Compassion in Action
DIISC
Darwin International Institute for the Study of Compassion
DIISC
Darwin International Institute for the Study of Compassion
Something has to change in today's world.
Let's start with future leaders from across the globe
In this era of escalating global conflict and strife – with such massive movements of displaced people, the overarching threat of climate change, and the ever-widening gap between rich and poor – there is an urgent need for compassion in human interactions.
DIISC will be dedicated to developing a critical and analytical understanding of the meaning and applications of compassion, in all its diverse and complex forms.
DIISC was launched in 2015 to address the need for an academically rigorous investigation of the nature of compassion. Easily championed, but everywhere alarmingly challenged, compassion can too readily be relegated as a “soft” or “pious” quality, sidelined by more instrumental, technical, pragmatic or ideological concerns. Compassion needs to be reconsidered, re-evaluated and consciously integrated into the understanding and practices of society as:
Why Study Compassion?
Why Study Compassion?
- a primary value and requirement in a modern world that, at individual, social, institutional and political levels, frequently fosters its opposite – a fear of annihilation of valued social institutions, of groups, and of the self – is widespread
- a means of treating others with the same concern, attention and generosity that one would wish for oneself; refraining from treating them as one would not wish to be treated oneself; being open to, disturbed by, empathetic to, and moved to respond to the experience and pain of others
- a difficult and challenging quality that itself requires better understanding; which requires the recognition of, and engagement with, pain, damage, anxiety, anger and difference, and the exploitative, competitive, violent or simply self-centred feelings and motives which also drive human beings, individually and collectively
- something that has been split off from and relegated to a subsidiary place in technical or professional skills, and collective enterprises, and that needs to be reintegrated as a core and primary component of all such practices and wider social relations
- an evolutionary phenomenon emerging as a positive and dynamic aspect in social relations as human beings have learned to cooperate and preserve themselves and their communities
- an attitude and a practice that, in turn, depends on social relations for its cultivation and sustenance – relations that can be thought about, constructed and nourished to do that, or which can work directly against compassionate mindedness and behaviour
- a quality that depends on the individual, the group, the organisation and society developing the skills and the habit of self-awareness and reflection
- a quality that requires, for its exploration and understanding, a dialogue between and synthesis of many traditions and discourses, including scientific, psychological, philosophical, historical, cultural, religious, sociological and political perspectives
"As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races."
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
DIISC is named after Charles Darwin, whose work on evolution offered a vital perspective on “sympathy” – which we might now call altruism, empathy or compassion-the instinctive impulse shown by humans and certain other animals to come to the aid of others in distress. He considered this concern for the welfare of others to be the highest moral achievement and virtue, particularly in those relatively rare cases where it is extended beyond the family group.
- stimulate and organise exploration, research, learning and education in and between a wide range of discourses and practices, as they help us understand compassion at individual, family, social, professional, organisational, intercultural, governmental, international and ecological levels
- bring together these perspectives in integrative dialogue and mutual learning, promoting inter-disciplinary collaboration and common purpose
- understand the implications for all aspects of community life, education, health care, environment, business, social policy and intercultural relations
- explore, develop and evaluate practices at any or all of these levels and domains of life that promote and sustain compassion in action
DIISC aims to...