Character

CHARACTER

Power of Choice | Reon Schutte

Reon Schutte spoke at Brookfield Academy's Character Takes Courage seminar. His message was powerful and positive about taking responsibility for the choices we make. They affect how we act, think, and respond. You can hear a sample of his presentation in the video. He described to the students how 3-4 years into his sentence in Zimbabwe's brutal Chikurubi prison (a 10% survival rate), he knew he had to stop obsessing about his constant hunger and daily ration of half a cup of rice and half a cup of cabbage. Hunger and how he was being starved to death were constant stresses on his mind, making each day a nightmare. He finally faced facts and admitted that these meager rations were, indeed, enough to keep him alive. The fact he was alive after years of it was proof! So everyday for untold months he countered every pain and thought of hunger with the reality that he was alive, that he wasn't hungry, that it was enough. Until one day, he received his ration and realized he hadn't thought about food once that day. After that, he was not a victim of hunger.

He then tackled the nightmare and trepidation of anticipating the daily beatings. He could hear the screams of others being beaten en route to his cell as the jailers got closer. Again, he decided to change his mindset and choose how he responded to his circumstances, so he started the long process of countering every panicked thought with a calming reassurance that it would be all right, just chill, he could survive it. Until one day, he was surprised when the clubbers came in his cell to beat him and the other men -- he hadn't been thinking about the inevitable beatings at all. He took his punishment that day and found himself surprised by their entrance the next day, too - no longer victim to the fear. What's particularly powerful is that from that day forward and with no exchange of words, he never received another beating.

Obama's Empathy Problem | Sympathy vs. Empathy

<<...Obama defines empathy as “the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us.” ... But can I really imagine what it is like to be an immigrant woman cleaning dorm rooms? How realistically can I imagine what it is like to be a laid-off steelworker? No wonder Obama says that this act of imagination is more demanding than sympathy and charity. We cannot really put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, because our imagination is always limited and subjective. We can try to understand another person's circumstances, but it borders on condescension to claim that we are able to see the world through someone else's eyes. As an act of imagination, empathy risks becoming mere pretense, deluding ourselves with false insights into other people's lives...

Before 1903, we called it sympathy. Sympathy means “fellow-feeling”, and is based on actual affinity between people. If I stub my toe, you feel my pain; not because you have used observation and imagination to see the world through my eyes, but because you have toes of your own and you too have felt pain. This is our affinity or “sameness”: we feel the same, because we fundamentally are the same...>>

Obama's Empathy Deficit | AmThinker
Obama's Empathy Problem [another version] | The Week

James Thunder | Honor and Taking Responsibility: Edward Livingston

James Thunder writes about a great character and example to us all: "... It is not necessary to describe the kind of job Livingston did at these posts before July 20, 1803, because you will get the picture when we focus on the period of July 20 to the end of October. This is when an epidemic of yellow fever hit New York. While many people fled the city, Livingston stayed. Each and every day, Livingston went to homes where someone had been stricken and assessed and supplied their needs. He did the same at the hospitals. In August, he himself was stricken. His 1864 biographer relates: "He was now the object of extraordinary popular gratitude and regard…. A crowd thronged the street near his door, to obtain the latest news of his condition; and young people vied with each other for the privilege of watching by his bed."

The U.S. Government notified Livingston that same month of irregularities that had occurred in the office of U.S. Attorney during his tenure. A large sum of money had been embezzled by one of its employees. The culprit was known but the amount was not yet certain. No one accused Livingston of personal involvement, but only of lack of care in supervision...." He took responsibility and reimbursed us. Click the title to read the rest of the story...

Martin Luther King Jr. | The Drum Major Instinct

In this sermon, Pastor King talks about how our egos are a great driver of good, but they can also lead us into temptation in ways that wreak havoc and pain on ourselves and on others. "...there is deep down within all of us an instinct. It's a kind of drum major instinct—a desire to be out front, a desire to lead the parade, a desire to be first. And it is something that runs the whole gamut of life ... And so before we condemn them, let us see that we all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade ... Now the other problem is, when you don't harness the drum major instinct—this uncontrolled aspect of it—is that it leads to snobbish exclusivism. It leads to snobbish exclusivism. (Make it plain) And you know, this is the danger of social clubs and fraternities—I'm in a fraternity; I'm in two or three—for sororities and all of these, I'm not talking against them. I'm saying it's the danger. The danger is that they can become forces of classism and exclusivism where somehow you get a degree of satisfaction because you are in something exclusive. And that's fulfilling something, you know—that I'm in this fraternity, and it's the best fraternity in the world, and everybody can't get in this fraternity. So it ends up, you know, a very exclusive kind of thing.." Aside: Try taking this history test: BLACK POLITICAL HISTORY: THE UNTOLD STORY.