Reframing conversations around human rights empathy takes practice.
Join our 2nd series of Zoom Forums beginning May 6 at 6:30 p.m.
Welcome back, subscribers to our Empathy Surplus Network USA Substack. We are a 501c3 membership-driven human rights empathy education collective of state legislators, their aides, and their constituents and constituent organizations dedicated to making empathy central to constant public debate. If you are a state legislator or legislative aide, why not be the first to join us to put #PeopleFirst!? We practice applying cognitive scientist, linguist, and progressive activist George Lakoff's brain insights during our Zoom Forums. Please consider joining our 2nd Zoom Series forums beginning May 6 at 6:30 p.m. Here’s the link to enroll and the upcoming schedule.
Framing the American ideal community around nurturance is constitutive.
Reframing conversations, especially important ones, around human rights empathy is constitutive and takes practice for progressives. Our Zoom forums help our members become more effective at making our duty of care central to constant public discourse.
Empathy is the soul of democracy and human rights, which is aspirational to our particular republic. Historian Lynn Hunt, in her book Inventing Human Rights: A History, referenced the importance of empathy, albeit limited to white male property owners, in the formation of our Declaration of Human Rights and Constitution. Nevertheless, true patriots have been calling for expanding empathy to all human beings from our beginnings.
The ideal American community is made up of strong, diverse, and nurturing families who care for each other in all walks of life, expanding freedom from want and fear. Americans who care about human rights and freedom from want and fear need to improve their cultural diplomacy to avoid civil war. One-third of our forums in this second session will focus on how to stop civil wars.
Countering the threat of Putin’s GOP with a caring domestic and foreign policy.
In contrast, not all republics are democratic, and not all democracies are focused on empathy. For example, the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are dictatorships whose core values are the opposite of empathy. Even though they have the word “republic” in their official name, they are authoritarian governments, similar to the Russian Federation, whose President Putin has taken over much of the US GOP.
Committing to governance that’s effective at caring for America’s strong, diverse, nurturing families to expand freedom from want and fear reduces the chance of civil war.
Reframing conversations around human rights empathy takes practice for progressives. The main thing you will learn is how to apply the latest insights of the brain to make empathy central to constant moral and political discourse. You’ll learn that all ideas physically reside in your body. You will begin to get your arms around the fact that reason is 98% unconscious, metaphorical, experiential, individual, and emotional. If you’re not already a Substack writer, you will start writing using our Pro-Empathy Freedom Framing Toolkit. Most importantly, if you decide to join us, your discourse may become more effective as you make empathy central to your arguments for your particular, passionate cause.
In addition to reading, discussing, and applying the latest insights of cognitive scientist, linguist, and progressive activist George Lakoff, we will also explore over three of nine Zoom forums how to stop civil wars from happening from author Barbara F. Walter, the Rohr Professor of International Relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. We will read the last two chapters of her book first: Chapter 7: What a War Would Look Like and Chapter 8: Preventing a Civil War.
Before discussing Walter’s last two chapters, we encourage our Zoom Forum participants to consider watching Kirsten Dunst in Alex Garland’s new movie, Civil War.
Sign up now to be ready for the first Zoom conference of the 2nd session.