Welcome back.
Welcome back, subscribers to the Empathy Surplus Network USA Substack. Our mission is to support members in promoting our commitment to a mutual and moral duty to care for one another’s human rights and freedoms. Empathy Surplus is headquartered in Wilmington, Ohio. We currently have an active 1-minute anonymous Ohio reader survey - Is your Ohio state legislature caring or cruel?
We are grateful to our organizational scholarship sponsors:
Antiracist Alliance, White Plains, New York
Books N More, Wilmington, Ohio
Circular Development, Sugarcreek Township, Ohio
Edward Jones Financial Advisor Jason Hillard, Wilmington, Ohio
Linndale Equipment, Wilmington, Ohio
Practice with Purpose LLC, Legal Counsel, Dayton, Ohio
Shalom Massage LLC, Oakwood, Ohio
TGE Solar, Cincinnati, Ohio
Everything starts with the brain.
Empathy is the soul of democracy and ethical businesses in a caring society. America’s major political parties are not progressive in promoting our duty to care for humanity’s human rights and freedoms. But they could be, if progressives embraced science-based communication as fervently as billionaires do. Consider the following reasons for joining our Empathy Surplus Zoom Forums in 2026.
Neuroscience says everything we think, say, or do begins with brain activity. Neuroscience says the brain can be trained to be more caring or cruel. Reason is unconscious, metaphorical, illogical, individual, and emotional.
Attention: Progressives, Embrace the science
Too many progressives deny this science. They think reason is conscious, literal, logical, universal, and unemotional. Consequently, they are ill-equipped to be effective communicators to resist the science-based communication of billionaires. So why do progressives deny the science? It’s a question my friend, the cognitive scientist George Lakoff, and I have been trying to answer for 30 years.
Rockridge Institute: 1998-2008
In 1998, Dr. Lakoff launched his Rockridge Institute, which was meant to be a progressive alternative to the cruel, conservative ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council. Meanwhile, I was building a financial advice practice with Edward Jones in Wilmington, Ohio, where some would tell me, “I’d do business with you if you weren’t progressive” or “What’s a preacher doing selling stocks and bonds?”
Y2K was a thing. Bill Clinton was throwing Monica Lewinsky under the Resolute Desk, and Titanic was a blockbuster. All the while, Rush Limbaugh was using the media and neuroscience to activate hatred in the minds of Americans.
It wasn’t until 2004, after John Kerry lost to Bush, that I discovered Lakoff’s bestselling Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate and learned about cognitive science, linguistics, and The Powell Memo.
The Powell Memo called on billionaires to embrace science-based communication.
In 1971, Richard Nixon appointed US Chamber of Commerce attorney Lewis Powell to the US Supreme Court. He wrote a memo to the Chamber’s Education Director to share with American CEOs, challenging them to disregard their duty to care for the public’s human rights and freedoms.
In a section of the memo entitled What Can Be Done About the Public?”, Powell wrote, “The first essential is to establish the staffs of eminent scholars, writers, and speakers, who will do the thinking, the analysis, the writing, and the speaking. It will also be essential to have staff personnel who are thoroughly familiar with the media and how most effectively to communicate with the public.”
Unethical corporate CEOs and billionaires answered his call. They bought the media and universities, and launched scientific think tanks to activate cruel neural pathways of selfishness in American brains, undermining our empathy, the soul of democracy, ethical business, and a caring society.
ALEC launched in 1973
Launched in 1973 in Ohio, ALEC is a 501(c)(3) member-driven education collective that does two things: [1] teaches its individual legislative members how to think and speak with limited empathy and no mutual responsibility, and [2] provides ready-made policy templates that those members can use to introduce as bills in their respective legislatures.
Consequently, cognitive scientist, linguist, and progressive activist George Lakoff launched the Rockridge Institute in 1998 to teach progressives science-based communication to counter the cruel wing’s assault on our democracy. Lakoff had discovered how the cruel wing was using cognitive science to wage a culture war to strengthen cruelty in American brains, and he was excited to teach America’s care wing strong cultural diplomacy.
I served on Lakoff’s Rockridge Nation advisory board from 2005 to 2008. When he closed Rockridge for lack of top-down funding, I founded Empathy Surplus the next year with a bottom-up funding model to do two things: [1] teach its individual legislative members how to think and speak with empathy for and responsibility to humanity, and [2] provide ready-made policy templates that those members can use to introduce as bills in their respective legislatures.
We haven’t done #2, because not enough progressives think they need #1. Consider joining us.
Lakoff and Rockridge inspired Obama - once
Lakoff promoted his books on the Rockridge website and posted articles for progressives on how to frame our conversations around empathy. Lakoff knew that at least one politician used the science - Barack Hussein Obama - because he visited Obama in Illinois during his campaign. Copies of Lakoff’s books were open and dog-eared on staffers’ desks.
The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy documented hundreds of quotes in which Obama used the word “empathy.” Obama coined the phrase “empathy deficit,” which inspired our name, Empathy Surplus. But after Obama’s election to the presidency, he backed off from using the word “empathy,” because conservatives attacked him when he used it, which was a mistake.
If you don’t own a media company, what do you do? Govern the discourse.
Again, it’s all about the brain. How does one activate empathy for and responsibility to humanity in the American brain? It’s simple, but not easy. You have to have lots of people across many organizations linking our mutual moral duty to care to the human rights issue they are passionate about, all the time. There are three simple rules:
Say what you want - Our siloed issues.
Say why you want it - Unite around our vision of nurturing communities and the core values of empathy and mutual responsibility that support it.
Say it all the time - Repetition of our shared vision and values to our siloed issues unites us by physically activating and strengthening our vision and values in the brains of everyone, even those who disagree.
Progressives must govern the discourse with brain priorities to win arguments or elections.
What are brain priorities? Brain priorities are our moral whys and indicate where most of our discourse should go when we talk about what we want. There are five moral priorities of importance in how brains think:
Vision: Nurturing Communities or a Unitary Executive?
Values: Duty to Care or Cruelty and Punishment?
Principles: Democracy or fascism?
Policy Directions: For everyone or billionaires?
Ten Word Philosophy:
People first or presidents first
Broad Prosperity or concentrated wealth
Better Future or bigger billionaires
Effective Government or billionaires’ government
Mutual Responsibility or family values
Consider joining us in 2026
Go to www.empathysurplus.com to join us with either a paid or a scholarship membership. Here’s our 2026 Schedule at https://proempathy.us/26schedule. We have 30 scholarships available for 2026. Once you join us, members have Four Empathy Activities:
Ingest Lakoff’s science-based communication for empathy.
Invest in our Zoom Forums and collective.
ve actions to cultivate empathy.
Implement our collective actions through partnerships to promote empathy.
Invite others to join Empathy Surplus.
Thanks for reading. Peace and love.
