It’s no secret that I spend a lot of time thinking about, practicing, and spreading empathy. Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization anchored my praxis with the thesis: Preserving humanity and the biosphere require empathy.
According to Rifkin, this isn’t a soft skill some people embody more than others, but rather a necessary intervention for humanity to get off a collision course. From my end, I endeavor to make it a bigger part of education, the place where we receive most instruction and participate in learning.
For Edwin Rutsch, his reach is a lot wider, more global, and covering people of greater age and geographical range. It is an honor to collaborate with Edwin, and support his work.
Edwin is influenced by Carl Rogers, the father of the person-centered approach to therapy. Edwin shared this quote with me about how empathy arises when one has a companion with them on a journey, which inspires me to cultivate even deeper empathy practices:
