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2025-06-17 - Defining Empathy | Otter.ai

2025-06-17 - Defining Empathy

Edwin Rutsch47min

Edwin Rutsch

00:02

Okay, so I'm going to do is give us the slideshow of the latest iteration of the of the empathy circle definition, or the whole holistic empathy definition. So let's get it. Let me do the slideshow here. Okay, so you've you've seen this before, but I keep iterating on it so it keeps expanding. And this is the defining empathy in the context of the empathy circle. And this picture here is actually of an empathy circle at the University of California, at Berkeley, we were doing training of students there on how to take part in empathy circles and the the empathy center. You know, our mission is to build the empathy movement and to make mutual empathy a primary personal, cultural and societal value. And our goal is to teach, you know, all 8 billion people in the world how to take part in an empathy circle. And I'm gonna just turn something off here, and just that, you know, I'm personally convinced, you know, it's been working on this for 15 years, that if we can do that, you know, make mutual empathy a core cultural value that is just going to improve the our culture, make a great, greater well being. You know, some of the benefits, many benefits of empathy that you know, I'm sure you're very aware of and and just few of them is a stronger relationships and connections, improve teamwork and collaboration, effective leadership, better conflict resolution, you know, increase personal and social well being and greater social cohesion. And I really think mutual empathy is core to creating, you know, greater democracy, even deeper democracy than what we have. However, there's a lot of criticisms out there about empathy at the moment, and there's a couple, there's several books out one is suicidal empathy. The other is toxic empathy. And in toxic empathy, you know, the author says toxic empathy demands our empathy only go one direction, towards the party the progressive worldview deems oppressed. We have the against empathy, you know, from the academic Paul Bloom, who was at Yale at least the time when he wrote this, he says empathy, it can spark violence or empathy for those close to us is a powerful force for war and atrocity towards others. So when you're teaching your kids empathy, you're gonna lead to more war and atrocity these and then we have the richest man in the world saying the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. We have another academic who wrote the book The dark sides of empathy. You know, empathy can fuel revenge. When people deeply empathize with victims, they may become more aggressive towards those they perceive as the perpetrators, and then the sin of empathy, another book out from sort of a very far right evangelical empathy demands that we enter into someone's emotional world so fully that we adopt their perspective uncritically, which can lead us away from the truth, and then we have, this is a, oh, I didn't share the have to stop this for a second. It didn't turn the audio on. Let's turn that on. So when, way back when Barack Obama was choosing a Supreme Court justice, he said one of the criteria would be empathy. And it led to a huge discussion in the Senate at that time about the nature of empathy. And here is Jeff Sessions asking, what is empathy? And anyway,

