The War For Kindness

The War For Kindness Plot Summary

Introduction

I was eight years old when my parents began their divorce, but twelve by the time they finished. As they drifted apart, they scorched the earth between them, creating two parallel universes that I shuttled between weekly. My mother, quintessentially Peruvian, valued family above all else. She lost herself in anxiety over how the divorce would affect me, cataloging every sign of my distress. My father, from Pakistan, valued intellect and ambition. He'd broken his back to give us what he never had, and felt betrayed when we didn't appreciate it. Each tried to conscript me into their war, telling me secrets, letting me break the other's rules, and venting bitterly. When I didn't join in, they accused me of taking the other's side. Rather than choosing between them, I did something different. When at my mother's, I picked up the rules that governed her heart and made them true for myself. When visiting my dad, I adapted to his world. It was difficult work, being pulled in different directions by a centrifugal force. Sometimes I wasn't sure what I believed. But I learned to tune myself to each of my parents' frequencies, managing to stay connected to both even as their ties to each other disintegrated. This experience taught me perhaps the most important lesson of my life: that empathy is not fixed, but something we can choose to cultivate, even in difficult circumstances. Two people's experiences could differ drastically, yet both be true and deep. We don't have to pick sides. We can stretch ourselves to understand multiple perspectives, and in doing so, preserve the connections that matter most.

Chapter 1: The Plastic Nature of Empathy

Alfred Wegener was an unlikely revolutionary. A meteorologist and adventurer who set records floating above Europe in weather balloons, he would eventually die on an expedition across Greenland. Studying maps of the ocean floor, Wegener noticed that continents complemented each other like puzzle pieces. He also observed identical species of plants and animals spread across continents separated by vast oceans. In 1915, Wegener proposed a radical idea: the earth's land had once clumped together in a single mass—Pangea—and had rumbled apart over eons into the continents we know today. His theory of continental drift was ruthlessly mocked by geologists. One researcher described it as the "delirious ravings of people with bad cases of moving crust disease." Traditional "fixists" successfully defended the notion of a stationary earth against Wegener's "mobilist" view. At the time of his death, his theory had been tossed into the rubbish bin of scientific history. Decades later, scientists discovered tectonic plates—masses larger than continents pushed along by currents of magma. The North American and Eurasian plates drift apart about as fast as your fingernails grow. Wegener, an outsider with an unbelievable idea, had been right all along. While we now accept that the earth moves beneath us, our understanding of ourselves has proven more stubborn. The "psychological fixism" view holds that our emotional capacities, including empathy, are hardwired and unchangeable. This belief feels comforting—it means we can know who others truly are, and ourselves as well. But it also limits us. Cheaters will always cheat, liars will always lie, and the unempathetic will never change. This deterministic view has been used throughout history to justify social hierarchies and dismiss entire groups of people as inherently inferior. Yet recent scientific discoveries have begun to challenge psychological fixism, just as geology eventually rejected the notion of immobile continents. Studies of the brain reveal that it continues to grow and change throughout adulthood. Our personalities shift substantially across our lifespans, and our cognitive abilities, including IQ, can improve dramatically with education and experience. Twin studies suggest that empathy is about 30 percent genetically determined—a substantial influence, but leaving plenty of room for environment and choice to play crucial roles. Life experiences powerfully shape our capacity for empathy. Children whose parents express high levels of empathy show greater concern for strangers as they grow. Romanian orphans who experienced neglect but were later adopted by nurturing families developed typical levels of empathy. People who undergo intense suffering often emerge with deeper compassion for others—a phenomenon known as "altruism born of suffering." After trauma, many survivors become peer counselors, helping others heal from wounds they once suffered themselves. This research paints a fundamentally different picture of human nature—not as fixed and frozen, but plastic and changeable. We're not static; our brains and minds shift throughout our lives. Like the continents beneath our feet, this change might be slow and imperceptible. And yet we move. The question isn't whether someone can change their capacity for empathy, but how much they can change, and what practices might help them do so.

