Arthur C. Brooks explains how contempt hijacks your limbic system as a threat response. He recommends loving-kindness meditation: start by wishing yourself well, then loved ones, strangers, and finally people you dislike. Deliberately sending compassion instead of reacting to the perceived threat rewires contempt into genuine care.
How might I combat this contempt I feel for others and act with love? Here's how you do it. You stand up to your own limbic system. Your limbic system is being excited by that because you're perceiving a threat, a threat to your way of thinking or your threat to your way of life. That contempt is happening to you, but that doesn't mean that you have to act on it. On the contrary, you can take an opposite signal strategy. You see somebody who's got an obnoxious bumper sticker, start by praying for that person. And not that that person will take the bumper sticker off their car. Pray for that person and say, I hope that person has love in their life. I hope that person has a beautiful life. That's a loving-kindness meditation in the Buddhist tradition as well. We start with loving kindness toward yourself and then toward your loved ones. And then you extend it actually out toward the people you don't even know. And finally to the people that you don't even like, that's a really, really hard thing to do, but you can will that. And when you do that, your orientation changes completely.
