Powerful Empathy Machine

Roger Ebert's remarks when he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Thursday, June 23, 2005:

When I started, I was asked, how long do you think you can remain a film critic? I said I should be able to hold out about five years. Now I’ve been film critic for 38 years and I think it's a worthy way to spend a lifetime, writing about films. They're not only entertainment. When they are entertainment that's not a bad thing, but sometimes they're more than entertainment.

We are born into a box of space and time. We are who and when and what we are and we're going to be that person until we die. But if we remain only that person, we will never grow and we will never change and things will never get better.

Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts. When I go to a great movie I can live somebody else's life for a while. I can walk in somebody else's shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief.

This is a liberalizing influence on me. It gives me a broader mind. It helps me to join my family of men and women on this planet. It helps me to identify with them, so I'm not just stuck being myself, day after day.

The great movies enlarge us, they civilize us, they make us more decent people.

That's what I've tried to support and that's what a great many of the people in this audiences have tried to support especially the many filmmakers who are here, the film artists who are here, the filmgoers who are here. It makes a difference, and what's why we do it and that's why this is wonderful day for me.

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See also:

• Ebert, R. (2011). Life itself: A memoir. New York: Grand Central Pub. (library)
• Life Itself (film)
• "This is Not Only Your Film," by Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com, January 17, 2014  

The Spaces between Words

Migratory Words by Su Blackwell

"This is the art and alchemy of poetry: through the spaces between the words, borne along on a wave of rhythm and sound, the life breath of the reader joins that of the poet. In this union of forces, an awakening can happen that is not only new from reader to reader, but in a great poem, from reading to reading."

~ Roger Housden, from Ten Poems to Open Your Heart

Stories are Powerful

"Stories are powerful because they transport us into other people’s worlds, but in doing that, they change the way our brains work and potentially change our brain chemistry. And that’s what it means to be a social creature—to connect with others, to care about others, even complete strangers. It's so interesting that dramatic stories cause us to do this."

~ Paul Zak  director of the Center for Neuroeconomic Studies and author of The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity

See also: "Trust, morality — and oxytocin?" In this TED Talk, neuroeconomist Paul Zak shows why he believes oxytocin (he calls it "the moral molecule") is responsible for trust, empathy and other feelings that help build a stable society.

Concentric Buckets

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See also:

• Knopf Poem-a-Day 2014
• Kenneth Koch bio from The Poetry Foundation
• Koch, K. (2005). The collected poems of Kenneth Koch. New York: Knopf. [library] 

Pain and Response to Pain Teaches Understanding

Sherwin Nuland from "The Biology of the Spirit," On Being, September 29, 2005:

Sherwin Nuland (Dec. 8, 1930 – Mar. 3, 2014)Do you know what I learned from writing [How We Die], if I learned nothing else? The more personal you are willing to be and the more intimate you are willing to be about the details of your own life, the more universal you are.

When you recognize that pain and response to pain is a universal thing, it helps explain so many things about others, just as it explains so much about yourself. It teaches you forbearance. It teaches you a moderation in your responses to other people's behavior. It teaches you a sort of understanding. It essentially tells you what everybody needs. You know what everybody needs? You want to put it in a single word? Everybody needs to be understood. And out of that comes every form of love.

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See also: 

• "Brain, Mind, and Spirit: The Wisdom of the Human Body," Sherwin Nuland's lecture given at the Chautauqua Institution (Aug. 22, 2005)
• "Fresh Air Remembers Surgeon And 'How We Die' Author Sherwin Nuland" (March 7, 2014)
• "How Electroshock Changed Me," TED Talk (Feb. 2001)
• "The Extraordinary Power of Ordinary People," TED Talk (Feb. 2003)
• Nuland, S. B. (1994). How we die: Reflections on life's final chapter. New York: A.A. Knopf. [library] 
• Nuland, S. B. (1997). How we live. New York: Vintage Books. [library]