The Empathy Instinct: How to Create a More Civil Society

Empathy is the power of understanding others, imaginatively entering into their feelings. It is a fundamental human attribute, without which mutually cooperative societies cannot function. In a revolutionary development, we now know who has it, who lacks it and why. Via the MRI scanner, we are mapping the human brain. This is a new frontier that reveals a host of beneficial ideas for childcare, teens challenged by the Internet, the justice system, decent health care, tackling racism and resolving conflicts.

In this wide-ranging and accessible book full of entertaining stories that are underlined by the latest scientific research, Peter Bazalgette also mounts a passionate defense of arts and popular culture as a means of bridging the empathy gap. As the world's population expands, consuming the planet's finite resources, as people haunted by poverty and war are on the move and as digital communications infinitely complicate our social interactions, we find our patience and our sympathy constantly challenged. Here is the antidote.

Culminating in a passionate manifesto on empathy, The Empathy Instinct is what makes us human and what can make us better humans.

Sir Peter Bazalgette: " The Empathy Instinct" | Talks at Google (48 min)

• How did you get interested in Empathy?

  • 1. He was wanting to create a good case for funding arts and culture?

    • what are the benefits of arts? creating empathetic citizens

  • 2.  The Holocaust Memorial - an unempathic act

• Brexit

• Digital world

  •  text is not so empathic

  • only talk to people that you don't agree with

• *Defining empathy: ability to see something form the other  persons perspective - be in the other persons shoes.

  • cognitive empathy - understand what makes someone else tick. can understand someone and play them like a fiddle. but has no sympathy

  • emotional empathy - ability to experience the other.

• *Empathy is the answer and cause of racism. makes you loyal to your tribe.  

  • Empathy can bridge the divides as well.

• Arts help you see the point of view of others

• 12:20 - About technology

  • power of empathy is face to face

• What can we do about the Empathy deficit?

  • in Early years

  • in Healthcare

  • in Justice System

• 23:00 Q and A

  1. Choosing switching empathy on and off? plus animals/meat eating

  2. I hang out with people with the same views. How to change that?

  3. How to apply empathy to people who are different from us?

  4. Shutting down empathy due to fear and what to do about it?

  5. If we feel guilty if our empathy snitch is turned off?

  6.  What about VR stories?

Sir Peter Bazalgette: ” The Empathy Instinct” | Talks at Google
May 1, 2017
by Sheeraz Raza
"Sir Peter Bazalgette in conversation with VP Comms, Peter Barron. Sir Peter was instrumental in creating the independent TV production sector in the United Kingdom. He was Chief Creative Officer at Endemol, President of the Royal Television Society, Deputy Chairman of the National Film School, Chair of Arts Council England, and is now Chair of the UK broadcaster ITV. He’s spent his career arguing for the role and importance of the arts and creative expression.
He joined us at Google to talk about his new book,The Empathy Instinct: How to Create a More Civil Society, which seeks to address the essential question of how we create a more civil society when so many of us are divided."
 

Peter Bazalgette on Empathy  (14 min)
Television executive Peter Bazalgette examines empathy. He talks to primatologist Frans de Waal, whose pioneering work with chimpanzees has helped to illuminate how our own evolutionary history suggests a deep-rooted propensity, both emotional and cognitive, for feeling the emotions of others.

The Empathy Instinct by Peter Bazalgette (2 min)
 

Empathy is the power of understanding others, imaginatively entering into their feelings. It is a fundamental human attribute, without which mutually co-operative societies cannot function. In a revolutionary development, we now know who has it, who lacks it and why. Via the MRI scanner we are mapping the human brain. This is a new frontier that reveals a host of beneficial ideas for childcare, teens challenged by the internet, the justice system, decent healthcare, tackling racism and resolving conflicts. 

In this wide-ranging and accessible book full of entertaining stories that are underlined by the latest scientific research, Peter Bazalgette also mounts a passionate defence of arts and popular culture as a means of bridging the empathy gap. 

As the world's population expands, consuming the planet's finite resources, as people haunted by poverty and war are on the move and as digital communications infinitely complicate our social interactions, we find our patience and our sympathy constantly challenged. Here is the antidote.

Culminating in a passionate manifesto on empathy, The Empathy Instinct is what makes us human and what can make us better humans.