Speaker 1

04:21

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? Yeah,

Edwin Rutsch

04:45

so, you know, the senators are confused about what empathy is, and I would say that it hasn't been very well, wasn't very well explained or articulated, what exactly empathy was. And so. A huge discussion in the Senate way back on what the empathy is. It was kind of left hanging, I think, wasn't very clear. And then here's another article that just came out, more recently by Kevin Waltman. It was titled The dangerous consequences of radical empathy unchecked by reason. And he says, in its most radical form, empathy demands unconditional allegiance to perceive victims, often at the expense of truth, reason, moral clarity. And I did reach out to him, and I've reached out to all of the authors of these books, and said, Hey, would you like to have a discussion about, you know, empathy, the nature of empathy, you know, I've interviewed 400 authors on the topic, and they don't want to talk. None of them, except Kevin, was willing to have a discussion, you know, about empathy. And we had a really great discussion, you know. And I was able to, I think, with having a clear definition, which we're going to, you know, be explaining, you know, in this, in this presentation, I was able to, actually, you know, explain to him what I meant by empathy, kind of explain, you know, how what he's talking about isn't really empathy. And He came to the point where he said, Yeah, he's going to, actually, he is going to be doing empathy circles, you know, with his colleagues. He's at the university, I think in Chicago. Can't remember which one, so it's important to have a really clear and precise and practical definition so, and that's why I hope to set up and the situation with the current definitions, I think are just super problematic. There's a lack of consensus, which is leading to confusion. And I'm saying, obviously, it's not clear to many people with all the you know, criticisms of empathy. I just think that that shows that there's a, you know, a lack of a clear definition, we wouldn't be the situation wouldn't be so muddled with a clear definition. And the other thing is, is the current definitions, especially out of academia, can be abstract, dry and not easy to understand. And that's really the affective and cognitive empathy model that's become sort of popular, kind of came out of academia, and I want to show an alternative model that I think is more effective. So the model, what I'm calling it, is a holistic empathy model. The model has different parts to it. The first part is basic empathy. And I'm going to go through each of these in detail, explaining them. There's self empathy, imaginative empathy and holistic and that creates the kind of the framework for the definition model. And I think what's unique about this definition is we're defining it in the context of the empathy circle. So instead of it just being sort of just discussion, you know, bit abstract discussion, we can really ground the experience of each of these components in in an empathy circle. So, you know, why should we define empathy in the context of the empathy circle? Like I was saying, it takes the definition out of the out of the abstract and makes it concrete. And I was interviewed, for example, by, you know, someone who wrote an article in Scientific America, and when she interviewed me, I said, we actually took part in an empathy circle. And I mentioned her, I said, whenever you talk to all the academics, tie their definition into the empathy circle, so you have a sort of a common, you know, a common denominator for what you're talking about, and then you can actually experience what they're defining. So you can have