Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/culture/empathy-culture/page/8/)
The ways of controlling the forces that threaten to destroy human life are all based on psychology instead of weaponry. The only alternatives to the vicious cycle of violence in the Middle East are nonviolent communication, empathy, and direct action.
As my physical body grows old and older, there is in parallel, an essence aware of itself that becomes younger and younger. Two opposite movements that don’t contradict each other in any way as there is a sense of wonder in becoming older/younger at the same time. When life is seen as a miracle even the Holocaust is perceived as a gift of the One and Only Force of Nature. When we are identified with our physical body, trying endlessly to meet its corporeal needs for food, sex, family, money, respect control and knowledge we see the world from the 1st story of a 10-story building. This perspective does not enable us to see much.
When the power of a political community is legitimate, when it is recognized as legitimate by those who form the community, then there is no need for the violence of domination. It is only when legitimacy disappears that violence takes center stage. The power of the state, derived from the people, is suffering a crisis of legitimacy.
Muslim Minister Keith Mohammad suggested that the world today operates like a Monopoly game, ruled by those with money. There is food, clothing and shelter for everyone “but we’re in a world where greed has become a way of life.”
Awareness of the Armenian genocide is growing not only in the countries of the diaspora, but also in Turkey. A complex reality of pain and sorrow, anxiety, and also sometimes liberation as they try to square state school textbooks that vilify the Armenians and blame them for their fate is felt especially by Armenians living and writing in Turkey.
There is a misconception that Trans women are performing femininity; they are feminine in their minds and bodies. “There are big women, small women, tall women, short women and trans women; it’s just different,’’ says Minerva, who identified as a female from the beginning. “It just felt right, we have to respect each other’s feelings, no?”
Sinai was a revelation of nonviolence and justice. A vision of a world in which God’s love of every individual was a proof that every single person was and is equally worthy and loved by God. We must recognize the commonalities of social justice movements across faiths and cultures because unity and empathy are the only ways we will make it to the Mountain.
Most people of any faith, or no faith at all, would live up to the nearly universal call to treat every single one of creation’s children with dignity and respect. If you make pizza for a living, make the best darned pizza you can and be thankful that people want to buy it.
The chestnut tree possesses a sense of empathy and a moral conscience, observing Anne writing in her diary and remarking: “She wrote that as long as she could see blue sky and clouds and me, she could be happy. Her words made me happy too.” This connection is generative: “Being a tree doesn’t stop you from feeling what people feel. And when someone loves you, you know it and it helps you grow.”
Although I had no specific expectations, what I encountered in Bethlehem was still unexpected…. This, like so many places in our current world in permanent transition, is a city of paradox and co-existing contradiction.