Quote of a Lifetime
…::”I used to think that top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science, we could address these problems, but I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these, we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.” ~Gus Speth
By focusing on and validating another person’s perspective, active listening helps build empathy.
Simultaneously, this focused, empathic process strengthens the Pre Frontal Cortex PFC’s role in reasoning and emotion regulation while also diminishing the amygdala’s “fight-or-flight” response, creating a calm awareness.
Active listening allows for a shared understanding of another person’s thoughts and feelings, which builds empathy and validates their experience.
This can help calm the amygdala, which is the brain’s “threat detection” center responsible for the fight-or-flight response. By using cognitive processes to understand your own feelings and understand the feelings of others, you are less likely to be reactive.
Active Listening engages and strengthens the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is responsible for complex functions like decision-making, attention, and emotion regulation. This also helps to counterbalance the “amygdala hijack” by allowing the PFC to navigate and respond to challenging situations with a calm perspective.
When individuals practice affect labeling — the act of putting feelings into words — stimulates activity in the frontal lobe (specifically the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex). This increased frontal lobe engagement helps to down-regulate the amygdala, the brain region responsible for processing fear and initiating the body’s stress response. This counterbalance effectively “calms” the amygdala and mitigates the intensity of emotional and physiological stress reactions.
However… in authoritarian trained brains, the same region of the brain (with overlapping neurological pathways) activates for a completely different purpose:
🏴☠️DISGUST🏴☠️
see also: schaden freude
Disgust is an innate, natural, instinctual emotion, which can be profoundly shaped, trained, and exploited into what appears to be “normalized” attitudes and behaviors, including violence, domination and grandiosity.
Human Behavioral Immune System
Innate Foundation: Disgust is considered one of the six basic, universal emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust) with a strong evolutionary basis, often linked to a “behavioral immune system”. Its primary function is to avoid spoiled food.
Cultural Shaping: While the core emotion is innate and protective, the specific triggers and intensity of disgust are significantly shaped by culture and education.
Weaponization by Authoritarianism
The core, physical form of disgust can be amplified into “moral disgust” or “ideological disgust,” which is a powerful mechanism for influencing social and political attitudes.
Social and Moral Disgust: People often project their own personal level of disgust toward individuals or groups perceived as violating social norms.
Dehumanization and Exclusion: Scape-goating, alienation and physical harm. Authoritarian dominators exploit these inherent sensitivities to consolidate power and suppress dissent by framing targeted groups as “contaminating” or “threatening” to the social order.
Authoritarian cultures promote a rigid social hiearchy and boundaries marked with strictly defined “in-groups” and “out-groups”. Individuals with higher levels of disgust sensitivity are more likely to endorse authoritarian attitudes and express prejudice toward various groups, including immigrants and minorities, often through the promotion of prejudice toward those labeled as “different”.
Studies suggest that individuals with higher authoritarian tendencies or national narcissism often exhibit less empathy for those outside their defined social circles and report more frequent feelings of anger, disgust, and contempt.
Ideological Divide: Research using neuro-imaging and surveys has found an “ideological asymmetry” in empathy, indicating that people’s political leanings influence the extent to which they feel empathy for others experiencing pain or suffering, especially across political divides.
Social Conditioning
Social conditioning can effectively use the brain’s emotional pathways, specifically involving the insula and the amygdala, to promote negative emotions like disgust and anger towards out-groups.
These mechanisms exploit the brain’s fundamental wiring for survival and social interaction, manipulating them to foster prejudice and intergroup hostility.
Note: Road-Blocks to Empathy (by: Thomas Gordon)
The Psychological Mechanisms of Oppression: Empathy, Disgust, and the Perception of Group Membership:
Note: Road-Blocks to Empathy (by: Thomas Gordon)
Social Training can exploit the brain’s inherent in-group biases and the insula‘s role in disgust and “social salience” (captures attention within a social context) to decrease empathy for out-groups and increase emotional disgust, which can escalate anger.
- Key Brain Regions:
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- Insula (Anterior & Posterior): Strongly activated by stimuli associated with core disgust (e.g., bodily fluids, contamination) and moral violations (e.g., unfairness). It translates visceral bodily cues into emotional sensations (e.g., gagging or feeling “sick” in response to an unfair act).
- Amygdala: Functions in threat detection, activating alongside the insula to identify and encode the aversive value of disgusting stimuli.
