Hi, everyone, I'm Edwin Rutsch structure, the Center for building a culture of empathy. And today I'm here with Warren Farrell, thanks for joining me,
we're looking forward to our discussion. Yes, I
want to give a little introduction to you. Just a short intro. You're an American educator, activist and author of numerous books on men's and women's issues. And you're considered by many as the father of the men's movement. But you started out as an advocate for women's feminists movement in you were on the board of board member of the New York chapter, the National Organization for Women in the early 70s. So you've been really in the women's movement from early time. And you're also the, the, the numerous books, the current book you have is the boy crisis, why our boys are struggling and what we can do about it. And you have when just are those books just over your shoulder? Everyone can see. And so this dialogue we wanted to talk about was the role of empathy in your work, and also in society in general. So thanks for joining me, and is there anything else you'd like to add by way of introduction about yourself?
That's fine, thank you.
Okay, well, I'll say that, you know, for this discussion, is, having started the Center for building a culture of empathy, our purpose is really to make empathy, a primary, personal and social value in the society. And that's sort of what we're working at. And from, you know, just seeing your work, you've talked about empathy, the importance of empathy with, for men, for boys, and I think, really, in relationships in general.
Absolutely. One of the things I do now and have done for the last 30 years is to do couples communication, workshops, and the and looking and that also ties into the boy crisis, but it sort of ties into the boy crisis in this type of way. And boys who are having experiencing a boy crisis, are oftentimes boys who have minimal or no contact with their dads, particularly after divorce. And so the question then is, well, how does how do we minimize that likelihood, and one of the ways of minimizing that likelihood is to make sure that mothers and fathers don't get divorced to begin with. So we have a couple of options there. One is to create legislation to prevent divorce or make it more difficult. And the other one is to create empathy, or the ability to communicate and hear each other, so that no one wants to get a divorce to begin with. And obviously, the much better path is the latter. And so then the question becomes, well, you know, that's very nice to say, we should all be empathetic, we should all hear a partner. But when we criticize our partner, it's biologically natural to respond defensively. Because historically and biologically, when somebody criticized us it was a potential enemy, and that we had to get up our defenses to make sure we weren't killed by the enemy, or to kill the enemy before the enemy killed us. And so being defensive, and not being empathetic, was functional for survival. It was just totally dysfunctional for love.
And I reflect that what I'm hearing so far, so what I'm hearing is that before if you were being criticized, you had to really defend yourself because you were really threatened. But that quality of threat doesn't really help we in you know, relationships, personal relationships,
it was very dysfunctional, it was very functional for survival. And it's 100% dysfunctional for love. And so when we're when we're, when we're upset with something that's happening, the person who's upset experiences, they're sharing that upset as not as a criticism, but as something that they're they're suggesting to improve the relationship, but they have enough usually a history to know that the other person may experience that is a criticism. And so it takes courage for them to even bring that up to begin with. But 90% of the time, the person hearing that responds defensively, and and that makes the everybody else in the relationship walk on eggshells. This is by the way, something that men do women do gay couples do. Female and male gay couples do. And so this is a universal process. That is the only thing that is the only qualifier on people who don't, who will respond defensively, is if you're not human, it's possible you don't do that. But if you're human, you when you're criticized, the more deeply you love, the more you fear, the loss of that love, the more you respond defensively so that you lose that love. And of course, that defensive response is almost a guarantee that you will minimize that love. And so we do the opposite of what is needed.
So instead of advertising it being an empathic relationship, there's a sense of of defensiveness, which is going to start building up barriers and walls between the partners, instead of them mutually listening and empathizing with each other.
Precisely. And before we know it, the person who is, is would like to make a suggestion for better intimacy, starts walking on eggshells, and, and then that's all becomes a volcano inside of them. And eventually, you know, and women usually are a bit bitter about not having this huge volcano, because they usually talk about more, they're more likely to share their upsets and their negative feelings to other women friends, whereas guys tend to sort of keep their feelings to themselves, and it sort of builds up, you know, it's a big volcano. And when we do share our feelings with men, man friends, our men friends tend to listen for about, you know, somewhere between 10 seconds and a minute or two, and then switch over to you know, what we what are the San Francisco 40 Niners doing this, but this week, or, you know, that's everything. And so we don't have as many outlets, both because of our own inhibitions about sharing feelings, that show vulnerability. And also, because of men not being the great, the greatest listening partners to other men who are showing vulnerability. So all that tends to lead to a lot of a lot of fear about bringing up what's really going on volcano that builds up inside of both people, sort of, and that lends to that tends to lead to divorce. And so, you know, the couple's workshops that I created was my saying, if this is biologically natural, is there anything that I can invent, that would allow people to have a work around to provide instead of a defensive response to be able to, to be able to provide a way of hearing their partner's feelings and fears and criticisms will not only not respond defensively, but to also associate any ability that they might have to provide a safe environment for their partner to say, whatever they want, in whatever manner tone, exaggeration or distortion they want. And by providing that safe environment, the person who's criticizing feels safer and more. And the result of that is they feel more loved by their partner, and therefore more love for their partner. And so the person who is the partner realizes that they have the the ability to provide the safe environment, and therefore the end result will be they're more loved by their partner. And so the criticism, even if it's given badly, is an opportunity to increase your love rather than the escalation that will lead to a greater amount of close environment. So you have
a positive spiral, a positive upward spiral, let's say us with empathy is being part of that versus a downward spiral of fear defensiveness, and just getting worse and worse.
