Translator: Darwin Escobar Reviewer: Theresa Ranft What's a world issue that most bothers you and makes you angry? The kind of issue that speaks to your heart and you'd like to see resolved. What issue is it?
Start thinking about it for a bit and shortly I'll tell you what mine is. Since my childhood, I wanted to do things differently, in a different way, and that turned me into a very inquisitive teenager very defensive of my own ideas and of what I believed in. I was always passionate about nature which made me decide to be a biologist early on at the age of 13.
I felt that my contribution to this world would come through my love of nature. I was one of those people who would say they liked animals more than people, you know? But over time I changed, I think I matured, and when I finished college six years ago I knew I wouldn't be following that path, because the truth is you can't change the planet without changing the people.
So I started to understand that the way we relate to ourselves and to others has everything to do with some patterns we observe in our society and with many of the problems we face. The way we see others, how we listen to each other and how we connect with each other has to change if we want to build a more peaceful, sustainable, and cooperative world for everyone. And when I understood that every transformation passes through us and that our minds are powerful, I decided I wanted to study how our brain works.
So I started studying neuroscience, and during my graduate studies the topic of empathy came to me as my subject of study, almost like an intuition, I can't really explain why. And at that time, I still had no idea of the whole capacity of empathy, and I had no idea that this topic would become my cause and would change the path of my career. In fact, I had no idea just how important this topic would become to me, that inquisitive teenager, very defensive of her own ideas as if they were absolute facts.
So I started to study about empathy, which is our ability to put ourselves in someone else's place; to embrace their view, in other words, to see the world through their eyes and share their feelings. That's when I discovered that real empathy actually breaks the majority of our paradigms. You know that golden rule we're taught as children?
"Treat others the way you would like to be treated. " Forget it. From now on, it's meaningless.
Don't treat others the way you would like to be treated. They could simply just have preferences completely different to yours. Empathy is about understanding this.
You know what empathy is: that cute, loving, maternal feeling that accepts everything? We’ll go far beyond that concept. Empathy is a powerful force.
Empathy is what unites us all as a society. We could even consider that society, the way it is now, is not the society that people want to live in, but I can guarantee you that, without empathy, we wouldn't be living in any society. Empathy is a revolutionary force that can help us change this world we live in, in the world we want to live in.
It's truly a hard time for dreamers, and in these hard times, sometimes it's not easy to talk about empathy. Sometimes people are led to believe that human beings aren't empathetic by nature. Many historians, writers, and philosophers have written about the dark side of human beings, the Machiavellian, self-centered side, and we can be led to believe, our society is leading people to believe, that this dark side might be bigger and stronger than the good side, than the cooperative or generous side.
I won't deny the events we see daily, on TV, on newscasts, or even things that happen in our daily lives, can confirm that belief, can make us think that humans are self-centered. But that is where science comes in to give people a little more hope, because neuroscience has made many discoveries about how humans function and how we relate to one another, and these discoveries have offered us a new perspective on human beings. So, to begin with, neuroscience has proven that we're empathetic by nature.
We are social beings and we are made to live and benefit from a harmonious society. We're born with structures, processes, brain connections that exist so that we can connect with each other and express empathy. We start to manifest this as babies.
You know when you have a baby and you start making faces at them and suddenly they imitate your face, or you make a sound and suddenly they start imitating those sounds? That baby is imitating you, and imitation is one of the neural bases of empathy. We can empathize because we are capable of imitation.
This is possible because we have a system of special neurons, known as the mirror neuron system, whose function is to recreate and mirror, in our own brain, anything that we see in others. It could be an action, a movement, or an emotion. We observe ourselves in others and it's as if we were in their place.
That's the reason why, if I were to ask you right now to imagine a little cut in the middle of your finger, like this, that came from a paper cut, and a drop of lemon juice right in the cut. . .
I noticed some of your faces and the way you reacted: you cringe, you make weird noises, because in that moment our mirror neuron system is working and it's as if it was happening to your own body. That is also why we cry during sad films and it's why we can, somehow, feel what others feel, because we always mirror each other. Secondly, neuroscience shows us that, despite empathy being innate, it can be trained, and this is possible due to one of the most wonderful aspects of our brain, in my opinion: our brain is plastic.
This means that it can mold and adapt itself to all and any stimulation that we give it. That's why at any moment in your life you can learn new things. You can learn to speak a new language, play a new instrument, or develop any skill you wish.
With empathy, it's exactly the same thing: from now on, if you settle on training your empathy in a conscious way, your brain will start to develop specific structures, it will start to make new neural routes, and over time empathy will become a more automatic and natural process for you. So, cool. Science shows us that we're born empathetic and that we can practice empathy.
But for what? Why would we waste our time practicing our empathy? Firstly, I think it's because nobody lives alone in this world, and empathy can help us have more profound relationships and more meaningful ones with people around us.
Secondly, because today empathy has already been considered one of the important skills of the future, one of the important skills of leadership of the future because it helps us improve other very important skills. Empathy helps us to be more creative, more innovative and to have a much faster systemic thinking. When we can view a problem, not just through our own perspective but through many different perspectives, the chances increase of us finding a more effective solution for it.
