Thread by @DrWilliams

1/ Empathy is not an intellectual or planned response.
Empathy is an emotion..a recognition of pain in another person that comes from feeling that pain within yourself.
It involves certain biological pathways incl. mirror neurons.
You can teach someone to intellectually

https://twitter.com/monocotyledon/status/1376659124188934145

2/ recognise signs of emotion e.g crying = sadness, trembling =fear :that may result in ‘sympathy’ but not necessarily empathy. Empathy training is teaching people to ACT empathic- not BE empathic. Just like a course won’t ‘teach’ a depressed person to ‘be’ happy. @victorklineTNL

3/ if we are ever going to have a government that acts & responds with empathy- we need to elect people with those traits. Just like if we want intelligent people in govt - there must be a demonstration that those traits exist in the person PRIOR to electing them. This may appear

4/ obvious , but in reality is not what is happening. We don’t ensure our leaders have psychometric testing prior to giving them the most important job in the country. We don’t ensure they are intellectually capable, we don’t ensure there is no conflict of interest

5/ In fact we elect leaders who are wealthy, arrogant , inexperienced & willing to step on others to achieve their own personal goals. We care not to ensure that those goals align with that of the greater population. @davtw2 @Drhutch2011 @waltonkate @BethanyinCBR @petaswarbrick