So it's now my pleasure to introduce the founding director of the empathy center, Edward Rutsch Edwin. Rutsch Edwin is also the developer and long term evangelist of the empathy circle practice. So now you can take
it away, right? Well, thank you, Janet and again, thank you to all the volunteers who have helped organize these summits. Let me do a screen share here of my slides show. And there we go. Yeah, and oh, let me recording. Get rid of this set things up, so and so, welcome, yeah. So welcome to the empathy Summit. This is the exploring empathy circles, foundational practice of the empathy movement. And as Jana mentioned, we're building the empathy movement, which is with the vision of to make mutual empathy a primary personal and cultural value. And it's something that I really feel that we need at this time in in our social, political times, because of all the kind of confusion and so forth is happening in the world, and that's what I want to go into this presentation is going to be about defining empathy in the context of the empathy circle, and if we need a if we want To build a movement to make mutual empathy a primary cultural value. We need to be clear on what our definitions are, and that's what I'm going to be personally focusing on. This year, we're holding empathy circle study groups. We have two that we hold. Every week, we'll be creating more presentations like this, wanting to write articles, and also create a workshop about the definition of empathy and looking at even writing a book. And this is sort of the beginning of that project. And let's go we know from the benefits of empathy are there's many benefits. You know, we have stronger relationships and connections, better conflict resolution, improved teamwork and collaboration. It's good for effective leadership and increase the personal and social well being and, you know, just general, greater social cohesion. And I came about 15 years ago, I came across the the value of empathy, and have just been dedicating my life to this topic, just because I just saw how important it was, you know, for just all the other values that mutual empathy builds, like trust and deep understanding and connection and and all these other values that flow from when we listen deeply to each other. So I'm really excited you know about this movement that we're that we're building, and hopefully we can turn it into a, you know, really have an effect on the the political, social culture of the United States and the world for that matter. But yes, there is a, but there's been many recent criticisms of empathy. There's a book called against empathy, the case for rational compassion, that came out, you know, a couple years ago. But there's a couple several books that have come out just recently, within the last year. And there's one called suicidal empathy, which is, I don't know sure if it's released yet, but the author is working on it, and has been on a lot of these, you know, podcasts. You know, Joe Rogan, etc, who've been in, he's been just criticizing empathy. And there's another one called toxic empathy that's come out and, and it's a the subtitle is how progressives exploit Christian compassion, and they've gotten, you know, a lot of publicity, of some NPR pieces on it, and two of them, in fact, and so they're getting a lot of publicity. The toxic empathy one I know, the person who wrote that she's very prominent in the left, I mean, right wing political circles, and has been really getting her message out. And then. And the, let's see the next one is there was just a recent podcast, or on Joe Rogan, where Elon Musk, you know, the wealthiest person in the world, and they had as a Doge and project in, you know, reducing the size of government. He said the fundamental weakness of Western civilization, civilization is empathy. So that's like another criticism, and there is even more. There's the dark side of empathy. By Fritz Bright House. He's a academic, and he says empathy can fuel revenge. When people deeply empathize with victims, they may become more aggressive towards those they perceive as perpetrators. So that's one of his criticisms, and then another one is the sin of empathy. So Joe Rigney says empathy demands that we enter into someone's emotional world so fully that we adopt their perspective uncritically, which can leads can lead us away from the truth. So, then, so most of these criticisms are coming from the political right. So you can is Joe Wrigley is sort of a right wing kind of Christian, evangelical Christian. And then we have also, even in the Senate or in Congress, there's talk been talk about empathy. So this is a little video clip from Jeff Sessions, who, back when Obama was president, was the judiciary head of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate, and when Barack Obama said that he was going to choose a Supreme Court justice that had empathy as one of their qualities, it really upset a lot of people in Congress, and there was Quite a discussion about empathy, you know, kind of back and forth in Congress. And it was really, to me, it was very unclear. You know, what they were actually talking about, is a real muddlement In terms of the terms of the definition. So let's just hear what Jeff Sessions has to say. And I think I did not turn on the audio, so I'm going to turn that on, and there we go, so hopefully you can hear this.