Chapter 2: Choosing to Care: The Empathy Tug-of-War

Ron Haviv and Ed Kashi witness pain for a living. As photojournalists, they document funerals, uprisings, and other human tragedies. Yet they approach their work quite differently. During the Kosovo War, Haviv photographed a Muslim family preparing their child, who had died of exposure, for burial. To capture such images, Haviv detaches from his emotions. "I have a responsibility to be there for the public, not myself," he explains, "not to become so emotional that I am unable to photograph." In contrast, Kashi immerses himself in his subjects' emotions. When photographing Maxine, a woman dying from Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, he found himself crying and even guiding her husband to tell her it was okay to let go. "I'm almost in the role of a social worker," Kashi reflects. Neither photographer would say their empathy is automatic or uncontrollable. Haviv deliberately suppresses his emotions during shoots, allowing himself to process them later: "I've trained myself so that I can become emotional once I'm away from the situation. Back at the hotel, I can cry." For Kashi, emotional connection is an essential part of his approach. Each, in his own way, chooses to empathize with purpose. This contradicts a long-held scientific view that empathy is purely reflexive—that we automatically catch others' emotions like a contagion, without choice or control. The philosopher Paul Bloom argues in his book "Against Empathy" that this automatic nature is empathy's fatal flaw: "Empathy will have to yield to reason if humanity is to have a future." But mounting evidence suggests that empathy isn't merely a reflex. It's more like a tug-of-war between competing motivations. We have many reasons to choose empathy. It feels good when we share others' positive emotions. It satisfies our deep need for connection. It signals our virtue to others and ourselves. But we also have reasons to avoid it. Connecting with others' pain can be distressing. When our own time or money is at stake, empathy feels burdensome. In one famous study, Princeton seminary students preparing sermons about the Good Samaritan—the biblical figure who stopped to help an injured stranger—were told they were running late. More than 60 percent helped a person in distress when they weren't rushed, but only 10 percent did when they felt time pressure. The irony is palpable: students wouldn't help a man lying on a sidewalk because they were in too much of a hurry to give a speech about how important it is to help a man lying on a sidewalk. Psychologists have developed techniques to tip this balance toward empathy. When Dan Batson played University of Kansas students a recording of a young woman living with HIV, some were specifically instructed to imagine how she felt. This simple prompt not only increased their empathy for her but also made them care more about other people living with HIV or AIDS. In another study, men performed worse than women on tests of empathic accuracy—until researchers told them they'd be paid for accurately understanding others' emotions. Suddenly, the gender gap disappeared. Beyond these quick interventions, can we build long-term, "slow-twitch" empathy? The neuroscientist Tania Singer conducted an ambitious experiment to find out. Her team ran participants through thirty-nine weeks of intensive training, including meditation retreats and daily practice sessions. Students learned to sharpen their attention and to extend warm feelings first toward themselves, then friends and family, and eventually toward strangers and all living beings. The results were striking: Students became better at understanding both their own emotions and others'. They acted more generously and found it easier to recognize their common humanity with different people. Brain scans showed that parts of their brain associated with empathy actually grew in size. Through purposeful effort, people had built lasting empathy and changed their biology in the process. The evidence is clear: empathy is not merely a fixed trait or an uncontrollable reflex. It's a capacity we can choose to develop, like a muscle that grows stronger with exercise. By understanding the forces that pull us toward or away from empathy, we can create circumstances that make caring more natural—turning an uphill climb into a downhill stroll.