- Basal Ganglia: Part of the shared network activated by both core (e.g., rotting food) and moral disgust. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
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- Function:
Empathy Bias:
Empathy Bias: Empathy, which also heavily involves the anterior insula, is naturally biased towards in-group members. The brain shows less activation in empathy-related regions, including the insula and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), when observing the pain or distress of out-group members compared to in-group members.
Social Training and Malleability
Social Training and Malleability: The brain’s response to social cues is highly malleable and influenced by cultural and social learning. Social training and exposure can determine which markers (e.g., race, religion) are used to define in-groups versus out-groups and activate these inherent biases.
Conversion to Anger
Conversion to Anger: Intense, sustained negative emotional training, especially within an in-group context, can promote anger and a desire for reprisal or control. This can be amplified by positive social feedback for expressing outrage within the in-group, a process observed in online social networks, which reinforces the behavior.
Social Training & Manipulation Mechanisms
Social training and propaganda can manipulate these neural mechanisms through:
Dehumanization
Dehumanization: Portraying out-groups as “disgusting” or “repellent” bypasses complex social emotions and activates more basic disgust responses, effectively moving the perception of the out-group to a category perceived as less than human.
Moral Outrage
Moral Outrage: Framing out-group actions as severe moral violations can trigger widespread moral outrage and empathic anger within the in-group, which then justifies punitive actions.
Social Contagion
Social Contagion: Group settings amplify shared feelings (emotional contagion), leading to coordinated actions and shared emotional behavior against an identified target.
Lack of Individuation
Lack of Individuation: Encouraging superficial categorical judgments over individuating information reduces mPFC activation (involved in social cognition) for out-group members, making it easier to apply broad, negative emotional labels.
Historic Examples
These mechanisms are evident in historic examples of mass persecution:
Witch Hunts
Witch Hunts: During historical witch hunts, individuals (often women) were labeled as being in league with the devil, a classification that invoked intense religious disgust and moral outrage among the in-group. This dehumanization justified extreme violence, such as burning at the stake, as a perceived necessary purification, overriding normal empathy.
Scapegoating of Minorities
Scapegoating of Minorities: In various historical contexts, minority groups have been blamed for societal problems (e.g., economic downturns, plagues). By associating the out-group with ‘contamination’ or ‘danger’ (activating disgust and fear), the dominant group could collectively justify discrimination or violence, as seen in many instances of antisemitism and other forms of ethnic cleansing.
REF:
The Psychological Mechanisms of Oppression: Empathy, Disgust, and the Perception of Group Membership
Note: Road-Blocks to Empathy (by: Thomas Gordon)
Social conditioning can indeed leverage the brain’s emotional circuitry, particularly the insula and amygdala, to foster disgust towards an out-group and anger by suppressing and deactivating empathy pathways and associating the out-group with pathogenic or moral contamination cues, name calling and harmful gossip.
Using verbal and social cues: Name-calling and gossip serve as powerful social tools to reinforce these negative associations and solidify the perception of the out-group as “other” in an imaginary heiarchy of special supremacy used to justify unconscious, hidden fear and hate projected onto imaginary “others”.
These mechanisms exploit the brain’s fundamental wiring for survival and social interaction, manipulating them to foster prejudice and intergroup hostility.
The Role of the Insula and Emotions
The insula is a key brain region involved in both the subjective experience of one’s own emotions (especially disgust and pain) and in empathy (feeling the same emotion when observing others). It processes internal bodily sensations (interoception) and integrates them with external sensory information to assign emotional valence.
Empathy: The anterior insula (AI) is a crucial node in empathy networks, activating when individuals feel pain or disgust themselves and when they see ingroup members experiencing these emotions.
Disgust: The insula, along with the amygdala, is strongly activated by stimuli associated with core disgust (e.g., bodily fluids, contamination) and moral violations. Social Training and Manipulation
Human perceptions are intertwined with and influenced by the perception of group membership as a prerequisite for survival. Social environments and training can “shape” these brain responses through learned associations and social appraisal, effectively altering which groups elicit empathy versus disgust.
Dehumanization: By linking outgroups with cues of contamination, disease, or immorality, social conditioning can activate the disgust response and insula activity towards that group. This process dehumanizes the outgroup, making them seem less than human and more like “disgusting objects”.
Reduced Empathy: When individuals perceive outgroups as low in warmth and competence (stereotyped as “disgusting”), the neural regions associated with empathy and mentalizing (medial prefrontal cortex, mPFC) show reduced activity. This “empathy gap” facilitates a psychological distance necessary for harm.