Exactly. And yet, I have found that this takes, you know, that I can teach this in a workshop. And, but if I don't give people a structure to do these things, and a structure that they can take home and practice, and then videos back to back that up to as well as something written and a memory, because memory tends to fade in the direction that we want it to our interest in a partner's interest. And so that all and and that because this is biologically natural, to be defensive, it takes a discipline to overcome what is biologically natural. And so I call my course the role meter soulmate, and the subsequent subtitle, the art and discipline of love. And usually people don't hear the word discipline and love in the same sentence. And what I'm saying is it really does require a discipline because you're overcoming the biologically natural responses, which is the lazy responses, to be able to just respond defensively.
Yeah, I think what you're saying there's core that it's a discipline, it's an ongoing practice. And I just wanted to mention a quote that I saw in your book and you say, empathy is the core of family stability and love. I've never had a couple have come to me and say, I want to divorce my partner understands me. That's a great quote. In the work that we do, we also have empathy building practices. And so the core of it I found is empathic listening or active listening based on the work of Carl Rogers. Rogers said active listening within a client therapy environment. He also started getting into conflict mediation and group work. And what we've done is On the empathy circle in small groups, with a speaker and a listener, and then sort of rotating the speaking and listening roles. And we've done all kinds of mediation, you're bringing Democrats and Republicans or conservatives or liberals together in these circles, to just dialogue with each other. And it's just, it's just if they can empathize with each other, and really listen to each other, it really creates that positive spiral that you're talking about.
Absolutely. And those types of contexts. And you know, the final chapter of the new book, I'm writing on this issue, called romantic soulmate, this is going to be called from Civil War to civil dialogue. And it's very much you know, my PhD was in political science originally. And so I was very tuned into the inability of anyone from, you know, I mean, just just take the initial words, the left calls themselves progressives. Now, what is the signal that word progressive, and suggest that anybody that disagrees with me is not progressive, they're regressive. The conservatives tend to call themselves patriotic. What is the suggestion of calling yourself patriotic is that anyone who disagrees with me is not patriotic. So both both political parties start from not only a non empathetic position, but a self righteous position, which puts the other person on the defensive, as opposed to being able to say, you know, I think that we both have the best intent. And the best intent is we want the strongest, most wonderful, most empathetic, most caring nation possible, that is still successful and able to survive and provide the best opportunities for our children. We have two different ways of getting there. How can we hear each other and how to, how do we make sure each other is heard. And so there's two sort of basic approaches to that, as I see it, one is listening to the other one empathetically, and the empathy often comes best in that that type of context, from hearing what that person's story is their background, my dad and mom felt this way, my father was very strict. He made sure I did everything that I had to do in order to be able to, to achieve, and he had no empathy for anyone who didn't try hard. And as a result of that, I became a conservative. My mom and dad were really, you know, and, and so, you know, my mom and dad were really empathetic to me, they always shared a lot of love and gave me a lot of, you know, support and so on. And that limb, and they were politically liberal themselves. And if I, if I even said something conservative, they often came down to me and criticize me for that. Now, you're beginning to have empathy for the fact that this person is not a bad person. But this person has a history has a way of wanting the love of his parents, the approval of his parents. And he grew up in a group of people that didn't tolerate a different perspective than than this. And so in order to get his own or her own approval, and love and support, they had to, they felt they had to take this position they never even thought it through from that perspective. So that's sort of hearing the history of how a person evolves. Hearing their personal story is a huge component of empathy. The other part is being able to make sure that no matter what that person says, that if you know if somebody says it's, you know, really clear that Sandy Hook is a conspiracy, and, you know, and the government is out to get us and if we don't have guns, we will never be able to defend ourselves against an evil government. And the other one is saying that you know, any words that are spoken in a college or university that make a woman feel unsafe, should be that women should get a trigger warning and those women should have separate, separate, separate set of safe spaces. And that you know, that guy if he offends a woman should be accused of sexual harassment and maybe not get to process in his trial. And so, you know, there's two people are about as far apart as you can get. And so the job there as I see it, is for the person who is that political, you know, quote, progressive, is that his his or her job is to fully listen to the person who is in disagreement with them, share with them what they heard, share with them what and ask the other person whether there was anything that they said that was distorted and if there was something that was distorted keep not don't say no, no, I got that. I didn't say that. Don't argue with that. You the person who feels who's being listened to cheer he has the opportunity to say I feel something was distorted in the person who is listening, or his job is to listen and to keep working on the distortion until the person who is When speaking says, I really now feel completely undistorted, and then you invite the person to say, was there anything I missed? And then if and then if they then you work through that same process over again. And then is there anything you want to add, I don't expect you to have to remember everything that you're is part of your point of view, immediately. And now that they're feeling trust that they know that the person is not going to distort them, not going to miss them, they can often go to a deeper level of thinking about what they said, with a greater amount of security, and often a greater amount of articulate Ness, because they know they'll be supported, or at least heard, even if you don't agree with them. And the important thing is to understand that, you know, when you are heard like that, and empathize with on both that personal story level, and on that intellectual level, that there's no obligation of the person hearing you to agree with anything that you say. And you know, that that's an important. That's an important part of the transition process.