Chapter 3: Breaking Through Hatred: Finding Common Ground

Tony McAleer usually targeted Jews, but this time he made an exception. He and his friends in the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), dressed in Doc Martens and carrying walking canes, began harassing a gay man in a park. He ran, and they chased him through Vancouver's streets, cornering him in a construction site. Tony and his friends grabbed loose rocks and whipped them at the man hiding in a crawl space. "It was like a game," Tony recalled. "I felt nothing." Tony grew up near that construction site, the son of a psychiatrist who worked long hours and retreated to a homemade British pub in their basement most nights. When Tony was ten, he walked in on his father with a mistress, after which the family fell apart. His anger grew, his grades plummeted, and he began rebelling at every turn. By sixteen, he'd adopted the skinhead look and music scene, which offered him both an outlet for aggression and a chance to show off his intellect. He specialized in Holocaust denial, overwhelming opponents with an avalanche of twisted facts. "I wasn't the greatest street fighter," Tony remembers, "but I was the great debater." As Tony rose through the ranks of white supremacy, creating the first white-power record label in North America and founding a racist automated phone service, he grew more extreme and less humane. "I was like a frog, being boiled in a pot that gets one degree hotter at a time." His worldview turned paranoid, seeing white culture besieged by outsiders. But Tony's hatred wasn't fiery rage—it was cold indifference. "When people think of hate, they see a red-faced, screaming person. That's hate mixed with anger. True hatred is a profound lack of connection... I couldn't connect with other people's pain, or with my own." Everything changed when Tony became a father at twenty-three. He doted on his children, and they offered him connection he hadn't felt in decades. "It's safe to love a child. They're not capable of rejection, or shame, or ridicule." He gradually withdrew from the skinhead movement to support his family. His most stubborn prejudice—against Jews—finally fell after he befriended Dov Baron, a leadership trainer. When Tony anxiously revealed his skinhead past, Dov simply said, "That's what you did, but not who you are. I see you." Tony spent the next half hour crying in Dov's office. "Here was this man who loved me and wanted to heal me, and here was I, a person who had once advocated for the annihilation of his people." Dov's compassion cracked Tony open, allowing him to begin healing. Tony's journey illustrates a powerful principle: hatred buries empathy but doesn't kill it. The psychologist Gordon Allport noticed this pattern during America's racial struggles in the mid-20th century. After the 1943 Detroit race riots, he observed that whites and blacks who had worked or studied together were far less likely to join in violence. In "The Nature of Prejudice," Allport proposed that bigotry often stems from lack of acquaintance, and its antidote is bringing people together under the right conditions. When groups have equal status, common goals, personal interactions, and institutional support for their cooperation, divisions between them begin to dissolve. This "contact theory" has become one of psychology's most well-studied concepts. In a recent analysis of more than a quarter-million people, the pattern was clear: more time with outsiders correlates with less prejudice. Contact can build empathy even in tough settings like post-conflict Northern Ireland, where Catholics and Protestants who had friends on the other side were less likely to dehumanize each other. The reason is simple: when an outsider joins the ranks of our friends or colleagues, empathizing with them aligns with our desire for connection. The benefits compound as empathy for one outsider often leads to caring for their entire group. Today, Tony leads Life After Hate, a nonprofit that helps extract people from extremist groups. "We stumbled through the wilderness and managed to get to the other side," he says. "From there we want to go back and help people who are where we were." Tony doesn't try to directly change hate group members' beliefs. Instead, he shows genuine interest in them as people, listening without judgment. This approach acknowledges the fear and shame behind their hatred while offering a path to self-compassion. By meeting someone like Tony, extremists can connect to a future they might never have imagined—one where they can care and be cared for again.