Triggering Anger and Harm: Disgust toward an outgroup is associated with both a desire to distance oneself (passive harm) and a willingness to attack (active harm). When paired with perceptions of threat (processed by the amygdala) or specific moral violations, this can escalate into anger and a drive for punitive action.
Historic Examples
Historic instances of scapegoating and persecution illustrate how these mechanisms play out socially:
Witch Hunts: Accusations often centered on moral violations and associations with evil or bodily corruption, serving to socially label the victims as ‘disgusting’ and justify brutal punishment.
Racial Prejudice/Genocide: Propagandists throughout history have used language and imagery comparing targeted groups to animals, vermin, or disease, leveraging the basic human pathogen-avoidance system to evoke disgust and facilitate dehumanization, thereby enabling extreme violence and neglect.
In essence, social training achieves its aims by associating outgroups with primary disgust stimuli, thereby activating the insula’s disgust response and short-circuiting the neural pathways that typically facilitate empathy and prosocial behavior toward fellow humans.
Note: Road-Blocks to Empathy (by: Thomas Gordon)
Social Dynamics:
Psychological theories of in-group bias and the scapegoating of out-groups stem from defense mechanisms like reaction formation and underlying inferiority complexes in the IN-GROUP members.
Inferiority Complex: Coined by psychologist Alfred Adler, this refers to a person’s feelings that they lack worth or are not good enough. When this feeling is shared among group members, it can create a collective sense of inadequacy.
Reaction Formation: This is a defense mechanism where a person consciously feels and acts in a way that is the exact opposite of their unconscious feelings. To deal with deep-seated feelings of inferiority, a group might unconsciously adopt an air of superiority and arrogance.
Projection and Scapegoating: The perceived inferiority is then often “projected” onto other, more vulnerable groups (out-groups). These out-groups are then made into scapegoats, blamed for problems or viewed as inferior, which serves to validate the in-group’s fragile sense of superiority and distract from its own insecurities. In this framework, the aggressive and exclusionary behaviors of the in-group are not a true reflection of genuine strength or superiority, but rather a defensive, often unconscious, reaction to feelings of weakness or inadequacy. This dynamic is frequently discussed in analyses of prejudice, discrimination, and group conflict.
Note: Road-Blocks to Empathy (by: Thomas Gordon)
Egalitarianism: The doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal human rights.
Research suggests that individual differences in political views, including those potentially related to egalitarianism, can correlate with differences in brain structure and activity patterns in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), insula, and other regions. For example, a larger anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) volume has been associated with greater tolerance for uncertainty, cognitive flexibility, and creative curiosity, which is hypothesized to allow individuals to accept more egalitarian views. (equal human rights)
Active Listening: This communication process, when perceived, has been shown to activate the listener’s reward system and can influence emotional appraisal processes in the speaker. Perceiving active listening can enhance activity in the right insula, which might represent an emotional reappraisal process based on reward-related information, suggesting that this practice can modulate activity in key emotional brain regions.
Active Listening expands empathy and calms the amygdala by using the brain’s prefrontal cortex to regulate emotional responses. Expanding empathy happens because active listening involves understanding and reflecting the speaker’s verbal message of what’s alive in them, which deepens connection. Calming the amygdala occurs when you put your feelings into words (affect labeling), which engages the frontal lobe, and this increased activity counterbalances the amygdala’s fear and reptilian stress reflex response.
Note: Road-Blocks to Empathy (by: Thomas Gordon)
How active listening expands empathy
It involves understanding emotions: Active listening is not just about hearing words, but about grasping the underlying feelings and needs of the speaker.
Validating feelings: By repeating or paraphrasing the speaker’s expressed feelings and meanings back to them, you are confirming that you have heard and understood their unique perspective. This makes the speaker feel heard, respected, and supported.
Checking for understanding: The goal is to comprehend the speaker’s message accurately. Using a gentle request for clarification (e.g., “What I’m hearing is…” or “Sounds like you are saying…”) helps ensure your interpretation is correct.
Avoiding assumptions: The listener should not “invent new feelings or thoughts the speaker has not verbalized.” The listener’s role is to focus solely on what the speaker has communicated, both verbally and nonverbally, and reflect only that back to them for confirmation.
The listener’s primary objective is to create a safe space for the speaker to feel fully understood without judgment or analysis.
