empathy

An infinity with God has always been a circle, not a straight line past all your mistakes.

My other boy thing is that I sort of have a teeny tiny superpower. It__ not a jump-over-buildings, see-through-people__-clothes, or lift-a-train-over-my-head one, which is good, because when you can do those kinds of things you probably have to live in a secret hideout instead of at home with your mom and dad. And I really like my room_.

If we possess narrative sympathy - enabling us to see the world from other's point of view - we cannot kill. If we do not, we cannot love.

As I squeeze, he turns his head, and there is the tiniest, slimmest of moments when he sees me. I look into those wolf eyes, and even though they are empty, they're still alive. In that split second he is alive and looking at me. I am alive and looking at him. Then the moment is over, the trigger is pulled back, and the gun is empty.

I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs. You refer to yourself in order to understand other people. That's the novelist's gift, isn't it?

One must always forgive another's passion.

Life is neither a glorious highlight reel nor a monstrous tragedy. Every day is a good day to live and a good day to die. Every day is also an apt time to learn and express joy and love for the entire natural world. Each day is an apt time to make contact with other people and express empathy for the entire world. Each day is perfect to accept with indifference all aspects of being.

Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.

You can't love someone without imaginative sympathy, without beginning to see the world from another point of view. You can't be a good lover, a good artist or a good politician without this capacity (you can get away with it, but that's not what I mean). Show me the tyrants who have been great lovers.

I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we__ known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later__r not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence, warfare and male dominance, but rather around sexuality, empathy, caring and cooperation. What a different intellectual landscape we would occupy!

Social intelligence was therefore always at a high premium. A sharp sense of empathy can make a huge difference, and with it in an ability to manipulate, to gain cooperation, and to deceive.

The emotional states are liberated inside water, we calm down emotionally, we become more sensitive, we are able to "touch" deeper ourselves and other beings. Empathy is echoing back to us giving subtle vibrations from the realm of the senses. Find your water ~

If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you don__ have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going on, and therefore, generally speaking, you don__. Hence the sure-fire way to simplify social arrangements, to ignore the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires, and mutual understandings that human life is really made of, is to make a rule and threaten to attack anyone who breaks it. This is why violence has always been the favored recourse of the stupid: it is the one form of stupidity to which it is almost impossible to come up with an intelligent response. It is also of course the basis of the state.

If everyone realized the value of life, the world would be peaceful. The meaning of these words, "Do unto others as you would have them, do unto you," would be understood: It would be practiced.

...The happy Warrior... is he... who, doomed to go in company with pain, and fear, and bloodshed, miserable train turns his necessity to glorious gain; in face of these doth exercise a power which is our human nature's highest dower: controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves of their bad influence, and their good receives: by objects, which might force the soul to abate her feeling, rendered more compassionate; is placable_ because occasions rise so often that demand such sacrifice; more skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure, as tempted more; more able to endure, as more exposed to suffering and distress; thence, also, more alive to tenderness.

If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.

The recognition and the acceptance of the Other's humanity (or humanness) is a maiming of self. You have to wound the self, cut it in strips, in order to -know- that you are as similar and of the same substance of shadows.

Humans pursuing deep, complete connections respond to quite different incentives from those that influence self-interested utility maximizers. Rewards, monitoring, and punishments are less likely to be effective than engagement, communication, norms, socialization, identity, and common purpose. They share not out of a calculation of reciprocity but from a psychological pleasure in sharing. Those seeking connections make decisions from their hearts as well as their heads, influenced by emotion, fairness, empathy, and intuition. Their behavior, thoughts, feelings, and even personal attributes are highly socially contingent. The range of humanity includes individuals who display every possible combination of selfishness and sociability.