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Three Tiny Challenges

This issue of the Fulcrum is a reply to a set of great questions by Nadir from Canada.

Nadir writes:

Three tiny challenges:
How does one help others empathize?
Will the division in our world end once more of us develop profound empathy?
Is there a way to change psychopathic or sociopathic behaviour for the better?

My first reply to Nadir: If these are tiny challenges, I wonder what the big ones may look like…

These three questions are like Russian dolls – each living within the other. They also throw us into a bigger picture set of considerations and a notable challenge: A proper approach requires a mature conversation. Because we know that the world we live in does not really want full answers to burning questions. So it acts like partial answers are the full answer or the right answer or a good answer, which in truth it is just a convenient answer. Because full answers call for change and the world is in love with time frames that its assumptions and comfort zones can handle.

Lack of empathy or something much deeper?

 The three questions are about fundamental behavioural change: Is it possible to help people to change, on this occasion in the context of developing empathy? As has been spoken of in many previous Fulcrum issues, change is a process manifesting in an ecology – inner and outer – that is designed for and supports it. Where does empathy live? What is the bigger picture process inside of which empathy – and many other qualities – are born and nurtured? Is empathy the way to a unified world? Is the cause of the conflicted, deeply confused world we live in lack of empathy, or is it something much deeper, such as disconnection from why the human is on earth in the first place?

Empathy

A bit of empathy – or other qualities, such as care and consideration – of course make a difference in all sorts of ways. How does one help others empathize? The question is: What do others want? Does what they want create space for empathy and other qualities? Do they have the nature of alignment to life that allows for empathy to have expression in their personal theatre? Because many of us absolutely care, but some need a bit of help to bring it to useful expression.

So, can one help others empathize? Can one help others to discover what they really want? Can one create the ecology in which people may draw closer to themselves and through that, what moves their life? Questions within questions within questions…

Energetic climate change

Is there a way to change psychopathic or sociopathic behaviour for the better? This needs to be approached not at the level of people beset with these syndromes but at the level of the ecology that enables and feeds these syndromes. Consider two families. One that fosters core values and qualities, and one that harbours perverse behaviour. Where would the problematic child be likely to come from? Now consider entire neighbourhoods, or even nations.

The fundamental issue with perverse human behaviour is that it exists in a world ecology that feeds it, and in some scenarios, rewards it. The problem cannot be wholly dealt with at a people level. The proper way to address it is by introducing fundamental change to its harbouring ecology. In short, we need a new world.

The dance of call and response between the human and the future

So, does the answer to the world’s problem wholly lies in a critical mass behavioural change? The thing is that we are not alone. There is more involved than just human beings and what we know and think. The future is arriving out of a great unknown, in the form of energetic waves and new intelligence that may just be way beyond the current level of human conception. Are we, as a collective, open to new ways of thinking about the future and what it means to be a human being therein? We may think we know, but do we really know?

The bright side

The bright, hopeful side of these important questions that are impressing themselves upon the minds of those who care is that there is now present a rare window of opportunity to engage in new discovery of what it means to be human, in a way that allows for a big update, not conditioned by the tyranny of ignorance. This is a matter of personal choice.

With best wishes,

David Gommé

World Copyright 2021© David Gommé