a visceral, felt experience. And you can also map the other definitions, you know, into the empathy circle. You can take all those criticisms, all those criticisms people are making, put them into the empathy circle and compare it to the whole, you know, the holistic empathy model. And then also, you know, take your own personal definition, and how does your own personal definition map onto the empathy circle? So, so an empathy circle here, just to give a framework, quick framework, of how the empathy circle works. It's basically 4567, participants in a circle. There's different roles. There's a speaker who's going to be speaking on the topic or whatever is on their mind. There's the active list. Listener who, when the speaker is speaking, the active listener is going to be listening to them and then reflecting back their understanding of what they hear the speaker say, and then the silent listeners who are just silently listening to and paying attention, being present with the speaker, the speaker shares a few, you know, ideas, maybe an idea or two, which usually is about, you know, a minute, 45 seconds to a minute, they pause. The active listener reflects back their understanding of whatever they said. The speaker checks, oh, did I feel heard and understood? Are they really the active listener really getting me? And if so, they continue speaking, and if they didn't, they can say it again. In other words, the active listener only reflects back their understanding. They don't add their own judgments or questions or comments. They're just showing that they understand what the speaker says. The turns speaking turns are timed, so we usually have maybe five minutes per speaking turn. When that time is up, the active listener becomes the speaker, and then they would select someone else to be their listen. The active listener becomes a speaker, and then they select maybe as one of the silent listeners who becomes the active listener, and the process continues. So basic empathy, or we're in the in the holistic empathy model, is this process of the active listener listening to the speaker. The active listener is sensing, sort of feeling deeply, listening to the speaker, sort of in a in a holistic way, just feeling the wholeness of the of the what the speaker is, their their feelings, their thoughts, just anything that the speaker, you know has, has to express. And you're also listening, not just with the words. You're sort of sensing, you know, if you're you can feel what the scent the speaker is. If they're feeling anxious or happy, you get a bit of a sense of that. So you're listening to the whole person. And this is basically this definition of empathy. And the active listening is based on the work of Carl Rogers, which this whole model is based on. And Carl Rogers is, or was, a therapist. And he was already working on the topic of empathy and using active developing the process of active listening back in the 40s, 50s and 60s already. And what he would do is a therapist. He would do that empathic listening or active listening with his clients, and he would spend the full, you know, 45 minutes or an hour with his clients, just listening to them. And he wouldn't give advice, and he wouldn't, you know, ask questions or anything, just reflect back what it is that they were saying. And he wrote, you know, some really great papers on on empathy, and you know about empathy. And anyway, that's the Yeah. So it just matches. So in the his therapy is kind of like the active listener listening to the speaker. You know, he is the therapist was listening to the speaker, and we're building on that to bring it into a relational, you know, a group, instead of just a one way therapist listening so

