Category Archives: politics

Who was the greatest Victorian traveller? A fish collector

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 15 July 2010
Who was the greatest traveller of the Victorian era? Amongst the usual top contenders you will find the name of Sir Richard Francis Burton. Best known for translating The Thousand and One Nights from Arabic and for visiting Mecca in 1853 disguised as a Muslim pilgrim, Burton wandered for years throughout the Middle East, Far East and Africa. He had an extraordinary talent for languages – he could speak twenty-nine of them – and was a master of assimilating himself into local cultures. Just after his death in 1890 he was described as 'a Mohammedan among Mohammedans, a Mormon among Mormons, a Sufi among the Shazlis, and a Catholic among the Catholics.'
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Is World Cup fever a nationalistic disease?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 15 June 2010
As football fever envelops the planet, with all eyes turned towards South Africa, I want you to imagine a different World Cup. Each country sends their national team as usual, but then all the players are pooled together and divided into teams based on their astrological star sign. So Virgos play Leos, and Aquarians are pitted against Aries, with each team having players from a mix of countries. Who would win overall? Perhaps the power of Taurus, the bull, would be no match for the sharp sting of Scorpio. We might imagine other World Cups, where teams are based on shoe size – the clodhopping size elevens against the nimble-toed eights – or maybe the favourite colour of each player.
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What it feels like to drop an atomic bomb

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 14 May 2010
Earlier this week I went to an entertaining talk by the writer Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink and other bestsellers. Midway through he made a throwaway comment about the bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945. ‘Imagine how it felt to be the pilot who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima – how do we feel about that kind of moral responsibility?’ The implication of this rhetorical question was that the pilot must have been desperately wrestling with the ethical consequences and dilemmas of releasing the world’s first atomic weapon on the unsuspecting city. Malcolm Gladwell is mistaken. In actual fact, the US Air Force pilot, Paul Tibbets, experienced no profound moral quandaries about his actions, either before or after dropping the bomb that killed an estimated 140,000 people. In a revealing interview with the oral historian Studs Terkel in 2002, when aged 87, Tibbets described exactly what happened on the historic mission in the Enola Gay.
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Election Special: Empathy and Immigration Policy

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 26 April 2010
The upcoming British general election on May 6 raises the possibility for a new dawn in empathy-based politics. Or not. My review of the election manifestos of the major parties – Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green – reveals that the word ‘empathy’ is not mentioned a single time in any of them (out of a total 356 pages of text). This is rather different from the last US presidential election, when Barack Obama mentioned ‘empathy’ in almost every speech he made.
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Colin Ward – an obituary and appreciation of the chuckling anarchist

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 27 February 2010
Colin Ward was one the greatest anarchist thinkers of the past half century and a pioneering social historian. He died earlier this month at the age of eighty-five, leaving a legacy of over thirty books and a huge following of activists, educators and writers – amongst them myself – who were inspired by his approach to radical social change, which always favoured practical, grass-roots action over utopian dreamings of revolution. The outpouring of obituaries in The Guardian and elsewhere are testimony to his influence.
Also posted in design, empathy through collaboration, obituaries, reviews | 4 Comments

Ian McEwan on Love, Empathy and 9/11

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 13 February 2010
Anybody who reads novels is a secret empathist. Most writers of fiction try to take you on a journey into the minds and lives of their characters, introducing you to worldviews that are not your own, filling your head with the voices of strangers. An instance from the history of empathetic literature is Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1931), a story told from the perspective of five individuals, with all the dialogue and action being submerged in their thoughts. When we read books like The Waves, we are inevitably drawn to make the imaginative leap that is empathy. I think novelists, who spend so much time attempting to understand the mental worlds of their protagonists, have a peculiar ability to appreciate the meaning and significance of empathy. One of the best examples of this is an article that Ian McEwan wrote in The Guardian, published just a few days after the September 11 attacks. It is, in effect, a meditation on empathy. ‘Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity,’ he writes. ‘It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.‘ Here is the article in full.
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Should you empathise with your father’s killer?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 16 January 2010
One of the greatest challenges of leading an empathetic life is trying to step into the shoes of people who we consider to be ‘enemies’ or whose views and values are very different from our own. If you’re on the receiving end of a racist comment from someone at the pub or a torrent of unfair verbal abuse from your boss, the idea of trying to empathise with them would probably be the last thing on your mind. If you came face to face with the person who had recently burgled your house, could you overcome your anger to see the crime from their perspective, and understand the circumstances that may have driven them to it? Empathising in such instances might seem like wishful thinking. But consider the case of Jo Berry. In 1984 her father, Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry, was killed by an IRA bomb at the Party Conference in Brighton. In 1999, one of the IRA members responsible, Pat Magee, was released from prison under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Jo’s response was a desire to meet him.
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Watch an empathy film this Christmas

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 19 December 2009
Perhaps you are looking forward to falling asleep in front of a mediocre DVD on Christmas Day as you digest an oversized lunch. But if you care for a more stimulating afternoon, I can recommend treating yourself to an empathy film instead. So, what are the options? A fascinating genre that can expand our empathetic imaginations [...]
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Inside Obama’s Brain: In Conversation with Sasha Abramsky

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 13 December 2009
Sasha Abramsky is one of the most original and politically insightful investigative journalists writing in the US today. He is best known for books such as Hard Times Blues, a penetrating critique of the US prison system, and Breadline USA, which reveals the hidden scandal of everyday hunger and poverty faced by American families. He [...]
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Why we need a Climate Futures Museum

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 6 December 2009
When I think about what is likely to result from the global climate change talks taking place in Copenhagen this month, I feel nothing but despair. Why? Because whatever kind of deal is struck is highly unlikely to keep global warming below two degrees. The majority of people in rich countries simply don’t care enough [...]
Also posted in climate change, empathy through education, public policy | 1 Comment