It fosters connection: This deeper understanding and validation create a more open and honest communication environment, strengthening your connection with the speaker.
Our perception of another person’s feelings can result more from what we are feeling, are afraid of, or are wishing for than from the other person’s words, tone, gestures, facial expression, etc. If we feel guilty, we may perceive others as angry or accusing toward us. Our inferences about other people’s feelings can be, and often are, inaccurate. Thus, it is important to check them out for good interpersonal communication.
How active listening calms the amygdala
It utilizes “affect labeling”: A component of active listening is identifying and putting into words your own emotions, a process called “affect labeling”.
It engages the frontal lobe: This act of labeling emotions activates the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain responsible for processing emotions.
It dampens the amygdala: The frontal lobe communicates with the amygdala, and increased frontal lobe activity helps to calm the amygdala by dampening its activity.
___________________________
It creates a feedback loop:
There is an inverse relationship between the amygdala and the frontal lobe—as frontal lobe activity increases, amygdala activity decreases.
Empathy, or Disgust, choose one, you can’t serve both.
___________________________
Practicing Active Listening typically enhances empathy; however, in individuals with an authoritarian bias, the same brain regions may activate for a different purpose rooted in the Fundamental Attribution Error. This could potentially lead to unrealistic delusions of superiority and the habituation of disgust feelings projected onto others. The idea that active listening might trigger disgust in those with authoritarian leanings is a plausible interpretation based on research suggesting their brains process social information differently, including emotions like empathy and disgust.
Studies have identified correlations between authoritarian personality traits and differences in brain structure, such as reduced gray matter volume in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). The dmPFC is a crucial region involved in social cognition, empathy, and perspective-taking. Research indicates a link between greater gray matter volume in this area and reduced fear, alongside an improved capacity to actively listen to diverse perspectives during conflict resolution. Conversely, other findings suggest that lower dmPFC gray matter volume might be associated with higher cognitive empathy, possibly due to a process of cognitive pruning.
Empathy involving another’s pain or distress frequently activates specific neural areas, notably the anterior insula (AI) and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). The AI, in particular, is consistently associated with processing disgust, encompassing both core physical and socio-moral forms.
Active Listening aims to foster understanding and reduce defensiveness, a process reliant on emotional processing and empathy. For an authoritarian-leaning brain, where disgust responses are often more readily triggered by perceived norm violations or threats to established order, active listening—particularly to challenging viewpoints—might elicit a neural response akin to disgust because it is processed as an aversive social stimulus rather than an opportunity for connection.
The core distinction lies in the interpretation of the social interaction. While one person’s brain views the situation as an opportunity for empathic connection through active listening, an authoritarian-leaning brain might perceive the same interaction as a challenge or violation of social boundaries, triggering a disgust response using overlapping neural circuitry within the insula. Recent brain imaging studies indicate that individuals with authoritarian attitudes exhibit differences in brain structures related to social reasoning and emotional regulation. This aligns with a tendency for impulsive actions under stress, including psychological projection of shame or guilt, finger-pointing, and scapegoating, often concealed behind a veil of power.
Research highlights specific brain structural differences linked to authoritarianism.
Authoritarians exhibit higher levels of “negative urgency,” indicating a propensity for impulsive actions in emotionally charged situations, correlated with higher trait anxiety. They also show higher autonomic reactivity to stress and slower recovery, suggesting a physiological pathway connecting stress response to political beliefs. This anxiety can drive people toward impulsive behaviors aimed at quickly reducing discomfort and regaining a sense of control through domination. Studies using the Big Five personality traits found that authoritarian followers often score higher on conscientiousness . In essence, a conscientious person is reliable and follows through on cultural commitments, which supports a reliable relationship where loyalty is paramount. However, conscientiousness is about responsibility and order, while loyalty is about devotion and allegiance, and one can have a conflict between their personal conscientiousness/principles and a demand for loyalty to authority figures.
Control: Individuals who feel vulnerable due to anxiety may seek to regain a sense of control by dominating others, viewing it as a way to reduce discomfort and manage their fear/safety.
Performance and Social anxiety: Some studies have found a correlation between social anxiety and a need for dominance, suggesting that aggressive or controlling behaviors can be a coping mechanism for social anxiety-related distress.
Authoritarianism: While not the same as anxiety, authoritarian attitudes are linked to higher stress reactivity and can involve a desire for control, which can be amplified by underlying anxiety.
