Empathy is one of the most important personality traits a human possesses. Empathy is what urges us to help other people.  However, in today’s day and age, empathy seems to be fading away from human nature due to the rat race for economic progress and social media. In a time characterized by connectivity and change, it is ironic that the platforms, such as social media sites that bring us together are drifting us apart. Empathy means more than treating others better—it means doing better.

 

However, we, the humans, who are the most intelligent species on Earth are practically killing our fellow men, animals, the ecosystem itself, and ourselves. Due to such neglect of people, crime rates have been through the roof all over the world. Bystanders don’t even try to help people in need or in danger.  People are indulged in themselves in such a way that they won’t help people in need. Think of capitalism for an example. Don’t all corporate companies make employees work for long hours without a break? If only they empathized with them, their employees would not be depressed and unhappy with their lives.

This behavior has a social impact as well. According to the norms in society, it has almost become ‘cool’ to not be empathetic to each other, which gives way to bullying which paves the way for depression and higher suicide rates. It is also in human nature to prove yourself as being better than others, or put in another way, competition is in human nature. In order to promote religion or propaganda, terrorists kill thousands, if not millions of people all around the world. Racism too is a result of a lack of empathy. 

Empathy is extremely important to be inculcated in people nowadays in order to prevent the total destruction of the planet. 

It is believed that the best age to inculcate feelings of empathy in people is from the age of 8 to 14 years, which was also believed by Rudolf Steiner, an extremely popular educational figure. If empathy is not inculcated within that time period, it will become extremely difficult to change people’s thought process and their feelings towards other people, which is why inculcating empathy should be part and parcel of one’s upbringing. 

We believe that empathy should be inculcated in children in order to make them better members of society and it is our belief that young aged kids should interact with children with special needs. If these kids can understand the problems kids with disabilities might have to face, they can understand each other as well and be more empathetic towards each other, i.e, they will become a lot more understanding and considerate towards other people. We want to make empathy more than a human trait. We want to make it a way of living.

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Link to a video about the same (Created by me) : 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0KzG9PMQqc

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