Ian Short

Empathy is the art of stepping imaginatively into the shoes of another person, understanding their feelings and perspectives, and using that understanding to guide your actions.

Empathy relates to sympathy and compassion, but it doesn’t have the same meaning as these words because they don’t involve attempting to understand emotions from someone else’s point of view. Opposites to empathy are introspection and narcissism – looking inward rather than outward. Krznaric calls the twentieth century the Age of Introspection, driven by self interest, justified by slogans such as survival of the fittest and what’s in it for me?, and demonstrated on a large scale by the free market economy. He asks for this century to be the Age of Outrospection, where we spend less effort analysing ourselves and instead try to empathise with others.

The book is about examples and scientific evidence to show that we are naturally empathic, and that by practising empathy we can improve the well-being of ourselves and others, promote peace, encourage cooperation, prevent tragedies, and generally make the world a better place. One of my favourite parts of the book was a short passage on how to empathise with hedgehogs, which was communicated by the British ecologist Hugh Warwick.

It is impossible to know exactly what it feels like to be a hedgehog. But what I ask people to do is to change their perspective. Literally. Get down at hedgehog level, get nose-to-nose with a hedgehog and then look at the world from this position. This will give you an insight into the complications we have thrown in the path of hedgehogs. Whether it is the cars on the road that not only threaten extinction, but also fragment the environment by preventing movement, to the litter that collars and kills hedgehogs, to the gardens given over to car-ports, decking and patios, and the borders cleansed of life with agro-toxins – we get to see those anthropogenic threats all the more clearly. But for me the most important thing is the contact of the eyes – looking at a hedgehog looking at me – eyes meeting and there being this almost intangible spark of wildness. Gaze at a hedgehog and let yourself fall in love with nature.