Edwin Rutsch

13:40

and anyway, he's listening attentively, listening to the whole being so the person's thoughts, feelings, values, hopes, desires. You know, it's just a deep form of listening. And he the way he described it, and he was very always loved his descriptions. He says, empathy is the listener's effort to hear the other person deeply, accurately and 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 if you're listening to someone who's sad, you know you don't you just say, Oh, I'm hearing you're sad. You don't say, Well, I'm sad too, you know. So you don't make it about yourself. You just listen to the speaker and be present with what's going on for them. And he continues also describing this basic empathy. And he would the basic empathy, he would just call empathy, you know, but I'm just to differentiate from other forms, calling it basic empathy for now. And he 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 by moment to. The changing felt meanings which flow in this other person to the fear, rage, tenderness or confusion or whatever he or she is experiencing. So again, you're sensing into the whole person. And then the next component is self empathy, and that's listening to yourself and sensing into your own visceral, bodily experiences. And the empathy circle supports the speaker, whoever's speaking, gives them space to sense into their own personal experiences, as well as when, I mean, I find when someone is listening to me and just, you know, reflecting back or empathically listening to me that it gives me space to go into my own personal experience more deeply. And Roger is also he didn't use the word self empathy, but he sort of pointed at it. He said, being listened to by someone who understands makes it possible for persons to listen more accurately to themselves with greater empathy towards their own visceral experiencing their own vaguely felt meanings. So being in an empathy circle, or, you know, having a therapist who listens to you, allows you to, you know, tap into your own feelings more deeply. And you know, we just call that self empathy. The other component is imaginative empathy, part of the model, and Rogers did not talk about imaginative empathy, or holistic empathy, you know, for that matter. So this is something that we're adding, and the the in the way that, you know, we have an empathy circle facilitator training, and we, you know, show how to do, you know, self empathy and basic empathy. And we don't talk much about imaginative empathy, and I don't talk much about it, but this is a sort of an important component in that. The way we have addressed it in our trainings is that in our trainings, we want to use the empathy circle for conflict mediation. And what we do is we set up a scenario where the the participants in the circle, in the train in the training are take on the role of a family member that's in conflict about an inheritance. So there's, you know, three siblings. They their parent has just passed, and that they feel that they deserve the inheritance, and each has a different reason, you know, for why they think they develop need they deserve the inheritance, and they're sort of in a conflict mode, so they imagine themselves in the role of these different characters, and then it's the job of the facilitator in the circle to, you know, kind of help keep them on track in the empathy circle practice. So it just shows how the empathy circle can be used for conflict mediation. And, you know, sort of role taking too. And it's so you're getting two, you're getting the you're imagining yourself in a role which is different from the basic empathy. But we also do basic empathy in the circle, so you kind of have both layers, the imaginative and the basic empathy. And so kind of explaining how this imaginative empathy works. You know, actors talk a lot about this. You know, for example, Meryl Streep, the actress. She says, I've thought a lot about the power of empathy in my work. It's the current that connects me and my actual pulse to the fictional character in a made up story. It allows me to feel pretend feelings and sorrows and imagine pain. And this case, you know, Meryl Streep was taking on the role of Margaret Thatcher and Julia Child. So she's stepping into that role, and she's imagining herself in that role, and even taking it farther. You know, these are four characters that she's taken part in. So you could imagine, you know, sort of an empathy circle with the different characters that she's that she is playing and that they have an empathy circle with each other, you know. So you're kind of combining the basic empathy and and imaginative empathy. And so we just need to differentiate those type of experiences, because they are different and they get really confused. I just think in the general definitions and out there and then imaginative empathy, you could also just imagine yourself being a character, and you can do role playing, right? The speaker pretends they're a lion, the active listener is the cow, and they're and then they're talking about, you know, how their day has been, or whatever. And then this is sort of a example of that, right? You're sort of taking on the role of these characters. Same thing could be like, if you're imagining yourself being fruit, you know, like, what is it like to be a pomegranate and and an orange or and again? Just made a little image here, sort of, kind of imagine yourself. You can imagine yourself anything. So, you know, it's a very powerful role playing, you know, to take, to imagine yourself, you know, taking on any kind of a different role. And so that's imaginative empathy. And then holistic empathy is the quality and level of empathy in a relationship between people. So in the empathy circle, everyone listens to everyone else, so that raises the quality and level of empathy in the group. So there's, you know, people maybe come into an empathy circle, sort of anxious. There's they don't know each other, they go through, you know, an hour or so of an empathy circle, and then you can just feel the whole group energy change, and people, you know, talk about it, you know, all the time, like, wow, this was really great. I just felt so connected to everyone. There's a whole level of empathy. So it's seeing the quality, the level of empathy in in the group, it could be in the society. You know, our goal is to make a culture of empathy, to raise the level of empathy in the whole society. And you know you can walk into a room and you can feel, hey, it's a fearful everybody's fearful in the room, or very joyous or sad. And for example, you know you could walk into this room and you could feel the group sadness, you know, and so you you have a sense of the feeling of the of the group. You could maybe meet these people out on the street and they're very angry to you, and there'd be, well, that's kind of like low empathy. Feel a lot of anxiety, and you feel their hostility and anger directed to you. So again, it's sort of the group feeling, the group sense you have. And you can sort of sense into the group energy. And the same way with, you know, here's the dance situation, everybody's open. You know, they're inter, interacting with each other. They're very inviting. So you can, you know, feel the energy of the group. And in, again, in this image is