Chapter 4: Stories as Empathy Bridges

"And if you heard the crow, you also knew about the sugar tarts!" A thirteen-year-old named Orrie interrogates the cook as the duchess looks on in a rehearsal of "Alice in Wonderland" at the Young Performers Theatre. She wears an oversize sweater and Chuck Taylors instead of Alice's traditional blue dress. When the director asks her to be "more inquisitive, not so accusatory," Orrie adjusts her tone and delivers the line again. The rehearsal is choppy, with actors stumbling over lines and standing awkwardly, but the director, Stephanie Holmes, offers gentle guidance. She reminds them to consider what the audience sees and knows, and to think about their characters' inner lives. For many of these young actors, theater has become transformative. Ella, who plays the Dormouse, was once painfully shy. In seventh grade, she transferred to a new school and didn't speak to anyone for two weeks. Her first role at YPT was "Silent Cat," but as she attempted more ambitious parts, she noticed herself growing bolder offstage as well. "Now I'm that super loud, chatty person at school who won't shut up!" The theater teaches these young performers to recognize common threads between their own experiences and their characters'. When Ella recently played Belle in "Beauty and the Beast," she struggled with a scene where Belle feels isolated and afraid. The director encouraged her to imagine how she'd feel if separated from her family. By the end of the monologue, Ella was in tears. This empathic exercise isn't limited to young actors. Method acting, developed by Konstantin Stanislavsky, trains performers to meditate on their characters' motives, beliefs, and history. "The actor's job is not to present merely the external life of his character," Stanislavsky wrote, "but to fit his own human qualities to the life of this other person, and pour into it all of his soul." For his role as a Holocaust survivor in "The Pianist," Adrien Brody ended his relationship, disconnected his phones, moved to Europe, and lost forty pounds. He tried to "encourage loneliness and to encourage loss." Does this repeated imaginative exercise actually enhance actors' empathy? Thalia Goldstein, a former professional actor turned psychologist, has conducted studies comparing drama students to those in other arts. She found that actors excel at understanding others' emotions and thoughts. More importantly, theater training actively grows students' cognitive empathy over time, while other forms of arts training do not. Other research has found that medical residents who train in drama interact more empathically with patients, and children with autism who complete theater programs perform better on empathy tests. Reading fiction offers similar benefits. For more than a decade, the psychologist Raymond Mar has examined how stories allow us to experience countless lives—from a black woman in the Jim Crow South to pioneers on a lunar colony. His research shows that avid readers have an easier time identifying others' emotions than people who read less. Even small "doses" of fiction help; in one study, people who read George Saunders's "The Tenth of December" later identified others' feelings more accurately than people who had read nonfiction. Books are portable, silent empathy machines that allow us to safely connect with people we might otherwise avoid or disavow in public. This power of narrative to build bridges was dramatically demonstrated in post-genocide Rwanda. In 1994, over just three months, about 70 percent of Rwanda's Tutsi population was murdered by Hutu extremists. Radio had played a key role in the violence, with stations like Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines broadcasting hate and directing killers to their victims. A decade later, a radio drama called "New Dawn" took to the airwaves. Instead of directly discussing Hutus and Tutsis, it told the story of two fictional villages in conflict. Characters like Batamuriza, who falls in love with a man from the rival village, and her brother Rutaganira, who initially agitates for violence but later becomes a peace advocate, allowed Rwandans to process their trauma from a safe distance. The psychologist Betsy Levy Paluck found that "New Dawn" increased listeners' empathy for people on both sides of Rwanda's tragedy. It became the most popular radio drama in Rwanda's history, with 90 percent of the country tuning in. During reconciliation trials, victims often filtered their experiences through the drama's lens, referring to real people by character names: "she was such a Batamuriza," meaning she wanted peace, or "he was a Rutaganira," meaning he incited violence. The story gave them language to discuss painful realities without direct accusation. Whether through theater, literature, or radio drama, stories offer a unique pathway to empathy. They allow us to safely enter others' worlds, understand their perspectives, and care about their welfare—even when direct contact would be difficult or impossible. By engaging our imagination, narrative arts expand our capacity to see beyond our own experience and recognize our common humanity with those who might otherwise remain strangers.