And in this world which is increasingly networked, increasingly connected, increasingly cooperative, I think that these skills are fundamental. But I'll say it again: empathy is even more than this. I asked you at the beginning what is a world problem that bothers you the most.
Here we have a chart with some of the world's problems. The problem you thought of is probably here. If it's not here, tell me later so I can add it.
So, war, inequality, poverty, intolerance, machismo, environmental issues. We have many current worldwide problems. If we start to analyze, we realize that these problems aren't isolated from one another.
They're all systemic, interconnected, and they always feed back into each other. And despite being different, they have some things in common, they have some of the same causes, and I have no doubt that lack of empathy is a common cause to all these problems. We can see this chart from two perspectives.
From the negative perspective, we can even become paralyzed from it, and say, "Wow, what a complex issue. What can I do to resolve a chart this big? How can I handle all this?
" Or we can look at the positive side, the side of solution, and think, "If lack of empathy is the root to all of those problems, then we can imagine that developing empathy may help us solve all those problems. " I want to bring up a different concept, which is the concept of acupuncture points. In Chinese medicine, acupuncture points are points on our bodies that have a great concentration of energy flow and, upon activating those points, you're not resolving a specific problem, you're relieving the whole system.
When we have very complex systems like that one, in which we cannot take action upon it directly, we need to find acupuncture points. If you tamper with that, you shake everything up. I really believe that empathy is one, if not the most important point of acupuncture of our society that needs to be developed.
When viewing this, I discovered that is my problem, that's what keeps me up at night. Our crisis over relations has to do with our lack of collectivity. How is it that our connection or lack of connection with some people came to cause these problems?
How is it that some relations are so fragile to the point of causing wars or violent conflicts, caused by intolerance? This cannot happen, and this became my cause, it became the subject of my work. Since then, I have tried to take this subject, this broader vision of empathy to many people and have tried to plant a little seed of empathy in all of them.
Just like me, there are lots of people out there doing the same, using empathy as an inspiration for social transformation. I wanted to briefly show three examples. There is an app, kind of like Tinder, but not only for loving relationships, - you can find friends there too - that connects people on opposing sides of political conflicts.
What this app does, besides linking Israelis and Palestinians, republicans and democrats, is bring people closer to what really matters, what they have in common, not where they differ. Sometimes, empathy can also inspire real life-changing experiences. TETO is an NGO that promotes the growth of communities in need.
Through TETO, young people, normally from higher social classes, spend days immersed in a community in need, building a house for a family. I was a volunteer for TETO for some time, and I can guarantee that, even more than building a home, the connection that exists between people, the experience and this deep sense of empathy transform you in a way that will change you forever. After an experience like that, you won't see poverty or inequality in the same way.
Sometimes empathy can even inspire revolutions in technology. This is a virtual reality project by the UN. The UN has created these films in virtual reality, where you wear the headset and you feel like you're really there.
Through these films, you can live the experience of a child in a Syrian refugee camp, or you can visit an Ebola treatment center in Africa through the eyes of a volunteer nurse. Despite this experience being virtual reality, it is extremely visceral and it also stays with you as if you were really there. I wonder about the potential of this on a larger scale.
Imagine if everyone in the world could connect in that way with people they'll never meet in their lifetimes. And, more than that, imagine if all the governors of the world, before making important decisions, could go through these experiences, live the reality of those people. I'm confident that their choices would be different.
These are only some examples of people who are using empathy as a source of inspiration. There are many, many others. I'm certain that many will show up here.
All these examples are, in fact, revolutions, peaceful and systemic revolutions, that are primarily changing our relations, to change that whole system later. In this whole process since starting to study empathy a few years ago, I've learned some things, with the workshops I've done, with the conversations I've had, with people who see empathy in a different way and with the processes of change that I have followed. I want to share three of these lessons.
The first is that empathy is already in every one of us and it's already a part of our lives. We wouldn't be here, living in our societies, if it weren’t for that. Then I wonder, "If it’s already inside each of us and it's already a part of our lives, then why are we not practicing it more often?
We worry so much about developing all these professional skills, things that we think will be important for our careers, and perhaps we're forgetting one of the most important personal skills for the world today. Secondly, I learned that change begins within each of us, but that this isn’t sufficient. We need every transformed person to get out of the woodwork and out into the world.
Get off the couch and out into the world to create new projects, new movements, or at least inspire new people, because we can't change the world on our own, but, mainly, we can't change the world just by looking inside. We need to look outside too. And finally and most importantly: it's very easy to start.
The first step is very easy. Every person in this room in this exact moment can start this revolution. Every person can take on the commitment to adopt one new habit for more empathetic relations and societies.
It doesn't depend on anybody, it only depends on each of us. And if we are constantly mirroring what we see in others, if our mirror neurons allow us to do so, could it be that, upon doing so, we'd be inspiring others to also take up commitments for new and more sustainable habits? I think so.
And if more people adopt new and more empathetic habits, could it be that, together, we’ll get nearer to having a more peaceful, sustainable, and cooperative society? I think so. I really believe in this revolution of empathy and I know the road is very, very long, but I think that the more people believe in it together, the quicker we'll get there.
Thank you.