Yeah, so there's, I'm hearing two parts to that. One is to share your story, your personal story of how you came to believe or be who you are. And the other is to do that empathic listening to hear people until they feel heard to their satisfaction. And keep, you know, maybe ask him, do you really feel heard or, and then be reflecting what you heard too, so that they know is this not hey, I, I understand you, it's like you demonstrate that you understand them beat by being able to reflect back what you understood them to say, and then giving them a chance to maybe correct you if you didn't accurately hear them. And here's that, here's another quote I had from you, too, is humans have spent 10k 10,000 years plus learning to fight and debate with the other side. And almost no time learning to listen and empathize. So we're talking about here is, maybe it's time for the culture to start learning these skills of how to listen and empathize. And I would say that it's, that's like the core and I shouldn't become the core cultural value, like a personal and social value. And that's, you know, I've been trying to work towards this, how do we make mutual empathy, a primary social value in the culture, you know, all through through the government, through schools, through families and just sort of every walk of life? In fact, I ran for Congress here. Did you really district as the empathy candidate? Oh, I was only got about 3% of the vote. You know, we have new redistricting here. And, you know, el servido, Richmond, Vallejo fair Fairfield and across the Antioch so it's a new district so and whole message was, we needed a culture of empathy. I think people weren't quite ready for it. Yes.
Not many people knew how to empathize with you. I was funny, because I ran for governor of California, some time around. Again, Schwarzenegger in the recall election, where there were a lot of candidates. And, and the, and I also didn't get a high percentage of the vote either. So I very much, but the process is really is an education. As we as we know, as you know, Dallas is a result of doing that. And I really applaud you for you know, putting that on the line and getting that out there and trying to get that message. My thoughts about what you said is I have three opinions on it. In terms of the importance of empathy being at the core of the culture, the first is yes. The second is yes. And the third is yes, like real estate. People say the is location, location, location. So the Yes, yes. And yes, there is nothing that can be more important to have. Starting in the first grade kindergarten is classes on empathizing classes on people sharing their personal personal story, a bully and bully, a bully in a bullied coming in from the playground, and with their class talking about the bully being encouraged to the bullied being encouraged to share what happened to him or her on the playground and why she or he felt bullied. And the and the bully being asked to share what you know, what happened was was was that bullying from his perspective or her perspective? Was that really, what was your intent? What are you feeling? What are you about? And we will find out we find out when we do that is that the bully and the bullied have a huge amount in common. They usually both have low self esteem. They both have struggles in school, they both have low grades. They're both behind that bullying is anger. And anger is vulnerabilities mask. And and so we have to see the anger, the the vulnerability. And so oftentimes we see the anger of the bully, and we respond on to anger with anger. But when we see the bullies vulnerability, we can respond to vulnerability with empathy. And that is really what we need to be teaching children is early, you know, as soon as they get into any type of school environment, if they haven't already learned it be that one of the tricks of empathy is, is what I is one sided empathy. So, part of what I talk about in the boy crisis book is I, as you probably know, I create a whole structure for family dinner nights, and so that that families learn how to do empathy all around the dinner table with every person in the in their family. But one of the things that often comes out of empathetic parents is that the parents at those family dinner nights, are really learning to not interrupt their son or daughter, to empathize with them to share what they heard them say. But sometimes the most empathetic parents don't also require the children to do that for them, the parents, so the child becomes empathy, the child does not become empathetic himself or herself. The child becomes self centered in the expectation of their feelings being heard, but is never required to hear the feelings of their brother, their sister, or their parents. And so empathy that is not required by the family to be a two way street. Empathy of somebody else does not beget empathy. Empathy as a one way street, begets self centeredness. So if the child is always having the parent pay attention to the child's needs, and feelings and fears, the child will tend to only pay attention to his or her needs, feelings and fears. And so that's a cautionary note about the importance of the family dinner night, being structured in such a way that everybody feels heard, not just the children, and that the parents get equal time as well. And that sisters and brothers get equal time, not just the person who is, is creating problems and therefore creating feelings that they that they want heard by the other person,
it's great talking to you, these are coming so much from the exact same sort of mindset. And I got that mutual empathy because I talked about not empathy, not just empathy, because I hear a lot of people say, Oh, I do all this empathizing, I listen to family members, etc, but nobody listens to me, right? So they're like, I'm fed up with empathy, because nobody's listening to me. And and then not only that, they misunderstand empathy. They think, oh, empathy is bad, because I don't get empathy. And they kind of start criticizing empathy, which realize that it's not, what's missing is mutual empathy is one way sort of, of empathy. And I did hear you say this in one of your other video interviews, and what came to me was that doesn't that say something about the therapeutic process, like in therapy, you've got a client therapist, and the therapist is doing all the listening to the client, and they come back, you know, week after week. And for me, it's what's really missing is the mutuality of, of the client, learning how to empathize with others, and how to take that skill home and do family empathy circles exactly the way you're describing them. So I think that's something that's really missing. You know, therapy is great for sort of like an emergency empathy, people are in huge distress, they don't even have the capacity to listen to others, and they need somebody to be there with them. But then you got to start learning how to listen to other people and how to take that skill, and bring it to your work your family and other places like that.
