Compassion and Complex Politics
A Strozier Faculty Lecture Series conversation with Dr. David Owens
What can help bridge our often contentious political and cultural gaps? Can compassion — a human evolutionary universal — play a key role? Dr. David Owens, assistant professor of science education, joins Leigh for a follow-up conversation to his Strozier faculty lecture, presented to the wider community as a WRUU and Georgia Southern University collaboration.
(Photos © FreeImages/Alexander Hayes and kslyesmith)
To skip the intro, fast forward to the 2:24 mark.
- Part of the Robert I. Strozier Faculty Lecture Series
- “Bridging the Partisan Gulf: Employing Compassion Toward the Successful Resolution of Socioscientific Issues”
- David Owens
- Abstract Socioscientific issues (SSI) are contemporary, often contentious issues with ties to science but that cannot be resolved without also considering nonscience aspects of the issue (e.g., climate change, genetic engineering). Though a number of potential resolutions exist, none equally benefits the stakeholders involved, making the issue difficult to resolve. Given that compassion is urged across a variety of worldviews and supported as beneficial for humans from an evolutionary perspective, then compassion might serve to bridge partisan and cultural gaps and act as a framework from which all individuals can begin to perceive and resolve SSI.