Research has identified a “psychological signature” for authoritarians who are more susceptible to extreme ideologies, which includes a blend of unconscious suspicion and impulsive personality traits like sensation-seeking and risk-taking. Difficulties with complex mental processing may subconsciously push individuals toward extreme doctrines that provide simplified, “story-book” explanations for human cultures. The neurobiological underpinnings remain an emerging field, but research suggests that specific brain functions related to social processing and emotion regulation, within the limbic system and prefrontal cortex, are implicated in the adoption of extremist ideologies.
Authoritarian messaging may be intrinsically rewarding at a neurochemical level, fostering a psychological addiction. Research indicates that individuals with authoritarian tendencies may exhibit specific structural differences in brain regions associated with emotional regulation and social reasoning. These variations, such as altered gray matter volume in the prefrontal cortex or reduced cortical thickness in the insula, may reflect established cognitive and emotional patterns that influence a preference for structure, order, and strong authority.
Individuals prone to anxiety or impulsive reactions under stress might be more inclined toward authoritarian ideologies, which can provide a seemingly clear and ordered view in perceived threatening situations. These findings contribute to understanding potential neurobiological factors in extremist beliefs and behaviors, suggesting a complex interplay between psychological predispositions, stress responses, and cognitive styles that can make individuals more vulnerable to the appeal of authoritarianism.
Researchers emphasize that these brain differences are not the sole cause of authoritarian beliefs, but rather biological predispositions that interact complexly with social, cultural, and environmental factors.
“Have you noticed some people see suffering and feel empathy and others see it and feel disgust?
Turns out that difference isn’t just moral, it’s neural.
Brain imaging shows that when people high in egalitarian values witness someone’s pain, their insula lights up. That’s the region tied to empathy and self-awareness. It literally links your body’s emotions to another person’s.
But in more authoritarian-leaning brains, the same region fires for a different reason, disgust. The same system that helps you recoil from spoiled food also kicks in when they see someone who feels different. So instead of compassion, their nervous system reads contamination. That’s why messages about care or equality don’t land. The body’s already in defense mode. They’re not processing strategy. They’re processing purity.
Fun fact, the (brain) wiring can change. The more we expose ourselves to differences (integration), the more flexible (healthy) the insula becomes. So maybe the real culture war is empathy versus avoidance. And only one side’s brain is trying to evolve.
Erika Jordan holds a BA in Sociology from UC Irvine, a Master’s in Counseling Psychology from the University of San Francisco, and is also a certified NLP Practitioner. She is currently a part-time faculty member at the University of San Francisco and has worked with marginalized communities for nearly a decade. https://www.youtube.com/@ErikaJordanSociologist
“I used to think that top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address these problems, but I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists dont know how to do that.” ~Gus Speth
Climate change denial – The resistance to climate action, often driven by short-term profit motives, does threaten future generations. Children will inherit the consequences of today’s decisions.
The interconnection is real: wealth concentration, environmental destruction, and psychological dysfunction do reinforce each other. Breaking these cycles requires both systemic change and shifts in how we relate to each other and the planet.
On an individual level, healing strategies include:
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- Developing self-awareness: Practices like mindfulness can help individuals perceive and witness their own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, rather than being ruled by them.
- Finding safe spaces: Processing emotional pain requires a safe environment, whether through talking with a trusted friend, support group, or Empathy Circle.
- Creating a new narrative: By exploring and sharing one’s trauma story, it becomes less upsetting. This can happen through writing or speaking with trusted individuals.
- Practicing self-regulation: Techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, and physical activity can help regulate the nervous system and calm the “fight, flight, or freeze” response.
- Developing self-awareness: Practices like mindfulness can help individuals perceive and witness their own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, rather than being ruled by them.
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- Active Choice: Individuals can choose to break the cycle by seeking healing, forgiveness, and a living relationship with Self, thereby creating a different path for their own and future generations.
Note: Road-Blocks to Empathy (by: Thomas Gordon)
References:
ACTIVE LISTENING PDF Carl R. Rogers and Richard E. Farson
Carl Rogers coined the term “active listening” in 1957
Active Listening and Empathy (msu.edu)
Active-Listening-Handout (BU.EDU)
Active listening can be a life-changing skill
Active Listening For Better Communication
Active Listening is hearing – with understanding – the intended ideas (KPU.CA)
Authoritarian attitudes linked to altered brain anatomy
Authoritarianism and psychological disposition
How to prove you are listening | Amanda Ripley #EmotionalIntelligence
How Active Listening Cultivates Cooperation
How Does Active Listening Enhance Conflict Resolution?