Absolutely. In therapy certainly does. You know, the work that I do with a cup with couples and so on is, you know, I think it leads to virtually everybody deepening their love for their partner. And that said, that doesn't mean there isn't a role for therapy, which is sometimes there's deep stuff that's going on that is that, that that the that any one part of the partner is what any one partner is not aware of, that came from their, you know, their fathers or mothers just functions are bad abandonment, and, you know, or some type of ADHD or Asperger's or other mental health problem that that a therapist can really help you get in touch with and those things are and then a therapist can also help you get in touch with being able to hear somebody's opinion besides your own if the therapist is a good therapist, and so, you know, good therapy can also work. But but empathy training needs to happen in kindergarten. In first grade, it needs to happen at different levels of sophistication, at every year through, through, through through the learning process. You know, certainly, I use my communication skills, virtually every not virtually every single day of my life. Whereas I haven't used my calculus since I got a decent grade on it. Right and, and so it's, there's room in the school for teaching this type of communication skills, which is the skills we use more frequently than any other day of our lives. And then also empathy for from a political perspective with people that we know that we Thanksgiving is coming up, and Christmas is coming up and Hanukkah and people are still, you know, they're often fearing getting together with people that they have different political opinions, and the agreement is just oftentimes, you know, nobody say anything, as opposed to being able to hear each other. And, you know, and, and, and be curious about, you know, what are all the ways that to be like a detective, and a detective that says, share a pit, tell me something about what led you to feel this way. And then you get, you get in that detective mode, one piece of the puzzle from this other person, and then your job is not to stop with that piece of the puzzle. But to ask for other pieces of the puzzle, until you like a really great detective, can see all the pieces of the puzzle how they fit together, and get to see the whole picture of the person talking.
Yeah, in terms of empathy in schools, you're saying kindergarten, first grade, I have, I have nephews and nieces, they were like five and six years old. It's a lot of family conflict, the older brothers kind of beat up on the younger kids and some of that hierarchy, the person who's the biggest and strongest kind of wins. And so they're in a conflict, I'm there visiting, and they start, and this is five year old niece, six year old nephew. I said, Okay, let's have an empathy circle. And then I first listened to my nephew. Okay, what are you saying? Yeah, this is the problem. This is what I'm really at mad about. And I just do the act of listening to reflection, then with my niece, I do the same thesis. Yeah, he's always beating up on me. So he's really beating up on you, you're really sort of fed up with it, and etc. And I just go and listen to both of them. And then I get them to emphasize the empathic listening with each other. So one would speak and the other would reflect back with their hearing, this is already five and six years old, right, that they can already start the basics of this. And so we go and they kind of talked about the conflict that they're having, they do exactly what you're saying they kind of explore the deeper aspects of it is, the conflict seems sort of flat in terms of the conflict and mode, but what's underneath it and kind of exploring those, those feelings and, and the deeper feelings that are underneath. And then afterwards, I remember my five year old nieces, I like empathy circles, let's do it again. Five Year Old, like, this is really good. I'm not getting beaten up, I'm getting my voice heard. You know, it's like so. So accidentally in kindergarten, this could be an in the family. I think having family empathy circles, that kids would already be learning these processes, like you're saying at the dinner table, right? Everybody gets the space to be heard. They get heard to their satisfaction. And it's like an ongoing process because, you know, empathy is that it's never ending. It's like, I think it was Johan Galton who does the start. He's like the father of the peace and conflict studies programs in the university. He says Peace is resolving conflict with empathy, creativity and non violence and it's a never ending process. I think that empathy in that formula gets left out of the peacebuilding is like, Hey, I'm right, be peaceful, it's exhortation to be peaceful, but it's not doing some kind of a practice, like, like active listening or empathic listening.
Absolutely. That's really good. And we have to also understand that, like with the family dinner night, not everything is so sometimes empathy, parents will sort of say, well, alright, let's say that my son and daughter they want to like they want electronics at the table. Okay, I'm gonna empathize with that, and relate. Now if they need electronics at the table, then my Empathy means I need to agree to that. Empathy does not mean agreement. Well, if you're a parent, and you know that he's still at ease, you can still say no for We're for this for our family dinner night, once per week, there's no electronics in allowed at the table. And if there's no and if you, if you keep electronics, if you keep them at the table, I'm going to take them away from you, and they won't be available until tomorrow morning. And then you know, and the parent and the kids go, Oh, you're so mean, I don't know, I only want them at the table, or they sneak them at the table. And then there's that there's a consequence. So empathy does not sometimes parents who are very empathetic, get empathy, confused with responsibility to make sure that children have the focus or the postpone gratification, or other skill sets, they need to be able to participate in a family process without just entertaining themselves. While rather than listening rather than empathizing.