Chapter 5: When Caring Hurts: Balancing Empathy with Self-Care

Liz Rogers, a neonatologist at the University of California's Benioff Children's Hospital, confronts life and death daily. The intensive care nursery (ICN) where she works specializes in treating extremely premature infants, some so delicate that raising their legs could cause brain bleeding. Families here face a fear most parents cannot imagine, and the emotional weight is palpable. Yet Liz moves through this environment with remarkable grace, hugging parents, crying with them, and talking about her own children. During one particularly difficult case, Liz and her team cared for Francisco, a premature infant with necrotizing enterocolitis—a condition where parts of the gut die inside the body. After surgery revealed that his entire intestine had died, the team had to inform his parents, migrant field workers who spoke only an indigenous Mexican language. Liz guided the conversation with profound empathy: "Although we can no longer decide whether he lives or dies, we can choose how he spends the rest of his time, and we want that to be with you." Later, when Francisco's life support was removed, Liz closed her eyes and placed two fingers on his forehead, tears streaming down her face. This level of emotional investment might seem unsustainable, and for many in caring professions, it is. Carla Joinson coined the term "compassion fatigue" to describe empathy's repetitive strain injury. "Human need is infinite," she wrote. "Caregivers tend to feel 'I can always give a little more,' but sometimes they just can't help." This exhaustion affects millions—from healthcare workers to teachers to family members caring for chronically ill relatives. In one study, empathic parents transferred their own well-being to their kids: children reported less anger and bounced back more quickly from stress, but parents exhibited inflammation and signs of cellular aging. The medical profession has traditionally counseled "detached concern" as a solution—a Vulcan-like goodwill that protects caregivers from emotional burnout. But Liz rejects this model: "Being honest and open about how a patient has affected you as an individual can only give more meaning to them." She's seen dozens of infants die and cries every time. The question isn't whether to care, but how to care sustainably. Psychologists distinguish between two types of empathy: empathic distress and empathic concern. Distress involves vicariously taking on others' pain, which often leads to avoidance or burnout. Concern, by contrast, entails feeling for someone and wanting to improve their well-being without absorbing their suffering. These states inspire different actions. People who tend toward distress help when they must but avoid situations that might trigger difficult emotions. Those who experience concern help regardless of the circumstances and are less likely to burn out. The key for caregivers is cultivating the right kind of empathy. At Johns Hopkins Hospital, a program called Resilience in Stressful Events (RISE) offers immediate peer support to healthcare workers after difficult cases. When staff members lose a patient or make a medical error, they can call a helpline, and a trained colleague responds within minutes. The RISE team listens without judgment, offering what its founder, Albert Wu, calls "psychological first aid." The program has dramatically reduced staff turnover after adverse events, proving that even a small dose of targeted empathy can protect caregivers from the emotional toll of their work. Other institutions are exploring contemplative practices to help caregivers tune their empathy. Eve Ekman, a researcher at UCSF, teaches doctors to identify their emotions with greater precision—what she calls "emotional granularity." By understanding exactly what they feel when working with patients, caregivers can change their relationship to difficult emotions. Some practice loving-kindness meditation, which cultivates empathic concern rather than distress. Studies show that after such training, medical students report greater concern for their patients and less depression themselves. At the deepest level, sustainable caring requires professionals to redefine their role. Many see themselves as heroic rescuers, battling illness and death at all costs. But caregivers who think their job is to defy mortality are doomed to fail. "Mortality could and should be part of medicine," says palliative care specialist Anthony Back. For caregivers, it offers an opportunity to help patients not by denying death, but by affirming life. When doctors, nurses, and social workers manage to be present with families—to listen, explain, and even cry at their side—they give them something irreplaceable. If they can do so in ways that sustain rather than deplete themselves, they can offer that gift to even more people who need it.

