Power U 37: Building Durable Empathy

#PowerU 37 - Now that the federal election is over in Canada, we are back where we left off at Power U before the election talking about how to counter-balance the impacts of power on your brain by intentionally building empathy. There are obvious benefits to having empathy when you hold power but less obvious is the structural and biochemical feedback that diminishes empathy for power holders without intentional efforts to build empathy. In #PowerU 34 we talked about one approach to do that, referred to as perspective taking. However, perspective taking has downfalls. First off, while it works well for those in the dominant culture to understand other perspectives, for those from those perspectives it can - and often does - create less empathy for the privileges of those in dominant culture. It also isn’t that durable and if you’re going to do the work of building empathy, why not do it in a durable way? Have a watch to find out more. For those that sent notes in response to my question in #PowerU 36 thank you! Building collective action over the long term - rather than doing massive lifts in the election and expecting our “heroes” to carry the day after its over - is, like hard empathy, more durable.