Why Humankind Needs Empathy
The past twenty years has seen rising levels of political polarization, a resurgence in nationalist and ethnic conflict, and fear of the “Other” -- of migrants, of different “races,” of opposing ideas. Despite having access to more information than ever, greater connections across borders, and heightened visibility of others’ pain and trauma, humanity’s response has included a surprising level of callousness. With all the resources available to an increasing number of people, what is preventing us from recognizing other perspectives and responding to injustices? How can we course correct?
Our answer: empathy, or the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Empathy allows us to examine our own biases and look beyond our assumptions to build a lasting connection with other people and even our environment. Empathy is the necessary foundation for a just future. As Danish psychologist Iben Sandahl writes, “For most of us, deep and intense moments of happiness are often, if not always, tied to deep and intense contact with others. Training our empathetic abilities is therefore also training joy of life.”
The contact hypothesis, as first posited by Pettigrew and Tropp (2006), makes the conclusion that contact with those who are different from us “typically reduces prejudice.” It is harder to dismiss someone’s identity or their beliefs if they are no longer perceived as outsiders. But it’s important to make contact in a shared space with shared goals. The power of culture and mass media to capture experiences, values, and modes of thinking from a variety of perspectives holds immense potential for empathy-building. We can make sense of the different lives we all lead by systematically and intentionally learning more about one another and the world around us. We act on this principle through the Humankind Experience, exploring our cultural legacies to make unexpected connections.
The femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. An untreated fracture takes about six weeks to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them, and offered physical protection and human companionship until the injury could mend.
What is the earliest sign of civilization? “A healed femur.”
—Margaret Mead
According to psychologist and author Jamil Zaki, empathy is a learned behavior that gets stronger with practice, becoming “deeper, broader, and more muscular.” We approach empathy as a skill that anyone can hone over time. Yet, it is crucial to define, encourage, and teach empathy early on if our goal is to mainstream empathy as a conscious practice, akin to other major behavior changes such as improved diet or changing social attitudes. In fact, research shows that children as young as two already have the emotional and cognitive capacity to understand others’ states of being. Since 1993, the Danish curriculum has included a weekly one-hour class, “Klassens tid,” teaching empathy to students aged six to 16 years old. Denmark’s standing as the world’s happiest nation may be connected to this focus on empathy and collaboration early in life.
If we can learn empathetic behavior, then we can apply it in our everyday lives through mutual aid. Mutual aid networks, or groups that work cooperatively to meet the needs of the community, operate on the idea that everyone has something to give, and everyone has something they lack -- from food to resources to services. One of Humankind’s objectives is to make mutual aid the norm: to increase positive collective outcomes, including social connection, solidarity, and shared resilience. Even in the midst of crisis, history has repeatedly suggested that we are far more likely to demonstrate what Zaki calls “catastrophe compassion” than division: we come together in solidarity. Giving communities the tools to take care of themselves and one another is the ultimate expression of empathy that we want to make a reality via Humankind.
With a deeper understanding of one another and our places in the world, we can begin rethinking how we adapt for a future that reimagines the basic necessities of modern life. Investments in housing, education, food, and healthcare can all be made through an empathy lens. We build on present innovations to not only raise the quality of life of entire communities, but also to reconcile the human experience with nature. In an era of intense urbanization and fragmentation from the natural world, empathy allows us to reconnect with our environment. In the same way that exclusion creates distance between groups of people, so too does distance from nature create the risk of exploitation of resources (Brown et. al. 2019). We invest in ideas inspired by the empathy-sustainability connection, and find inclusive solutions for the next stage of Humankind.
Difference is necessary for growth; the key is to celebrate it in a culture of civility, camaraderie, and mutual responsibility. We know that empathy education will not end all disagreements, or prevent all future conflicts. But we do have a strong belief that Humankind’s potential is yet to be met. It will take a long time to embed empathy into our everyday lives, but we can agree that our challenging times call for a new way of thinking and understanding one another.