Yeah, when I say that, that what you're describing is an empathy deficit if the parent is just sort of acquiescing and indulging the children, because the true empathy in that situation is mutual empathy. So if you say, hey, there's no, we want to make your case like I, we want to have family time, we want family members to hear each other to develop empathy, connection. And that's the purpose of not having those devices there. And then the child, the children has to reflect back, okay, I'm hearing parent, then you don't want this year, because you want time to create this positive environment, do you feel heard, and then that dance, a child's turn to speak, and they can think about, I really want my toys here, and all that kind of stuff, and the parent can reflect back, you know, you really want this, you want it really badly, you're really, really wanting it. And then you just kind of go back and it's like, you cannot have it here until you can convince me that the way that we come to an agreement that it's here, right, then they use the empathy to kind of this discuss that that issue in depth, you know, kind of explore it. Why is it important? Why do I want this? So it is, I guess, what I'm saying is, instead of just making the hard and fast rule, it can also be a gateway to an empathic mutually empathic discussion. And I think that's what we do with the empathy circle in the sense that we have, you know, small groups, four people, five people doing that mutual empathic listening, when person speaks, they speak to someone, that person reflects back with their hearing until the speaker feels heard, or we have a time limit of, of like five minutes. So somebody doesn't like speak for an hour, which has happened, there's a time limit. And that's that boundary that you're talking about, there's a time limit the boundary, and you have to hear the other person to their satisfaction. So that is another boundary, which I've heard you say to it's the, you know, fathers and mothers that the mothers will often just acquiesce to the children, they don't want the children to feel bad they want so they kind of just give them what they want, which is not really empathy. It's, yeah.
And it's, you know, it's on that issue. On the boundary is a difference that many people do not get, which they often use the words boundary setting a boundary and forcement interchangeably. And statistically speaking, moms are more likely to set boundaries, and dads are more likely on average to enforce boundaries. And so when bed when studies and bedtimes have happened with moms and dads, moms set bed times earlier than dads do. But children being raised predominately by moms versus dads, even though the children with the moms being being raised by the moms have earlier bedtimes the children actually get to bed on average earlier by in the in the film among when they're being brought up by dad. And one of the reasons for that is that the you know, the the moms may say set the bedtime at 830 and dads at nine o'clock. And but then the child at 830 says, you know, Oh mom, it's 830 but I haven't done my homework and mom goes oh my goodness, you haven't done your homework. We don't want you to go into school unprepared to do your homework and so Okay, all right. If you have to do your homework, finish that off. And then so the child takes till nine o'clock to finish the homework off. Okay, let me see your homework. Okay is good. Well, maybe you could have changed it a little bit here. I don't want you to go into school unprepared now it's 915. Okay, now I I really did all my homework really well. Can I have that favorite story of mine read now mom feels obligated to read that story after the homework is done well, and it's 930 Dads are more likely on average to say some version of you didn't do your homework. Well, that was your choice. It's nine, nine. It's nine o'clock and so you're gonna have to go to school with your homework not done. And the child goes, oh my god, Mom's gonna think it's terrible that you did this, let me go do to do that, well, tomorrow you'll know to do your homework ahead of time. And and then the dad will more likely say when you've done everything, your chores, your homework, brush your teeth, well, etcetera, etcetera. You can have any that time between when you've done all that, and the nine o'clock time, you can do anything we can, you can roughhouse with me you can we can play games together, you can have your favorite story read, you get the choice between the time that everything is done, and your bedtime. And, you know, those are the types of difference examples of the types of differences that dads and moms will often do in terms of boundary enforcement, combined overlapping with empathy. You know, moms will, will respond empathetically to the fact that the child didn't do the homework. Well, I did doesn't want to go to school without the homework being done. But not combine that with a sense of boundary enforcement,
I will concern with that being called the mother sort of acquiescing is empathy. Because that's just sort of indulging the child well, so I don't think it's there. She's maybe hearing them. But what for me what true empathy is, or a deeper a mutual empathy is for them to have a dialogue about why this is important to her. Right? Like, I think this is really important too, and for the child to be hearing it say, and that's where that little empathy, you know, circle empathy dialog comes. Because when you reflect back where it is that you're hearing, you're sort of taking it in deeper into your consciousness. I find like, I remember I had a, you have one of these marketing calls, and I say why I'm not interested, and they keep going at it. Well, well, this is this is I really not interested and they keep going with a see that there's an opportunity that I said, are not interested in, can you reflect back what you heard me say? And he said, You are not interested. So there's, there's something about having, you know, acknowledging at a deep level and be able to reflect back so it's so that the kid can reflect back like, you really don't want me to stay up late, because you're concerned about my well being and my health and developing bad habits. Yes. And, and so I guess what I'm saying is all those things that are sort of like boundaries like that, that they become opportunities for an empathic dialogue to happen if it's mutually empathic, it's not Yeah, so that's, that.
I totally agree with that. And that's really anyone that's hearing this, this is really an important distinction, because the the normal interpretation is a superficial interpretation of the mom in that case, saying, oh, yeah, Oh, sweetie, I don't want you to go to school without your homework being done, I can understand that is that the mom right there as being empathetic. But real empathy would be going back and forth in the way that use that you said, about the mom taking the opportunity to say, here's what will happen if this, if it happens in this type of way. And having both the child and the mother hear each other
and come up to an agreement, there's a mutually negotiated agreement where the child is really understanding the importance to the mother about why she's doing, you know, making the points that she's doing, and sensing and feeling that that and a deeper level.
And the importance of that, I think is that oftentimes, when we look at that type of situation, let's say the mom and dad are both there. And then the dad says, Sorry, you didn't get your homework done, you're going to have to go to school without your homework. And mom says, Oh, my goodness, I don't want you to be really, you know, go to school, without your homework that will feel terrible to you. We would normally interpret the mom as being more empathetic. And that is being sort of more an empathetic, yeah.
So
cruel, insensitive to the
anti empathy, it's anti empathy. She's not sharing and having that dialogue. So yeah.
