Compassionate Integrity Training CIT-Faciltator-Guide-2.1-Final | Page 118

C OMPASSIONATE I NTEGRITY T RAINING
A S ECULAR E THICS A PPROACH TO C ULTIVATING P ERSONAL , S OCIAL AND E NVIRONMENTAL F LOURISHING
Scenario 3a:
“You drive up to a red light on a street corner in downtown, and you see a homeless person on the corner
holding a cup with a sign that says, ‘Please help me. I am hungry and homeless.’ How much empathy do
you have for this person?”
Scenario 3b:
“As you look closer you notice that there is a small child sitting by the person’s feet dressed in filthy clothes
with no shoes on. How much empathy do you have for this person?”
Scenario 3c:
“How much empathy do you have for the child?”
Scenario 3d:
“Now imagine that there is no child there, but you see that the homeless person is your mother. Now, how
much empathy do you have for this person?”
5.
After you have completed two to three scenarios, ask people to return to their seats and have a
discussion about the way we decide for whom we will have empathy and how much using the
following questions:
a.
“What do you think this activity reveals to us about empathy and who we empathize
with?”
b. “What criteria did we use to decide how much empathy you would have for the people in
each of these scenarios?”
c.
“Do you find it interesting that there was so much variation in the amount of empathy
people had for people who had experienced exactly the same external event?”
d. “Are these criteria always fair, given our discussions about common humanity?”
e. “Does having empathy for someone mean you condone what they are doing, even if it’s
wrong?”
f.
“Is there such thing as too much empathy?” (Here you may have to explain the difference
between empathic distress and empathic concern.)
C ENTER FOR C OMPASSION , I NTEGRITY AND S ECULAR E THICS | L IFE U NIVERSITY | M ARIETTA , G EORGIA
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