Edwin Rutsch

22:55

of the group, you know, as a higher level of empathy, because everyone's listening to each other. You know they're not excluding each other. And so a higher level of empathy, and then the holistic empathy is going to be made up of those different component, different parts. So summary of holistic empathy, it's a way of sensing into life. So basic empathy is the deep listening and sensing into another person's experience. Self. Empathy is deep listening, sensing into your own experience. Imagining. Imaginative empathy is sensing using your imagination, sort of a role playing. And holistic empathy is a deep listening and into the community's experience. And that sort of combine, you know, has components of basic self and imaginative empathy, and some of the qualities of of holistic empathy, I would say, you know, for a high level of holistic empathy is openness, you know, like an authentically expressing what's going on and being open to others, instead of being close and defensive sense of care, you know, valuing the inherent worth and dignity of everyone, instead of, like indifference, presence, you know, full attention to the present moment of yourself and others, instead of kind of being disengaged or distracted, a non judgmental attitude, you know, listening without criticism and demands curiosity, you know, a general desire to learn more, instead of, you know, being apathetic and indifference and mutuality. So empathy is shared, reciprocal, rather than a one sided, you know, relationship, where you're doing all the listening and presence it, there's a mutuality. So in terms of next steps, you know, with this, I'm inviting, you know, the everyone kind of watching this, to go. Around your definition, like, how are you defining empathy, and to compare it to the holistic empathy you know model, and how does your definition fit in the empathy circle, where do you see and how do you see it playing out, take other definitions that you you know, hear, and kind of put them into the empathy circle and compare them to the holistic empathy circle model, and also all the criticisms out there, which I'm going to one of the projects, is to address all those criticisms, and so just as just A little bit of a transition here. So I wanted to take next this is sort of a new component that I've added is comparing other models to the empathy, holistic empathy model. And the most common definition model out there that you'll see is, if you know, if you read through the literature, through the, you know, through a lot of articles, now they're talking about cognitive empathy, affective or, you know, sort of, they call it emotional empathy and empathic concern. And sometimes they call it empathic compassion, or even compassion. So I just find this whole model. You know, very problematic. The first problem is that it creates a feeling versus reason polarity. And I think you can't really, you know, I can go into more depth on this, but it's so feeling and reason are so intertwined that it's hard to pull these apart. So when we do basic empathy, we just listen to the whole person. We don't say, oh, you know, we don't kind of separate them. And Carl Rogers never talked about this either. He never used this. He saw people. Is, is? It's kind of whole, whole individuals. You know, this model, I think, is dry, boring and academic, you know, it's just not a, you know, just for common discussion with, you know, lay people. It's just, it's just, it's, it's too confusing. And it also has an individualistic viewpoint, instead of sort of relational view. And I think the holistic model has a broader relational view, and you can also look at it from, you know, within that framework is you can also see it from an individualistic point of view, but it is grounded in a relational and the other problem with this cognitive, affective model, is it, there's even no agreement on the different components of it, so there's contradictions to it. And I'm going to go through, you know, through the different components from what I can have been, be able to made, have been able to make sense of is so we have the cognitive empathy part, kind of the breaks down into three or three basic common headings, you know, different sub components, and then there's some other ones. Gets thrown in there as well, different people put it throw in different topics or different headings. So the first one I'll just go through each individually is understanding so and that's Dan Batson, big empathy researcher. He said, knowing another person's internal state and including thoughts and feelings and so to map that onto the empathy circle, that's exactly what happens in an empathy circle. So as the active listener is sensing into the speaker, they create a sense of understanding, right? So I'm this little map. Here is a active listener. Someone is depressed. You kind of sense their depression. You start hearing the whole story, and you put together, sort of a map of of the person they have depression. Why they have depression? Maybe. How are they dealing with the depression? What's their history of depression? How effective has it been or, you know, the strategies for addressing it? What's the story behind it? So you create sort of that whole understanding, where it's a bit of a byproduct of the process of empathy, which is sensing into so when you sense into the experience of someone, listen deeply, that's the what I would say is the empathy, but the the understanding is sort of a what happens out of that process that you create, that that deeper, that sort of map of of who you know that person is. And then. Um, another part of is the imagining so and perspective taking. So. Dan Batson also says, imagining how another imagining how another empathy is, imagining how another is thinking and feeling, or imagining how one would think and feel in the other's place. So it's like you imagine yourself if you were in that situation, or you imagine the other person in that situation. So there's different forms of imagination, but and then you also see the terms perspective taking come up a lot. It involves the ability to adopt the viewpoint of another person. So it very much overlaps with imagining. Often, imagination is is the very broad you can kind of imagine anything, whereas perspective taking, you're sort of imagining specifically how another person what's going on for them. And I think that that really matches that maps over to imaginative empathy. So both imagining and perspective taking fit within the imaginative empathy, you know, aspect of the holistic empathy model. So with imaginative empathy, you know you're using yourself, your feelings, your thoughts come up in in that role. Uh, one quick, uh, point about the problem with imaginative empathy, it's not necessarily accurate. You don't know if you're accurate or not with what you're coming up with, whereas with basic empathy, you're sensing into the other person's experience, and you're getting feedback with active listening on if you're accurately understanding them or not. So yeah, that's again, the playing, the role playing here. So let's go into affective, emotional empathy, kind of break that down, emotion sharing, state matching. There's two different aspects you see with ineffective empathy, there's emotion sharing and an emotional reaction, and then empathic concern is typically the sort of