And and that, you know, in the dad, not having that dialogue is also a different form of non empathy. But, but it's not giving. Hearing the child's pain is not the only that is not full empathy. Hearing the child's pain and giving into the wasn't asking for is not empathy in the way that you're talking about in the way that I'd like to see. Exercise. Yeah, because
the parents have pain too. So it's like the child should be hearing the pain and concern about wanting to be good parents and wanting to the well being of the child, too. And so yeah, those things become gateways to foreign empathic dialogue. I just have a quick story about that. Like we have this empathy tent, which we first set up at Occupy Wall Street in Berkeley was here and I guess Mill Valley, and we set it up in Berkeley. And we offered listening, you know, it occupied and conflict mediation. And over the years, we've set it up in different places. We set it up in Sacramento after Trump was elected. And we and it was at a right wing rally at the state Capitol Park. And we just offered listening to people there and did empathy circles with, you know, a lot of the folks there. And then Breitbart, they wrote about it. They said, all these groups are doing, you know, conflict mediation between the political left and right, and they did a pretty fair article, you know, it wasn't like really, but the comments to there was something like 400 comments about oh, you lib tardes you wimps. And that's all these negative, you know, sort of comments. And for me, I was like, thrilled, I said, Great, you're really you have some comments, I want to hear what your comments are, let's have an empathy circle. And we'll have a mutually empathic dialogue, space for you to share your concerns, because I really want to hear it. But there can be three or four of you and just me like, like, you know, One against three or something, it's fine with me, but we'll do the empathy, circle practice. And we'll record it to so other people can benefit from suddenly everybody became quiet, they all became quiet and just disappeared. And I would have loved to have had an empathic dialogue with them. So that usually when people sort of attacked me like that, you know, online or whatever, I said, Let's have an empathy circle to discuss it. So
let's that's really great. So tell me a little bit about your, what you did politically? And then more about how exactly did you set up this empathy circle? If it was at a right wing? Trump's celebration after election, then where did you get the Liberals to be able to listen to the to the right wing?
Oh, it was just we have a group sort of a team you know, four or five, six people that does the empathy tent and then when we set up there, we just put out a call to some of the empathy community if they weren't to come and we had I have some photos and videos I can send you from that one. And we just set up the tent we had it was like it was something that the right unite the right they call the unite the right rally, there was a whole spectrum of right wing you know, folks, the what would eventually become proud boys. They weren't proud voice at that point. And was actually some identity Europa group on if you know them, but identity Europa is the word of the khakis, and they got they were the ones that Charlottesville who had the tiki torches and stuff. So we set up the tent people would come by, we just listened to them. And then a group of five proud boys came to the empathy tent. And the topic of the Holocaust came up with the Holocaust meant one of our members is Jewish. And so they were assigned to talk and I was getting really heated, and I turned around, I wasn't paying attention. I just heard that he did this. I said, Oh, we do empathy circles here. So I started doing having them do empathic listening with each other and, and my friend who's Jewish, he said, you know, Holocaust means half my family were killed in Austria, and the other half were spread around the world. And the identity Europa person, he, he did not want to say that he started saying, Oh, it's a communist. I don't know it just reflect back. And then the second thing he said a second time, he didn't reflect back, it was like a third time and he just wouldn't, couldn't reflect back. And then one of his friends who had been doing a little empathy circle with one of our other members, and just tell them back what you heard him say. And he said, Okay, half your family was killed. The other half was spread around the world. You know, that's what the Holocaust means to you. And my friends, and yeah, I feel heard and he just felt the guy finally got me, right. So it was all everybody you know, we're there to hear them and for them to hear us and have that mutual empathic dialogue. And we also went to an impeach Trump rally in Los Angeles. We set up in the Los Angeles City Hall, right on the lawn, or if you know, the area, but across those across the street is a police station, and it was a pro Trump rally in the police station. And several 1000 People came by or impeach Trump, and we had the tent set up we brought one person from each side into the into do an empathy circle during the day. We had a camera team there from the film school filming it. And we did six pairs during the day of the left and right, each one of them ended with hugs between the two participants. And on the other side of the street, they were screaming and yelling at each other. And that's just the power of empathy. You know, it was written up in LA Times mentioned it instead. stuff So,
absolutely that I couldn't agree with you more. Where did you get at the Trump? At the impeach Trump rally? Where did you find the conservatives?
We just walked across the street to the police station, like in the front lawn in front of the police station that's kind of like a plaza. We just went over there and said, Hey, guys, we're here. We're over there, interviewing people doing these empathy circles. We got there real early, when they were first setting up. And actually one of the organizers was just very open. And he was glad to come over and talk with us. We had actually one of the main organizers of the pro Trump and, and the organizer of the impeach Trump rally, be in empathy? They weren't empathy circles with each other, but they were both in our tent. Yeah.
Fantastic. Yeah, I, I think there's probably, in my opinion, there's probably no more important work that can be done on the political level than that. And no more important work that can be done on the human level than starting communication and empathy training in kindergarten, first grade, we would do more for the world, we would be the most respected leaders, if that was what we lead with. And you know, and there's, there's some, the only place in the world that I've experienced it, is when I went to Denmark, I went over to when the boy crisis book came out, I went to Norway and Denmark and did a presentation to the Norwegian Parliament on the boy crisis and what was happening on why it's a global crisis. And then went over to Denmark and did some stuff there. And the among the things that I did there was to go through a grammar school and in their one of their grammar schools, they had communication skills training in first, second, third grade. And that was really an eight said, No, that was very, very, I didn't get into the details of exactly how it was done. But they certainly did find it, the people who were telling me about it. So they found that extremely, everybody agreed that it was extremely helpful.
