Welcome, caring subscribers!
Let’s unite around our commitment to care for one another’s human rights and freedoms.
Welcome to the Empathy Surplus Network USA’s Substack. We are a 501(c)(3) membership-driven, science-based communication education collective for caring citizens and their elected officials. We are focused on governing, i.e., framing and reframing, ongoing public discourse around empathy for and responsibility to humanity. Doing so cognitively unites our siloed human rights interests around our shared core value of empathy. Visit www.empathysurplus.com to learn about opportunities to get involved or financially support our work.
Why is governing/framing ongoing public discourse so important? Because brains are physically activated and changed through experience and language.
President Barack Obama said, "The most important title is ‘citizen.’” We are all unconscious governors and framers of our everyday conversations, because that’s the way our brains work. We can’t help it. Every time we open our mouths in conversation, we activate all of the brains within earshot. Caring citizens have failed to use science-based communication applications to educate and inspire their neighbors to participate in the public square by activating their caring neural pathways.
Empathy is the soul of democracy and ethical businesses. Today, the USA is polarized between caring citizens and cruel citizens. Empathy Surplus Network USA is for caring citizens who want to apply science-based communication applications focused on our mutual duty to care. Our community of practice wants to activate and nurture the caring neural pathways of US brains. Thanks for your interest in our network.
What the science says.
In YOUR BRAIN’S POLITICS, co-author, cognitive scientist, and linguist Elisabeth Wehling, interviewing author, cognitive scientist, linguist, and progressive activist George Lakoff, says, “Our metaphor choices are usually unconscious. It’s not the case that we look at abstract concepts, such as taxation, and ask ourselves, ‘What brain source domain for taxation should I use today?”
Dr. Lakoff replies, “Right, but if the choice is not conscious and deliberate, then...it’s the language used in public discourse that determines how things are perceived.”
“But that’s only one part of the issue,” Lakoff continues. “There is more to this. Namely, the more often a metaphoric mapping is used in language, the more that metaphor is being ingrained in people’s brains due to synaptic strengthening.” If public political debate repeatedly employs one given metaphor, then that metaphor becomes our primary way of perceiving the issue at hand. The mapping simply becomes part of our common sense, our ‘only,’ ‘unquestionable,’ and ‘inherently rightful’ shared understanding of the issue.”
Lead with your moral why - empathy! Make it conscious.
Every conversation, opinion, rule, law, policy, or legislation activates either caring or cruel neural pathways in our brains because all of these things are moral and political activities. The neural activation is unconscious. Our job is to encourage and support our stakeholders’ conscious efforts in activating caring neural pathways to unite siloed interests.
#GoEmpathySurplus with S.H.O.E.S. Diplomacy
Consider using this hashtag on all your social media, especially when you’re describing your S.H.O.E.S. Diplomacy activities:
S - SHOW UP at public meetings with empathy to make caring public comments.
H - HELP local institutions fulfill their caring missions.
O - ORGANIZE with empathy and compassion.
E - EDUCATE everyone from birth to death [a] how to cultivate empathy and [b] how to protect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the rule of law.
S - START OVER each day with empathy.
To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
