TED - Why aren't we more compassionate?

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Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, asks why we aren’t more compassionate more of the time.

You know, I’m struck by how one of the implicit themes of TED is compassion, these very moving demonstrations we’ve just seen: HIV in Africa, President Clinton last night. And I’d like to do a little collateral thinking, if you will, about compassion and bring it from the global level to the personal. I’m a psychologist, but rest assured, I will not bring it to the scrotal.

There was a very important study done a while ago at Princeton Theological Seminary that speaks to why it is that when all of us have so many opportunities to help, we do sometimes, and we don’t other times. A group of divinity students at the Princeton Theological Seminary were told that they were going to give a practice sermon and they were each given a sermon topic. Half of those students were given, as a topic, the parable of the Good Samaritan: the man who stopped the stranger in – to help the stranger in need by the side of the road. Half were given random Bible topics. Then one by one, they were told they had to go to another building and give their sermon. As they went from the first building to the second, each of them passed a man who was bent over and moaning, clearly in need. The question is: Did they stop to help?

A few conversations comes to mind often with one of ex’s. The main one was understanding the difference between empathy and compassion. Her take on it was this…If a person is drowning in the water…

Compassion is throwing them a rope.

Empathy is jumping in the water with them…

Confusing something else for just an empathy for someone else is pain is a common mistake I’ve made. It can be incredibly toxic at times. Afterwards walls built to stop getting hurt etc. Only recently have I started to figure out I need to let more compassion in my life. Not only give it but receive it as had always seen it as a weakness. I guess with myself in a way had always wanted someone to swim with me as I was drowning too. So I think that where the compassions gone in the world. Most of us want someone to take that pressure of our pain. The way we want that is to show empathy rather then show compassion. But ends up being incredibly toxic.