And anyway, what is empathy? What is empathy? Is this your personal feeling that you are had a tough childhood, or something prejudice that you have you're Protestant or Catholic, your ethnicity, your race, some biases you brought with you to life and to the court is that what an empathy is?
So, yeah, so Jeff Sessions is asking, what is an empathy? And I think that just shows that people do not really understand what empathy is. The current definitions, I find, are problematic. There's one is there's a lack of consensus, especially within the academic community. It's kind of all over the place in terms of what people are calling empathy, and sometimes they're contradictory, or one person says it's compassion, the other person says it's empathy or the you know, so it's just, it's just all kinds of different definitions and, and I would say that the definitions are obviously not clear to many people, because you can just see all the criticisms. And even Jeff Sessions, you know, in this in the Senate is saying, what is empathy and the current definitions I find can be abstract and rather academic, and they're not easy to understand. So, for example, the term affective empathy and cognitive empathy is had become popular, you know, within the academic community and and then people have kind of taken that on. You'll see in the literature, articles, you know, books and so forth, that this term is used a lot, and even these terms are rather confusing themselves. And so I feel that we we need a really. Clear and practical definition, something that that is very usable and practical. You know, it's just not some abstract, sort of detached, sort of a definition. And I think the way to to do that is to define empathy in the context of the empathy circle. So most people here know how the empathy circle works. It's a practical process that anyone can can do fairly easily. And so we want to what I want to do is define empathy within the context of the empathy circle. What is happening in the empathy circle, and where do we see empathy playing out? So this, I hope, will take the definition out of the abstract and and make it more concrete, you know, something that you can actually experience viscerally. You know, have the felt experience of what people are talking about, and also that we can map other definitions on. So all these criticisms that we see out there about empathy, we can map those onto the experience of the empathy circle and see if they actually fit within the scope of, you know, what we call empathy. So I think this is a really going to be a real contribution to creating some greater clarity about the nature of empathy, and with that, we can use that to help build the empathy movement with a sense of clarity. So what the model that what I'm calling, you know, empathy, so is I calling it holistic empathy? And instead of like affective, cognitive empathy, I'm using the term holistic empathy. And the definition the model has these four facets, or four components, that there's a basic empathy and there's self empathy and imaginative empathy and holistic empathy. And I'm going to go through these and just show how each of them, oops, how each of them plays out in in the empathy circle. So let's go into an empathy circle. We know the basic practice. There's a speaker, there's an active listener, and then there's the silent listeners who are observing the speaker is sharing their whatever is on their mind or talking about the topic. And the active listener is being present with the speaker. They're sensing into their feeling, into the experience of the speaker, and using active listening, or empathic listening, to reflect back their understanding, which helps you know that you stay the active listeners stay present. It makes sure that they're really hearing and understanding the speaker and going deeper into the speaker's experience. So that is what a lot of people just call that empathy. And I'm saying that. I'm saying that that's sort of like basic, the foundational empathy. And this is, you know, this definition is based on the work of Carl Rogers, and that is what Carl Rogers would call empathy, that the act the listener is sensing into the experience of the speaker and then. So what does that look like? You know, Kyle Rogers says empathy is the listener's effort to hear the other person deeply, accurately and judge non judgmentally. Empathy involves skillful, reflective listening that clarifies and amplifies the person's own experiencing and meaning without imposing the listener's own material. So that's one of his definitions of empathy, and that, again, is that the active listener just listening to the speaker in the empathy circle. So if you somebody asks you, what is empathy? You can say, Oh, the basic of empathy. Let me show you in an empathy circle what empathy is, so you can point to it directly in the empathy circle, and then an empathic wave,
yeah. Can you move your zoom thing? Jen, do you
know how to move that? Move
your cursor.