Chapter 6: Building Empathy-Positive Systems

Sue Rahr has never been afraid to tussle. The only girl in a family of seven kids, she later joined the King County Sheriff's Office near Seattle. During one of her first patrols, a drunk man sucker-punched her mid-sentence. "I immediately reacted not with what I learned at the police academy, but what I learned with my brothers," she recalled. "I grabbed him by the hair and pulled him to the ground, and as he's on his way down I kicked him in the nuts." Despite this scrappy beginning, Rahr was uniquely skilled at avoiding conflict. In her first three months of training, she was the only officer who never needed to use force, relying instead on communication and influence. Today, Rahr heads police training for Washington State. At the Criminal Justice Training Commission (CJTC), her approach directly challenges the "warrior mentality" that has dominated American policing in recent decades. This mindset encourages officers to view themselves as combatants embedded in dangerous communities, always prepared for threat. Instead, Rahr promotes a "guardian" philosophy, reminding recruits that their job is to protect communities, not wage war against them. Above the academy's entrance, a sign reads "IN THESE HALLS, TRAINING THE GUARDIANS OF DEMOCRACY." On every desk, a card displays the acronym "LEED: LISTEN AND EXPLAIN WITH EQUITY AND DIGNITY." Rahr's approach makes empathy concrete in three ways. First, by example: she stripped away the military-style atmosphere that once prevailed at the academy, creating a more open environment. Second, through classroom instruction on emotional intelligence, racial bias, and mental illness. Third, in "Mock City"—a gymnasium converted into fake stores and apartments where recruits practice managing volatile situations. In one simulation, trainees must interact with a young man experiencing a psychotic episode. They're evaluated not just on maintaining safety, but on how well they recognize and respond to his emotional state. "In law enforcement," Rahr explains, "empathy is still viewed as a weakness, or catering to political correctness, but really it's critical to officer safety. Police officers deal with people in crisis, and having your trauma acknowledged lowers the tension. Listening is a de-escalation strategy." Early research suggests that CJTC's approach makes a difference. In one study, Seattle officers who received LEED training used force 30 percent less often than their peers. Washington cops have also shifted their tactics around mentally ill individuals, hospitalizing more and arresting fewer. Rahr's philosophy has slowly spread across the country, with departments from Las Vegas to Cincinnati adopting similar training. However, she faces resistance from those who fear that empathy-focused officers might hesitate in dangerous situations, putting themselves at risk. A similar transformation is happening in education, led by psychologist Jason Okonofua. As a teenager in Memphis, Jason was arrested for refusing a suspension he felt was unjust. The vice principal had rounded up students holding flyers for a party and handed out one-day suspensions. When Jason objected, saying he needed to get back to studying, she escalated it to three days and called the school police officer. The officer took Jason to a back room, handcuffed him, and said, "I thought you were the good one"—referring to Jason's brothers, who had been frequently expelled. This experience highlighted the toxic culture of "zero tolerance" in schools. Since the 1990s, exclusionary discipline has skyrocketed, with students—particularly black and brown children—suspended or expelled for increasingly minor infractions. These policies create a vicious cycle: teachers identify "bad kids" early and react forcefully; students feel disrespected and misbehave more; teachers escalate discipline further. Each learns to fear and provoke the other in a spiral that pushes thousands of students out of school altogether. Now a professor at UC Berkeley, Jason developed an intervention called "empathic discipline." He first had teachers read about reasons that even good kids act out, then provided stories from students describing how empathic discipline had helped them. Teachers responded by writing about their own strategies for kind discipline. After this brief intervention, students reported feeling more respected, especially those who had previously been suspended. Most importantly, students whose math teachers received Jason's training were suspended about half as often overall—not just in math class, but throughout the school. The program has since expanded to school districts across multiple states. Both Rahr and Okonofua demonstrate that empathy isn't just an individual choice—it can be built into our systems and institutions. Many organizations now recognize this principle. Google found that its most successful teams were characterized by "psychological safety" and mutual respect. The design firm IDEO encourages employees to set aside time to help colleagues and considers generosity during hiring and promotion. When empathy becomes the expected norm rather than the exception, caring becomes each person's default setting rather than an uphill struggle. As Jason reflects, "Mindsets are in a person, and that's important, but we should also think about where those mindsets come from." By creating environments where kindness is expected and rewarded, we make empathy easier for everyone.