Edwin Rutsch

32:34

categories. And then there's the emotional sharing is sort of state, matching, matching others, feelings. Emotional contagion is sort of taking on others feelings. And then there's a union or fusion, losing a sense of self, sometimes that gets thrown in there. And this is not consistent. You know, among the academics, it's like some have some of these headings, and some don't have others. So these are, this is just sort of a generalization, and then the other is the an emotional reaction. So if you're doing basic empathy, listening to someone, they're saying that the emotional reactions that you have to basic empathy is empathy. So that's be personal to spread the stress feeling distress at witnessing another person suffering, or you're feeling sympathy, you know, feeling sorry for the the other person, or just any reaction that you have, and even empathic concern is sort of a reaction could actually fit under the reactions, yeah, so try to speed up here, so we have basic empathy, you know, again, the person is depressed. The, you know, sort of the gray area is the active listener, sensing into listening to that person. You sort of feel their depression. You know they from their body language, from what they're saying, you might feel their depression. And so that's the basic empathy. So with affective empathy, and this part is really not well described, I think in the literature, you know how this kind of works. I think a lot more could be really done to explain this. So state matching is it starts with empathy. So I empathize with the other person, they're depressed, and then I become depressed and and I stopped listening, because, you know, I'm kind of wound up in my own depression. So it can be the state matching can be a block to empathy, but I think it's not empathy and emotional contagion is very similar to that. Oh, that then not ready to move on. So. They're kind of similar. They could even be the same thing in some cases, but it's like the other person has a feeling, and then you have that feeling. Is the feeling, you know, contagion, that it comes over to you, or is that a response to your your own self, you know, your own personal depression? But anyway, it's, it's sort of that sense of state matching, I think, yeah, maybe this is affective empathy union or fusion. So you kind of have these feelings. You're kind of lost in the feelings you don't know, is it my feeling? Is it the other person's feeling? You're kind of like lost in this lost, losing sense of self, whereas with the empathy circle, and you know, with basic empathy, you're listening to the other person, and you're reflecting back, which sort of helps create the self other distinction, and so you're not getting sort of lost in, in whose feelings, or, you know, who's who sort of owns the feelings. So I gotta work on this a little bit more to they clarify that. But let's go into the affective so that's sort of the the emotion sharing different versions. There's, and it's a very complicated like, how that emotional sharing happens. And need to do a lot more to kind of break that down and make it easy to understand emotional reactions to and this is like you're basically, you're listening to someone, and you have. You know, these are the reactions you can have. You can go into distress, you can feel concern for the other person, you can feel sympathy for them, or you can have any reaction. And so all these reactions are often described as empathy, which I don't think that they are, they can actually be blocked to empathy. So here it is, personal distress. You know, you're listening to the person you hear, they're all They're depressed, and you're kind of all worried about them, and you start getting really distressed, like, Oh, what am I going to do? The Mary, they're going to kill themselves. And you, it becomes about you, and your personal distress, and your distress actually blocks you from listening and going, you know, listening deeply and getting, giving space for the person who's depressed, depressed, to explore their their experience and to share it, and for You stay present with it. So that's personal distress, empathic concern. You know, the person that has depression, you're concerned, oh, I need to do something. You know about this, and you start becoming maybe anxious, but you have concern. And then there's also reactions like sympathy, like the person's depressed, instead of, instead of saying, Oh, I hear you're depressed, you know, let's hear more about it, you say, Oh, I hear you're depressed. I feel so sorry for you. And you know, it becomes about you, and you're feeling sorry for the other person. And then some any effective empathy under this category, any reaction, you know, if you feel depressed and or you the person, if they're feeling joy, then you feel joy, and it becomes about you and your joy. I know there's some academics who have talked about empathic joy, and you could. And I think this whole, I think he's had so anyway, with basic empathy, the whole reaction component does not, is not part of empathy. I think it's actually can often be a block to empathy. It's fine to have these reactions, and I should make a slide for that. You can have the reaction, but you want to maintain it. You know, kind of in the back of your mind. Sometimes you can't. You know things are going to come up, even judgments. But the important thing for basic empathy is you stay present with the other person and and listen to them and be present with them. So, yeah, that's the end, and that's just any feedback comments.

Jodie Jenson

39:33

Oh, good. I love what you've added at the end there with mapping the other definitions onto the empathy circle and the holistic empathy definition. I really I gained a lot from that, and I thought that that was really valuable. I really like I know I've said this before. I really like your your visuals. I think it helps to solidify what we're talking about, and it helps you to be able to. Wrap your brain around something that's really abstract.

Edwin Rutsch

40:02

To have something visual, you can kind of have been kind of visual to kind of tap into yeah for Yeah. I like

Jodie Jenson

40:09

it. And so in terms of turning this into a longer training, I think that, I mean, most of the content stays the same, and then we add in more discussion about it. And I mean, I have a few things that I want to discuss next week, from from some of the research that I've done on it, that I think we could really benefit what you it would be complimentary to what you already have there. And so we can just see if there's a place that it fits in. But I mean, most of what you have is just really well in line with with how I would conceptualize this as well. One question, let me see if I can think back to the question that I have. I have to leave in a couple minutes, but imaginative empathy, I'm just curious if you have made the connection between, like, doing that as a practice, and how that benefits people.