No, not sure how to get rid of Don't worry. Oh, there it is. I got it. Oh, thanks for yeah, see that. And then he also another description of that process is being listened to. Let's see, I think I went, I go. I went too far. See that? Okay? One, oh, there we go. I I'm,
oh, there's wine for the slide. An empathic way, here's Rogers also says an empathic way of being with another person has several facets. It means entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it. It involves being sensitive moment to moment, to the changing felt meanings which flow in this other person to the fear or rage or tenderness or confusion or whatever he or she is experiencing. So again, he's describing that basic empathy. And you can use all these as reference if you're trying to explain to someone what Empathy means, kind of the basic aspect, another aspect of empathy is self empathy, which is, you know, feeling, sensing into your own experience. And it's, it's having that sensing into feeling, a sense of connection, of acceptance, understanding that you apply inwards. And Rogers also addresses that experience of self empathy. He doesn't call it self empathy, but he says being listened to by someone who understands makes it possible for a person to listen more accurately to themselves with greater empathy towards their own visceral experiencing their own vaguely felt meanings. So going back to self empathy, by the active listener listening to the speaker, they are supporting the speaker in self empathy. So again, you can reference that in the empathy circle. And the next part is what I call imaginative empathy. And you see a lot of times when people talk about cognitive empathy, they say, well, that's imagining some, you know some, someone, you know, what they would feel and think like and that is like a different experience than being directly with someone and listening and feeling, you know, your way into that. That's sort of a role playing aspect. And with that, we have imaginative empathy. And that's I think, what Meryl Streep meant, she says, I've thought a lot about the power of empathy in my work, and it's the current that connects me, in my actual pulse, to a fictional character in a made up story. It allows me to feel and pretend feelings, and that's like an actor you can take on a role, and the like in this is Meryl Streep, you know, taking on the role of Margaret Thatcher and Julia Child. And you could do an empathy circle, right with, with, with taking on roles like this is all four roles that Meryl Streep has done. And those roles, you could take on those roles. And those roles could be in an empathy circle, listening to each other, so that it adds the layer of imagination. And I think this is something that's not really talked about. You know, it's kind of kind of muddled in this term cognitive empathy, which I think is just not very descriptive. So again, you can take on a role, and you can take on the role of an animal, you know, and say, what is it like to be this animal? And then, you know, speak from that. And then your active listener would say, Oh, I hear you're feeling, you know, really hungry, and you really like to eat, you know, whatever. So you could, you know, imagine, have that, then you can again, you can imagine anything you know, you can imagine yourself being fruit, for that matter. So that's sort of the, you know, touching on this notion of imaginative empathy, which is, you know, a very open, creative sort of way of sensing into and understanding the world, like basic empathy is sort of a way of knowing, and this is kind of a direct way of knowing, and imaginative empathy is more of an imaginative way of knowing the world. And then the other part is what i. Call holistic empathy, and this is usually empathy is seen, you know, from an individualistic point of view. It's just the speaker, you know, is empathizing. But there's a quality of empathy, which is when everybody is has self empathy, and we're all listening to each other, it creates sort of a little culture of empathy, a holistic quality of empathy, where we're all mutually in a mutual relationship, and there's a general quality, overall quality of that empathy, way of empathic way of being. And that's sort of the culture you know, that holistic empathy is really what I see. So basic empathy is sensing into another's experience, self. Empathy is sensing into, you know, our own visceral experiences. Imaginative empathy is sort of an imagining an experience. And the holistic empathy is sensing into the sort of the community's experience and and mutual empathy between all sort of parties. And with that, I got one minute next step. I would just remind everyone to some next steps. You can ground the definitions you hear in the empathy circle, ground the criticisms of empathy in the empathy circle will be addressing a lot of those criticisms, you know, to map them onto the empathy circle. And most of those criticism I don't get too worried about, because they're not even talking about what I would call empathy. And, you know, in the empathy circle, where you see this playing out, and, yeah, you can contact me if you're interested in being part of the study group that's working on this. You can, you can contact me, and you can, if you're we have really great group that's working on this, so that's it. Thank you so much. And.
