I hope you find as inspiring as I do.
Continue reading →

Posted on by Roman Krznaric 7