The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance

How Kindness and Empathy Will Reset and Reshape A Better World: Jamil Zaki, Ph.D., with Dave Asprey : 694

Apr 30, 2020

Jamil Zaki, Ph.D., a Stanford psychology professor and director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, reveals fascinating insights about kindness and empathy. He discusses how these traits are crucial for our survival and social harmony, especially during crises like the pandemic. Zaki shares that empathy can be taught and strengthened, emphasizing its learnable nature. He also explores how shared vulnerabilities enhance connections and how acts of kindness can combat loneliness and foster deeper community ties, even in challenging times.

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ANECDOTE

Childhood Empathy

Jamil Zaki's parents, from different cultures, divorced during his childhood.
He developed empathy as a survival skill to connect with them.

INSIGHT

Kindness as a Superpower

Kindness is a fundamental human capacity for thriving.
Cooperation is key to human success, from early humans to modern society.

INSIGHT

Types of Kindness

Cooperation and altruism are two forms of kindness.
Altruism may appear selfless but can also offer internal rewards.

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In this episode of Bulletproof Radio, my guest is Jamil Zaki, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. Our conversation explores kindness, empathy, and compassion. You’ll find out the surprising ways people carry these traits into their personal lives and their broader social groups and communitites.

In a stack rank, kindness wins: “So kindness is, obviously, I think the most important for us as a collective,” Jamil says. “We need to cooperate, we need to work together, and that's whether you're in a family or a company or a culture.”

Jamil has presented and written extensively about kindness and empathy, with featured articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The New Yorker, and the Atlantic and many more publications and media outlets. He’s the author of the book: “The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World.” (It's available in hardcover now or you can preorder the paperback, set to release, June 2, 2020.)

Using tools from psychology and neuroscience, he gives us a totally new understanding empathy by examining how empathy works and how people can learn to empathize more effectively.

Empathy has been thought of as a hardwired trait—as in you either have it or you don’t. But Jamil says it’s a learnable skill that can be taught, strengthened and adapted to the modern world. And we need that more than ever in the current calamity of Covid-19. “That sense of common humanity and common vulnerability can really actually ignite massive amounts of empathy,” he says.

Listen on to learn how to bring more empathy and kindness into your life now and how to shape it for the future.

Enjoy the show!

Catch my Instagram Live with Jamil at https://youtu.be/ENjhT71FUN8. And get more resources at https://blog.daveasprey.com/category/podcasts/.

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