How loving strangers changes your brain (and your life)

We think about love as primarily a

psychological phenomenon, something that

we don't have a great deal of control

over. Aristotle famously said, when you

really love a friend, you experience

that person as a second self. And the

love ethic says those same feelings

should [music] be extended to strangers.

How do we navigate our lives in an era

where [music] our politics, our

economics, our technology is causing us

[music] to become far more isolated and

divided?

I would define compassion in a nutshell

as a a natural sense of concern that

arises in us in the face of someone who

is in need and wanted to do something

about it. And much of the current

scientific studies that overlaps the

science of compassion is the study of

empathy. Empathy is this ability to

vicariously experience someone else's

pain and that's what allows us to

[music] connect with the other person.

There are some interesting studies

coming from meditators who meditate many

hours on compassion and then looking at

their brain. You can actually see the

brain's expression in action. The whole

mapping of the brain regions that are

involved in an experience [music]

something like compassion is beginning

to be done. What is really natural to

our human being is the ability to

connect with someone, an ability to

relate to that person at a deeper level

and [music] have a much more openhearted

interaction.

>> The common perception tends to be that a

quality like loving kindness is a sort

of weakness that it makes you sort of

silly or very complacent. being a

doormat and letting someone walk over

[music] you. Why do we have such a sense

of loving kindness that it's degraded

into this foolish reaction compared to

[music] the force that it genuinely is?

We can have a genuine compassion [music]

for someone and also protect ourselves

and have a strong boundary. We really

can redefine strength. If you can't be

[music] brilliant and you can't be

courageous and you can't be wonderful,

be kind. [music] It actually is great to

really feel into the pain of someone and

to [music] wish them well.

>> A love ethic or a love-based approach to

ethics says to love your neighbor with

the same intensity with which you love

yourself. The love ethic is asking

[music] us to feel something about the

people who are in need, who are around

us, to open ourselves up to have that

kind of emotional reaction again.

[music] And also giving us a glimmer of

hope that maybe our emotions, especially

one particular emotion, might be the

path forward for us learning how to

build a better society where people are

genuinely cared for.