This YouTube talk (presented by Dr. Arthur Brooks) argues that civility and tolerance are insufficient responses to political disgust and contempt. Instead, the speaker recommends actively practicing love and compassion toward political opponents—citing Matthew 5:44, Bahá'u'lláh (Baha'i), and the Dalai Lama—and proposes a brief neuroscientific/psychological mechanism: by repeatedly recreating the positive emotion experienced when being kind, one reprograms the nucleus accumbens and thereby increases kind behavior toward opponents.
Chapters
How do you reprogram your nucleus accumbens? You do it by doing something different. Every time you feel political disgust, every time you feel political contempt, what should you do? What should you practice? What should you do actively? Some people say civility, be civil. Some people say tolerance. And I say that's nonsense, that's garbage, because those are standards that are the lowest standards possible. Many of you will recognize this passage. You've heard that you should love your friends and hate your enemies. But today I give you a new teaching. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. That's Matthew 5:44 of the Christian Bible. Want something non Christian? The Baha' I faith. The prophet Ba' Ullah has said, if you have an enemy, consider him not as an enemy. Do not simply be long suffering, nay, rather, love him. The Dalai Lama says, when you feel hatred, show warm heartedness. He said, remember a time when you did that by accident and how it made you feel. He's an excellent psychologist. You understand that when you recreate an emotion frequently, what that will do is that will bring back the action that led to the emotion in the first place. In other words, if you recreate the feeling of how you felt when you were kind to somebody, you will be kinder.