Yeah, I'm just wondering, how do we get traction? Because it seems it's like, you know, here it is, it was actually this with the impeach Trump rally that was actually part of the documentary called Trump phobia, what both sides fear was a filmmaker traveled around the country when Trump was elected, he went to all these different rallies, you know, these Pro and anti Trump rallies at the beginning. And she came to Berkeley and saw our empathy tension. You're the only ones doing anything like this. And that's why she invited us to LA to you know, have it be filmed there. But it's like, we've kind of showed this to people and said, Well, that's great. Okay, let's go back to the bad law. It's like, it's like crazy. It's like, it's hard. There's a I don't know what it is to get traction with these values. It just seems like if we had this training from the get go, I've been trying to get politicians to do empathy circles. So the first thing I did running for Congress is I invited all the other candidates to an empathy circle. And two of them are the other took part and the Republican wanted to but the scheduling didn't work. And then the establishment candidate didn't even send, you know, acknowledgement of it. So
it's when you're running as a Democrat or Republican,
running as a Democrat, right. Yeah. And, yeah, it's
and then we're running against
who Garamendi John Garamendi?
Oh, yeah. Right. And he's, he's the incumbent, right.
Yeah, we had redistricting. So he wasn't the incumbent per se in this district, because he actually was in another district and his district got all changed. So he came into here doesn't even live in this district. But so he was the incumbent in the sense that he's in Congress already has been for a while, but he wasn't an incumbent in this district.
Yeah. And so who who did you run against and who won
Garamendi one, I was in the primary. So we had Garamendi and then, you know, two other Democrats and one Republican. And so the Republican just won because the Republicans vote for Republicans and then the Democrat. He wants to be seen as sort of the establishment candidate. So they went to the general election and Garamendi just won.
Wow, that's um, well, first of all, I think what you're doing is exactly the way to begin to start to publicize the alternative of empathy. And you know, one of the reasons I ran for governor of California was because I wanted to publicize the importance in Boy crisis of children, boys in particular having dads in their lives and girls having dads in their lives, we know that girls who don't have dads in their lives are far more likely to become pregnant out of wedlock when they're teenagers. And and then their children in turn are more likely to be be pregnant out of wedlock as teenagers. And so we have a huge amount to do to get both to get people to be aware of this. And so the political getting, but people like you and I, people who tend to agree with empathy tend to be focused on communication. How many therapists run for political office, how many people are empathy specialists run for political office or communication specialists. And that's what we really, we you know, and it doesn't, it doesn't really make that much difference. It makes a difference if we win. But a good way of looking at it is, for years, for decades, in Europe, the Green Party candidates ran favoring the environment. And they were considered wimps, and they were considered radicals. And they were considered, they always lost by a huge amounts. And after a while there, the momentum built. And now it's very difficult to, to run for office in most of your without advocating for a for a better environment and for, you know, solar and alternative methods of combating climate warming.
Yeah, so using the political system to get the message out, I think, is what you're saying that was my intention to I didn't think I would win, but let's use the political structures to, because, you know, I did have candidate statements. And that went out to 400,000, you know, voter guides. And so you get that in there. And people read it. And so we're sort of building I, you know, you're the kind of movement guy, right? I mean, you've been in movements, you know, how to build movements, it's like, we need a move, we need an empathy movement here. What do we do to build this empathy movement? The first thing is, we start running for office to get the word out, what else can we do to build that movement.
And that, and it's very much that empathy. That was when the women's movement surfaced in the 1960s, late 60s, I just immediately I empathize with what women were saying, and what you know, it was like, terrible that a woman, my mother, you know, and one of the reasons I can empathize was because my, you know, when I got into UCLA for my graduate work, my mother started to cry. And I said, Well, what's the matter, and she said, you know, here you are going to graduate school. And I never went to college. And I didn't go to college, because even though I got a scholarship to Cornell, we didn't have much money in our family. And I felt that it would, what little money we had, I wanted to save, and get a nice wardrobe and to be able to look attractive, so that I could attract the man. And, and that man that I attracted was your dad. But I could see that there was a deep pain inside of her, that she did not, in fact, make use of her intelligence, and an education way. And so and that type of my sister was oftentimes interested in a boy in school, and, but she, there was no permission in those years to for the girl to reach out without being thought of in a negative way. And so she kept her feelings to herself and just tried to flirt. But sometimes that worked, and mostly it didn't. And so she you know, and so that the empathy for that made me feel like oh, my goodness, I don't want women to grow up feeling that they can't, you know, that they that their, that their beauty and has to be cashed in at a young age to, to be able to, you know, get economic security for life, I want them to be able to have their own economic security. So that when the woman falls in love, we know that she's really in love with us. She's not in love with our ability to provide economic security for her. And, and so that empathy got me involved with the women's movement on their on the board of neck now in New York City. And that led to maybe 10 years of writing books that were completely focused on women's issues. And then I began to start to see, I remember a Japanese teacher coming up to me and and saying, you know, Dr. Farrell, you know, what you're saying is very interesting about women, but it's not. You know, in my class, I have more problems with the boys than I do with the girls. And I heard that in Japan, Australia, Canada, UK, you know, and I started to say, I started but what's happening with boys in our schools on my emotional and intellectual agenda, and after a while, I began to see that it was much much worse for boys. The boys were falling behind girls and having significant problems in more than 70 different areas and And that just blew my mind, you know, to see that boys IQs were were falling down, that the sperm counts were decreasing, which has an impact on fertility that boys were far more likely to drop out of high school and then boys who dropped out of high school were rarely able to often more than 20% likely to be unemployed, when they were in their 20s. And, and so the boys and boys today, in three years from now, it's projected that boys males will be only half as likely to graduate from college as females, only half as likely. And so people go oh, all right, she that's really sad for boys. That's not very good. But it's not just sad. For boys, it's sad for girls, because they're going to be looking for a good girls who graduate who are college graduates don't tend to drop college don't tend to want to seek out college dropouts. And girls that are high school graduates don't tend to seek male high school dropouts. And when those dropouts are unemployed, and often living in their family's home, you don't see girls who are looking for future fathers searching the basements of people's homes to find out find future fathers. And so all of these things become something that are that impacts girls, we want our daughters to have somebody boys who are worthy of their love, as well as you know, as well as we want things to be good for our sons as well.