Edwin Rutsch

41:18

The benefits, yeah, it's, it's a way of knowing. So basic empathy is a way of knowing, and imaginative empathy is another way of knowing, I think, and but, and actually, I would say imaginative empathy is built on basic empathy and self empathy. You're sort of sensing into scenarios, and it can be really quite accurate, but it can also be projection, right? They're projecting onto so there's a you have to realize that it's not necessarily accurate.

Jodie Jenson

41:53

Yeah, I really like when you made that distinction, like bringing it back, because the amount of imaginative empathy can be really powerful, and it can get you to think differently about different people's lives. You know, even people you've never met before, people who aren't even real. But then bringing it back to this is your projection of you in their shoes, whereas the basic empathy is actually getting that real time feedback from the person to see if you've accurately understood what they said. I really think that that's an important component of it. The next one was in the holistic empathy section. I think it would be really powerful if we could make the connection for people as when you notice like, because you had the pictures of like, here's a group that's feeling hostile, or here's a group that's there's higher empathy in the group, and they're more open to each other. I think it'd be powerful to make the connections with people as to when you notice that, what do you do with it? Like you actually have the power to influence that group as well. That's something I've been really paying attention attention to recently, especially with some interfaith work I've been doing where there was potentially a feeling of hostility between groups before we got together, but then we got the groups together, and my personality and a few other peoples in the group are just very like light hearted. We like to joke with each other, and so when we brought that part of our personalities together, all of a sudden the walls went down, and people shifted. And I think that that's a really powerful thing to bring to the surface in a training, that we have the power to influence that, that feeling in a group. Mm, hmm. It doesn't just have to be that you notice it. You can also shift it. If you feel that something needs to be shifted, yeah,

Edwin Rutsch

43:57

strategies of how to shift it, like, how do you shift it? And it could be even just empathizing with a couple of people, reflecting back you changed the whole energy. And

Jodie Jenson

44:10

so I like that you put the picture back up of the empathy circle. As you were talking about that, I was looking at the people's faces like the intensity of their gaze. You could tell that this was a group that was really there. There was a cohesion, and there was there was mutual empathy happening, and you didn't even have to hear any of the conversation. You could see it in the picture. And I like, I like pointing things out like that, right? Just that there's there. There's a quality to a group, and you can see it. You can sense it even without having to be a part of the group. You can sense it from the outside even so, I think that we could really dive deeper into some of those areas

Edwin Rutsch

44:49

as well. Yeah, I see this is like a little kernel, and it can be just continuous iteration, improving, refining, you know, and also the next. Level would be to add the criticisms go into some of the criticisms. For example, one of the big criticism this whole thing about victimization, that was the discussion with the guy with him about he was seeing empathy leading to victim is feeling sorry for the victims, and being able to explain how it's not that actually, that seeing people as victims actually blocks empathy so and how it's the empathy is the way out of the victim, perpetrator, you know, rescuer dynamic. And I think that's another part. Is we and then to create a structure so you can, we can quickly take any criticism of empathy, quickly plug it in a quick be able to quickly analyze it and show how it's not really empathy, where they're kind of, at least within this model, you know, within this model, we can show that this is not what you're talking about, is not empathy. And we actually might even agree with you with Yeah, phenomenon

Jodie Jenson

46:06

that came up for me as well as you were talking, because something you said sounded similar to Paul Bloom, and it was, it was, you know, just talking more about taking a step back from your absorption in the emotional environment, and that kind of sounds like Rational compassion. He talks about it. So we're not, we're not actually enemies, right? That's the funny thing about it is semantics are making people enemies Exactly, yeah, and we need to get outside of that. And I think that that's why this, this project, is important.

Edwin Rutsch

46:39

Yeah, and then we can invite them into the empathy circle too. So we have a practice. We can invite the critics, or what have you in. So I think it's very it's very powerful what we're doing. I wish

Jodie Jenson

46:50

I didn't have to go right now, but I do. So I'll say next week, and I will have prepared my ideas of an outline by then, and we'll discuss it.

Edwin Rutsch

47:00

Okay. See you. Then, bye. You.

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