Chapter 7: Technology's Double-Edged Impact on Empathy

In 2007, the Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal invited anyone with an internet connection to shoot him. Three years earlier, his brother had been killed by a drone strike in their hometown of Najaf. Grieving, Bilal saw an interview with a drone "pilot" who cheerfully described dropping missiles on Iraq from a base in Colorado. "It struck me," Bilal recalls, "that Haji's death had been orchestrated by someone just like this young woman, pressing buttons from thousands of miles away...oblivious to the terror and destruction they were causing to a family." For his exhibition "Domestic Tension," Bilal set up a spartan living space in a Chicago gallery with nothing but a bed, a computer desk, and a paintball gun mounted on a turret that could be controlled remotely. Users could log on, aim, and fire as many times as they liked. Over thirty days, the gun went off about sixty thousand times—once every forty-five seconds, day and night. Bilal took shelter behind a Plexiglas barrier while he slept, but sleeping was nearly impossible. People shot at him from 138 countries, often while mocking him through chat messages. "Die, terrorist," read one. Some people would have shot at Bilal in person, but he believed many fired only from the emotional distance of the internet. Technology is widely viewed as our era's biggest threat to empathy, and the statistics are troubling. In 2007, the average American adult spent eighteen minutes a day on their phone; by 2017, that had ballooned to four hours. As cities grow and households shrink, we see more people than ever before but know fewer of them. Rituals that bring us into regular contact—attending church, participating in team sports, even grocery shopping—have given way to solitary pursuits online. By retreating from face-to-face encounters, we've neglected the world's best naturally occurring empathy training. Countries with greater internet usage show lower average levels of empathy, and individuals who spend more time online report greater trouble understanding others. When we read each other's words instead of hearing voices, we're more likely to dehumanize those we disagree with. Social media also creates echo chambers where we seek out facts that match what we already believe and gravitate toward stories that emotionally affirm our existing views. Blue and red news feeds show two entirely different worlds, each designed to generate outrage toward the other side. Yet technology need not destroy empathy. It can also create connections that would have been impossible just a decade ago. Virtual reality pioneer Jeremy Bailenson has developed experiences that allow people to literally "walk in someone else's shoes." In one project, viewers explore scenes that tell the story of a person's descent into homelessness—from eviction to living in their car to sleeping on a late-night bus route known as "Hotel 22." Compared to traditional perspective-taking exercises, this VR experience made people more willing to sign petitions supporting affordable housing and reduced their tendency to dehumanize homeless individuals even a month later. Other technologies directly help people develop empathy. The Autism Glass project at Stanford uses Google Glass and facial recognition algorithms to help children with autism understand others' emotions. When a child wearing the Glass looks at someone, the device identifies their expression and projects a corresponding emoji in the corner of their vision—a red angry face, a yellow frightened one, or a happy smile. After using Autism Glass for several months, children like ten-year-old Thomas Coburn became more attuned to family members' feelings. "He was like, 'Oh. Mom's upset!'" recalled his mother, Heather. Even after the program ended, Thomas continued picking up on emotional cues more quickly, and his teacher noticed he was dealing more effectively with conflicts at school. Perhaps most inspiring is Koko, an app that connects strangers for mutual emotional support. When users share their problems, the platform matches them with others who offer empathic responses based on cognitive behavioral therapy principles. The system works both ways—after receiving support, users are encouraged to help others in turn. This exchange benefits everyone involved. Those in distress receive immediate compassion, while helpers often find that addressing someone else's problems gives them new perspective on their own challenges. "I was like she was a different person," Koko's founder Rob Morris said of one severely depressed user who became remarkably insightful when helping others. Technology is neither inherently good nor bad for empathy—it's a tool whose effects depend on how we design and use it. When platforms maximize user engagement through outrage and division, they erode our connections. But when they create meaningful interactions and help us understand perspectives different from our own, they can actually enhance our empathic capacities. The question isn't whether technology will shape our empathy, but how we will shape our technology to serve the connections we value most.

Summary

Throughout this journey, we've witnessed the remarkable plasticity of human empathy. From Tony McAleer's transformation from white supremacist to compassionate advocate, to medical professionals like Liz Rogers who balance deep caring with self-preservation, to innovators creating empathy-building technologies, these stories reveal a fundamental truth: empathy is not fixed at birth but something we can cultivate and strengthen throughout our lives. The science confirms this view—our brains physically change as we practice understanding others, and simple interventions can shift our perspective in profound ways. What makes these insights so vital is that they arrive at a moment when our connections are fraying. Political polarization, technological isolation, and economic pressures all make empathy seem like a luxury we can't afford. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite—empathy is essential infrastructure for our collective well-being. When police officers learn to listen rather than dominate, when teachers recognize the humanity in troubled students, when strangers reach across divides to understand each other's experiences, everyone benefits. The path forward isn't to accept disconnection as inevitable but to recognize that creating a more empathic world is both possible and necessary. We can build this capacity in ourselves through deliberate practice, in our institutions through thoughtful design, and in our culture through the stories we choose to tell and the connections we choose to nurture. The future of empathy isn't predetermined—it depends on what each of us decides to feel, and how we translate those feelings into action in our daily lives.

About Author

Loading...

Jamil Zaki

Read more