“What’s missing is curiosity about the lived experience of the Other … It tells me that you were not on the receiving end of empathy in that you don’t even know when it’s missing … You have a template called: No Curiosity About The Other …
“Violence against an Other is a murder of the Other in your mind; it is an erasure of the Other in your mind. You can’t hurt someone you empathize with because you feel their pain … If you’re able to hurt someone, it is because they do not exist in your mind other than as a thing … You can’t hurt someone if they are alive as a person in your mind … Violence isolates, staggeringly, because you not only have to kill off people in your mind in order to hurt them, but you have to kill off people who might point that out – and that’s why people who are violent tend to end up in these circles of dead souls …
“I wanted to point out what’s missing – not because I don’t think you can do it, but because I think you can do it – but you haven’t noticed what’s missing. And what’s tragic, of course, is that tells me … you’re surrounded by people who can’t tell you this, otherwise you would know…
“You’re not alone in this – at all. This is the human template in the 21st century; it’s been the human template for all of human history. And the degree to which we’re able to notice this is the degree to which we’re able to make strides towards a reasonably decent and just and peaceful society.
“Empathy requires two things which are both very complex and challenging; the development of empathy requires: exposure to empathetic behaviour, in other words it requires that the child receives empathy; but then it also requires that empathy be expected of the child … If you didn’t get empathy modeled towards you, there’s just no way that you would know this … In a dysfunctional household, empathy is punished because it shows vulnerability …
“Please, please, please don’t start self-attacking for not learning the language of empathy when you weren’t taught it by your priests, you weren’t taught it by your teachers, you weren’t taught it by your parents, you weren’t taught it by your culture, you weren’t taught it by your artists, and you were punished if you were to show a shred of it…”
