Empathy is a weakness

Indifference fuels cruelty and human rights violations in this world. The perpetrators are few but they have a mass of followers who are indifferent to what is happening around them.

How did we get here? Nazism cultivated the idea that empathy was a weakness. From Guatemala to El Salvador, from Rwanda to former Yugoslavia, what made the massacres and genocide possible was indifference.

Indifference was not created in a vacuum: it was propagated through fear and a calculated effort to eradicate empathy with those whom the regime wanted to eliminate.

Every time you exercise your empathy you’re not only creating the grounds for becoming a better storyteller and leader but also cultivating an attitude that will make our society a better place for all of us.

And just for this, because you’ve decided that empathy is a strength, we should all be grateful today.

#humanrights #indifference