Improving Your Communication through Active Listening
Intergroup social influence on emotion processing in the brain
Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure
Prefrontal Brain electrical activity during positive emotion
Psychological Mechanisms of Oppression: Empathy, Disgust, and the Perception of Group Membership
Psychological causes and societal consequences of authoritarianism
Seven Active Listening Techniques
Social-emotional feelings and anterior insula activity influenced by culture
Trust and Empathy with Active Listening
Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The Authoritarian Personality. Harper & Row. (This is a foundational work in the field, often referenced in later studies.)
Peterson, J. B. (2018). 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Random House Canada.
Duckitt, J., & Sibley, C. G. (2009). The ideological attitudes of authoritarians and social dominators: Combined effects of different motivational bases. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(3), 361–371.
Osborne, D., Costello, T., Duckitt, J., et. al. (2023). The psychological causes of societal consequences of authoritarianism. Nature Reviews Psychology.
REF: ScienceDirect.com
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As social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, noted that an “us” versus them” mindset…. often leads to comparing ones enemies to infectious… It results in using metaphors that evoke the moral emotion of disgust.
Disgust, according to psychologists Buckels and Trapnell “appears to have the unique capacity to foster the social-cognitive dehumanization of outcast members.” (human beings)
workplace Work-place work Work Workplace
The Conflict: Empathy vs. Managerial Action
Carl Rogers’ person-centered approach (PCA) in a workplace setting encounters significant challenges when dealing with traditional management practices, particularly regarding disciplinary actions like firing an employee. The core tension lies between the manager’s need for performance metrics and the PCA’s emphasis on trust, empathy, and unconditional positive regard.
Managers often operate from a framework of performance, efficiency, and clear standards, where removing an underperforming or non-compliant individual is a necessary solution for the team’s overall productivity. This is a results-oriented, often “biomedical” or “mechanistic” approach to organizational health.
Rogers’ approach, in contrast, posits that an environment of unconditional positive regard (accepting individuals without judgment), empathy, and congruence (genuineness) is necessary for people to feel safe enough to grow, self-actualize, and find their own solutions. In the specific scenario you described:
Manager’s Perspective: Removing an individual is a necessary managerial function (a “gatekeeping” role) to maintain standards and ensure the team’s success.
Rogers’ Perspective: Unconditional acceptance and empathy are paramount for fostering a secure environment. Terminating someone without fully understanding their perspective, involving them in the solution-finding process, and providing an environment for potential growth would violate the trust of the entire group. The remaining employees would perceive a lack of fairness and a risk to their own security, leading to a breakdown in psychological safety and trust.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8950126/#:~:text=5.,as%20a%20barrier%20to%20PCC.
roadblock road-block roadblocks road-blocks
What Active Listening is not:
Jumping in with “help” in the form of “good advice”
Questioning to get at the “facts”
Reassuring to make them “feel better”
Simply put,
roadblocks take the “conversational ball”
out of the speaker’s hands
and puts it firmly into the listener’s.
The 12 Roadblocks to Communication:
https://www.gordonmodel.com/work-roadblocks.php
” Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of people who are oppressing them.
We Think We Listen, but that might only be a thought!
“Our first reaction to most of the statements that we hear from other people is an immediate evaluation or judgment, rather than understanding. I believe this is because understanding seems risky.
~Carl Rogers
https://empathymatters.org/now/active-listening-carl-rogers/
“The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the seed of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is already dead.
~Albert Einstein
..::”For me, the Jewish religion, like all others, is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions… And the Jewish people have no different quality for me than all other people”. ~ Albert Einstein
Einstein viewed the “cult of individuals” as unjustified and often in bad taste, noting that it was unfair to select a few for “boundless admiration” while ignoring everyone else.
(He explicitly stated he could not see anything “chosen” about Jewish people)
”Refusing humility traps you in delusion.♡ Love Albert Einstein … Only a comic book bible would suggest a cultish behavior to genoc~~ everyone else, but some special chosen ones?~ OMG
Imagine living on the only known planet in the infinite universe, where the mortified rich get richer by colonizing the people to follow debunked dogma, repeating an ancient doctrine of war, projected onto innocent children, again and again, the rich get richer, and the children inherit a brutal indoctrination instead of Living Sacred Life. https://empathymatters.org/armageddon/
