The release of the ebook version of Empathy: Lessons ,2nd Edition, coincided with a major astronomical event – the total solar eclipse that traversed North America on Monday April 8, 2024. The gods are watching and winking at us humans to encourage expanding our empathic humanism! 

Empathy is oxygen for the soul (see Chapter 6: Evidence-based empathy training). So, if you are short of breath due to life stress, get the expanded empathy delivered in this book. Just as the body needs oxygen to live physically, the soul needs empathy to live emotionally. Most people are naturally empathic, but the cynicism and denial needed to survive everyday life drives empathy away. Remove the obstacles to empathy and empathy naturally develops and grows. That is the empathy lesson in a nutshell without all the guidance and practice needed to succeed. Find out how to take your empathy to the next level.

In addition to all the features of the First Edition—a readiness assessment for empathy, tips on overcoming resistance to empathy, evidence-based empathy training, empathic techniques of stress reduction, applications to dealing with bullying, healthy well-being, and capitalism—the enlarged Second Edition includes new chapters on rhetorical empathy in politics, the limitations of empathy (and what to do about them), and an expanded chapter on empathy as a lens on love and romance. Not to be missed!

The empathy lessons include how—
To perform a readiness assessment; establish a set up for success in cleaning up inauthenticities that block empathy so that empathy can expand and flourish;

Empathy is not an “on–off” switch but a tuner (a dial) that expands or contracts in accessing the vicarious experience of the other person;

Empathy works as a method of data gathering about the other person, providing a vicarious experience of the other person without being flooded by the experience;

Introspection, vicarious experience, listening to one’s own “voice over” and radical acceptance are the royal road to empathic receptivity;

Empathic receptivity overcomes emotional contagion, creating a set up for clear communication of feelings and experiences;

Empathic understanding overcomes conformity and enables shifting out of stuckness into contribution, transformation, and leadership, including satisfying and flourishing relationships;

Empathic interpretation overcomes projection and is the folk definition of empathy, walking in another’s shoes, adding “top down” empathy to “bottom up,” empathic receptivity;

Empathic responsiveness drives out anger and rage, acting as a soothing balm to suffering and emotional upset, deescalating conflict and aggression;

Scientific, peer-reviewed, evidence-based research confirms that empathy reduces inflammation and stress;

Relationships get “weaponized” in bullying and, coming from empathy, how to overcome bullying, reestablishing boundaries: recommendations to students, teachers, administrators on how to stop bullying (including cyber-bullying) and promote empathy;

“Corporate empathy” is not a contradiction in terms, “CEO” now means “chief empathy officer,” and empathy is now the ultimate “capitalist tool”;

In rhetorical empathy, the speaker’s words address the listening of the audience in such a way as to leave the audience with the experience of having been heard. The speaker articulates the experience the audience is hiding harboring in their hearts yet have been unable to express.

To expand empathy, start with and stick with integrity and authenticity – start with creating a safe space of acceptance and toleration. Fake in; fake out. Empathy is based on integrity and being straight with the other person to and with whom one is trying to relate.

Decline the choice between empathy and compassion, between expanding empathy and fighting and reducing the empire of prejudice, imperialism, the pathologies of capitalism, and violence. 

Some have tried to force a choice between compassion and empathy. The world needs both more compassion and expanded empathy.

My colleagues and friends are telling me, “Louis, you are sooo 20^th Century – no one is reading hard copy books anymore! Electronic publishing is the way to go.” Following my own guidance about empathy, I have heard you, dear reader. The electronic versions of all three books, Empathy Lessons, 2nd Edition, Empathy: A Lazy Person’s Guide, and A Critical Review of a Philosophy of Empathy – drum roll please – are now available. 

Feeling like you are thrown “under the bus” again and it’s getting crowded under there? Get the empathy you need to fight back and flourish in this book. Get expanded empathy here!

Order from author’s page: Empathy Lessons, 2nd Edition: https://tinyurl.com/29rd53nt

Order from author’s page: Empathy: A Lazy Person’s Guide: https://tinyurl.com/29rd53nt

Order from author’s page: A Critical Review of Philosophy of Empathy: https://tinyurl.com/29rd53nt

Read a review of the 1st edition of Empathy Lessons – note the list of the Top 30 Empathy Lessons is now (2024) expanded to the Top 40 Empathy Lessons: https://tinyurl.com/yvtwy2w6

Read a review of A Critical Review of a Philosophy of Empathy: https://tinyurl.com/49p6du8p

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Above: Cover art: Empathy Lessons, 2nd Edition, illustration by Alex Zonis, original oil paint on board, entitled “Memory blocks: Shimon”

Order from author’s page: A Critical Review of a Philosophy of Empathy: https://tinyurl.com/mfb4xf4f

Above: Cover art: A Critical Review of a Philosophy of Empathy, illustration by Alex Zonis

In conclusion, let me again say a word on behalf of hard copy books – they too live and are handy to take to the beach where they can be read without the risk of sand getting into the hardware, screen glare, and your notes in the margin are easy to access. Is this a great country or what – your choice of pixels or paper!?!

(c) Lou Agosta, PhD and the Chicago Empathy Project