Having empathy is reaching beyond genuine curiousity in others and must come with the notion that others may have DIFFERENT conventions and pre-judices than you 🙂
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The following short story illustrates that point:
I did also learn. From this boy that i had not realised that American youngsters did not know very much about foreign countries and cultures. And thought that everybody is or should be an American, but that we do not know that yet :-). Today that is different, they have found that their digital power is stronger than their President if they cooperate.
It even applies to every meaningful discussion or dialogue you can have: others may see things from an different perspective than you and may interprete what you say against different models and filters. That is why marketing and govt mindfuckers do not tell you what to think, they find& support and then manipulate&change your filters.
Only way to counter that manipulation is to connect and build our own [ collective intelligence & small scale distributed authorities ] like people in Barcelona, Hong Kong and Taiwan did.
PS1. This empathy notion, a vital function for #Synthecracy is very much connected to a. Csermely‘s ideas of “Weak Links”, see: https://theconnectivist.wordpress.com/2016/07/11/the-way-ahead-4-proposed-remedy-against-escape-into-fear-isolated-tribes/
and b. The ideas of Ryszard Kapuscinski as expressed in his splendid lecture about meeting The Other https://theconnectivist.wordpress.com/2016/10/31/basis-for-my-belief-in-open-connectivism-connect-with-the-other/
PS2. For more background on the activity of Altruism, which is broader than Empathy, I recommend the excellent Thesis of drs. Frederique van Till, which shocked economists until it dawned on them that also ‘buying and selling’ does not work without altruism and empathy ! https://theconnectivist.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/altruism-in-virtual-communities-thesis/
jaap van till, TheConnectivist
