Week of April 14th

      Empathy is the main theme through out all three videos. Sir Ken Robinson discusses changing paradigms and how institutions like schools are not adjusting to the needs of the digital era. He believes "we should be waking them up to what is inside themselves"(Changing Paradigms Robinson). Thousands of students are medicated today to help them calm down and focus on one thing at a time. But he believes that society should be waking them up to their full potential to be in present and changing the curriculum to fit each students needs. Roman Krznaric has a very interesting lecture on the power of outrospection, the new age of the twenty-first century. I though it was revolutionary how he came up with empathy museums where " its not about dusty exhibits, but an experiential and conversational public space where there is a human library where you can pick out people for conversations" (The Power of Outrospection Krznaric). Ideas like this really allow the viewer to experience sweat shops and appreciate everything one has like family, clothes, shoes, all the necessity's and luxuries and to hopefully realize that there is more to the world than just myself. This is the idea to empathy, learning everything about the struggles and lifestyles of others and appreciate the love of life.
     Jeremy Rifkin talks about an empathetic civilization and looks into the nuero science of how our brain works and shows how it is wired to be a nice people. In his lecture he go's on about how the human race is not wired to be basically what a lot of people are today. Rather be "compassionate, affectionate, attachment, sociability, and companionship" (Empathetic Civilization Rifkin). Its awesome to see how society is wired to act this way, but it seems like things like envy and lies change our natural adjectives to be selfish, rude, and false. Rifkin then discusses how our society can become empathetic. He says "can we connect our empathy to a single race writ large in a single biosphere" (Empathetic Civilization Rifkin). If society can connect in family like matter with people of the same religion and people in the same nation state, then why, with the help of technology, can't the world connect global? He believes that technology is the key to connecting the globe together and have a world where every single person is empathetic to the everyone. The only way that there will be successful future is if every single person can empathize with every one.