The Empathic Civilization : The Race Essay

Empathy is a central theme that runs through the entire book. Dr. Bromfield highlights the importance and significance of empathy, understanding adolescents while balancing the need to challenge and push them. Empathy is an emotion, I value highly as a future humanistic counselor as I believe it can be a very potent tool in therapy. “ As to this day I am awed at empathic understanding’s near miraculous power to soften children’s and adults’ defensive resolve” (p48), he describes the miraculous power of empathy and how it can allow persons in therapy to uncover those other emotions that they may have suppressed quite well.

Carl Rogers describes empathy as the ability to sense the client’s world as if it were your own. Sanders (1999)

Empathy and caring is an essential part of human health. We love because we can empathize (Szalavitz & Perry, 2010). Empathy underlies everything that makes society work; such as altruism, collaboration, love and charity. Failures to empathize are a key part of social problems, such as crime, violence, war, racism, child abuse and inequity. Although we are genetically predisposed to care for others, the development of empathy requires a lifelong process of relational interaction (Szalavitz & Perry, 2010). More importantly, the first relationship humans experience, the

Younger generations aren’t feeling as empathetic as older generations and this will lead to a dangerous society. Empathy is the ability to understand and share feelings. Teaching empathy at a young age will allow one another to accept and communicate with each other. It is also a necessity skill in life that helps each other to recognize one’s emotions. According to the article, This is How Literary Fiction Teaches us to Be Human by Tom Blunt, he emphasizes empathy can be taught through literary fiction and it is vital that young children feel empathy toward each other.

The importance of empathy in any helping profession, medical or social, cannot be overstated. The workers that exemplified it in their practice did the best that they could with their limited resources.

Why do I care so much about empathy? It was something that called to my heart. Every

Empathy is the ability to understand and experience the feelings of others, particularly others’ suffering. Humanity’s gift of understanding complex emotions ushers in a new way of understanding ourselves and how we react to stimuli. This ultimately leads to questioning of everything, leading us to one strong notion: Does empathy guide or hinder moral action?

We seem to be living in the “generation me”, where the upcoming generation is showing less and less traits of empathy. Often times, empathy and sympathy may get confused, but sympathy is the feeling of caring about feeling sorry for someone’s trouble while on the other hand,empathy is being able to relate to another person issues or problems. Online social media networks may be to blame for the lack of empathy. Through online, we are able to ignore others and their emotional feelings. However the behavior of lack of empathy can also be played out in face-to-face situations.

Race is a social construct that has influence all aspects of the American world view and life. The idea of race was constructed in America to justify slavery of Africans, stealing from and killing Native Americans, and prejudice against immigrants. Boas was took a stand on this subject that was not in line with mainstream perceptions on the subject. Another differing view was Du Bois who had some similarities in view and differences from Boas. Even with their legacies showing that race is not a biological reality, the power and impact of race can still be felt today, even though it is seen as a social construct by anthropologists.

During barbaric times such as the Middle Ages, one had very little interaction with people different from themselves. Because of this, when interacting with people different than oneself, one sees others as inferior and easy to dispose of. This resulting in the death penalty for minor crimes such as stealing or disapproving of the king. By the expansion of one’s circle of empathy in modern society, people will not react in violent ways, but will be compassionate and caring to other

Professor Paul Bloom states he is against empathy. He believes it is wrongfully used in our society and should not be used in certain situations. He still thinks it is important sometimes, but should not be primarily used as a result of anger, depression or retaliation. He believes compassion is the solution to empathy. In the long run, Bloom states that empathy will fail or burnout in a person. Hannah the extremely empathic person will eventually burnout according to Bloom. The use of empathy everyday as a core moral code will eventually be overwhelming and burned out and used up. The person will change direction and use empathy less in their lifetime. This essay will explore Paul Bloms opinion of empathy in his article, “Against

In Chapter 1 of Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek explains the importance of empathy through a classified mission that occurred on August 16, 2002 in Afghanistan. As twenty-two men travelled through a valley with a “high-value target”, Johnny Bravo and his wingman were flying above thick clouds, ready to

In the article, Generation Me, it talks about the loss of empathy in college students. It also gave some reasons that could be behind the decline. One being the increased levels of self-centeredness. College aged individuals are showing rates of higher self-esteems and positive self-views. The other possible reason for the empathy decline is the influence of media. The article states how the media might be isolating and desensitizing these individuals. Of the four sources of cultural change I believe that the one that explains the decline of empathy is the one that states that cultures change in response to changed conditions in the society. I believe this explains the decline because society has changed from thirty years ago. As it was said

Most definitions of empathy are based on the same core idea - empathy is the ability to understand and identify someone else’s thoughts and feelings, as if they were one’s own (wordreference online dictionary, 2016). Although it’s been said “there are probably nearly as many definitions of empathy as people working on the topic.” (de Vignemont & Singer, 2006, p.435) suggesting that there is no singular way to even define empathy, let alone explain its impact on our behaviour. Due to the sheer depth and complexity of empathy it’s understandable that each discipline within psychology presents it’s own explanation for why we experience it, and how it can affect our interaction with the world around us. Psychologists have been exploring empathy for decades, in hope of gaining a complete grasp of what it means and how it can vary between each person, therefore its important we look at different psychological perspectives to try to understand it’s many dimensions.

I believe empathy is formed at home. When we are kids, our parents teach us the golden rule, which is: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As we grow older, we are taught that it´s important to care about people’s feelings. We grow up with the idea that we shouldn't only care about ourselves, but always be concerned for others. In my opinion, everyone should desire