Well, maybe we need a mutual empathy. Men's movement is just a thought is that these different movements, women's movements was about getting women empowerment, it wasn't about mutual empathy. And I think that's something that's been missing from the different movements. It's not, it's like we need to, they're like the same with the civil rights. So it's, you know, we need these rights, but it's not geared towards we need mutual empathy. The same thing with the women's movement, it's not, it's like we need this power, we need these rights. It's not about mutual empathy. You can see the LGBTQ cube community, it's again, it's like, we want a piece of the pie. But it's not about this movement for mutual empathy. And, and even you know, black lives matter. It's like, hey, we need, you know, this power. And so it's like all these movements, they tend to be for special interest groups going for, they're getting power within the structure, social structures. But if they had been about mutual empathy, each group would have supported every other group, you know, in that mutual empathy. Yes,
it's actually political groups, oftentimes are really, the incentive system is not to be empathetic, but to be the exact opposite of empathy, apathetic. So if I'm a Democrat, and I'm running against the Republican, my job is to get out there, every single thing that I can say that to attack him or her, every way of distorting his or her perspective, in such a way that will make other people vote for me and against that person, the degree to which I can catch that person is the devil in me as the angel is the degree that I feel like I'm likely to win. And so instead of empathy, it is demonization training. Not empathy.
Yeah. Well, great. I, I know you need to go after this. I could talk for hours, maybe we can follow up at some other point. It's just, it's not often I find people are so attuned to the same, you know, value of empathy. It's like, it's,
I find it super green. It's a delight to be, you know, normally speaking, before I do a program, I check out to see what you know, whether it's views are, are because I'm deeply involved in doing the couples communication book and, and getting the, my course, from my website out there. And so people can take that, and so I don't really, so I have to sort of focus on make sure my time is used very valuably. And so then I saw the work that you're doing with empathy. I said, this is so much up my aisle. I care so much about what you're doing that I said, you know, the, that the other metrics aside, I just wanted to meet you and dialogue with you and support you and, and support each other and what I consider one of the most important missions in the world. Yeah, great.
And maybe we can hold some empathy circles. I saw you were interviewed by Jordan Peterson. And I thought if he would do an empathy circle, and model it for his viewers, you know, I had done a couple of empathy circles with someone. He's interviewed John Verve a key. So they taught together in the university there and he's been on Jordan Peterson's program a few times, and John was open for doing an empathy circle, because he's done it, and then maybe have an empathy circle with him to model how to have a dot and empathic dialogue, as you learn the empathy by observing people having a mutually empathic, certain empathy, circle dialogue. And actually, Jordan Peterson has talked a lot about empathy. He's very well versed with Carl Rogers, when he gave a talk at Cambridge University, and the whole talk was about listening and actually built on Carl Rogers, empathic listening. Yes. And so he, he's tuned into it, but hasn't, he tuned into the one way listening, like I as the listener, you know, or maybe this strong man sort of approach. But if he would do an empathy circle, and model it, I think it would get a lot of people would learn the practice.
I'll talk with him about that. That sounds like a very good idea. He's, as you know, I've done three interviews with him on the boy crisis book. But he's also an after the last of the third interview a few months ago, he invited me to come out to something called Peterson Academy, which is what he's going to be starting this coming summer. And Peter, and he's chosen a few what he thinks of his world thought leaders to do course, their courses there. And the course he's asked me to do there for Peterson Academy is on couples communication, which is of course about empathy. And so it will be the beginning of opening up that so that will become a course his on his Peterson Academy course offerings.
Oh, great. Yeah. And yeah, for a for him to have a couple 100,000 People see how empathy circle see him actually doing this process? I think we'd be just really powerful. Yes, I'd like to get like Trump and Biden to do empathy circle. Instead of a debate. They actually sit there and they listen to each other. We just be amazing. To be continued. I know you had to go. You had time commitment here. So it's just been amazing talking to you. Wonderful talking
to you. Let's communicate and also let's get together and take a walk together and talk.
Right yeah, I'm right over the bay here. So to be continued, absolutely, really great.
