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Science-Based Communication Education Collective
We are committed to protecting and empowering strong, diverse communities of nurturing families who care for each other’s rights and freedoms.
Democracy makes no sense if we care for no one but ourselves and our own families.
Our Mission: Support our members and volunteers in applying science-based communication to frame and reframe ongoing public discourse around empathy, uniting siloed human rights advocates and elected officials.
Welcome. We care about you. Here’s how.
We want to know what matters to our members and their organizations in building a caring society because those matters are moral and political. No one tells their conversation partner, “What matters most to me in building a caring society is pure evil because I’m bad.” We’re all trying to be the best version of ourselves. Whether it’s in the realm of a healthy family, religion, building a business, government/legal, education, arts and media, or journalism, we want to empower you to frame it from our mutual duty to care for humanity’s rights and freedoms.
Join our science-based communication education collective of caring human rights advocates.
Or financially support our science-based communication education collective of human rights advocates.
Or volunteer with our science-based communication education collective of human rights advocates.
What is science-based communication?
Science-based communication education equips us to apply Dr. George Lakoff’s and others’ cognitive science and linguistics to frame our individual passions and organizational missions around a shared progressive vision, strengthening our progressive biases. We seek lifelong partnerships to centralize empathy in public discourse on human rights issues.
Our approach is based on the phenomenon of biconceptualism: People with healthy human brains are morally complex and have an unconscious, cognitive bias between two nations as family metaphors and moralities – nurturing parents versus strict father – care versus cruelty – democracy versus autocracy. Biconceptualism confirms the ancient lore of two internal wolves battling for the human soul – a caring wolf and a cruel wolf – the winner being the caring wolf we consciously feed.
In some parts of our lives, we unconsciously apply the core values of non-hierarchical nurturing parent-family progressivism, a strong commitment to govern relationships with empathy for and responsibility to humanity. In other parts, we unconsciously apply the core values of hierarchical strict father-family conservatism, obedience to the strict father’s interpretation of authority, and cruel punishment for disobedience. Our membership collective helps each other expand our duty to care and apply the values of strong, diverse communities of nurturing families caring for each other’s freedoms.
Our duty to care for each other’s freedom requires empathy, the soul of democracy and human rights.
The duty to care for each other’s freedom has been a legal concept in English law since 1760. Conservatism has limited the duty to care, and fascism has ignored care altogether since their terms were coined. The United Nations defeated fascism when World War II ended in 1945. Take 1-minute to listen to former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the international committee of the United Nations from 1945 to 1948 that defined human rights. She is reading the Proclamation from the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Notice how it obliges “every individual and every organ of society” to learn about the UDHR and teach others about it using “progressive measures.” That requires a commitment to the legal concept of the duty to care. You can read the entire Preamble and all 30 of the UDHR at this link.
Benefits of Membership
Members have immediate access to our science-based education community of practice via Zoom. The benefits of membership include:
- Increase your understanding of cognitive science and linguistics in political and moral discourse
- Learn how to expand empathy in yourself and others
- Learn how to respond to conservatives
- Expand your sense of a nurturing purpose
- Give direction to your duty to care for yourself and others
- Strengthen your ability to communicate care more effectively
- Improve your collaboration skills needed in a caring society
- Reduce your feelings of helplessness and be the responsible change
- Increase your security in the knowledge of what counts as effective nurturant communication
- Build your oratory confidence with practice
- Improve your caring critical thinking through testimonials and conversations
- Meet other caring citizens who want to expand empathy in their communities
- Feel better after talking about human rights expansion
- Voting rights for board trustees
- @empathysurplus.com email and access to our Google Workspace
- An extension number to the Empathy Surplus phone number 833-672-8487
Click our logo below to financially support C.A.R.E. Education to Prevent Cruelty.
Free Compassionate USA Micro-Course Partner Since 2022
George Lakoff's Resources
The basic idea is this: Dr. Lakoff's resources are free and open to all. He will provide framing suggestions regularly over social media, and whoever receives them can decide how to use them, and whether to share them or retweet them. Dr. Lakoff's process is bottom-up.
Dr. Lakoff also offers this framing service to activist organizations, media folks, and elected officials and their staff.
Pro-Empathy Pledge to the People of the World
(Recited while holding a neighbor's hand. People from other countries may insert the name of their country.)
I pledge my care to the people of the world
and to my neighbors in the United States of America
and to our human rights, which I defend and promote,
one world governed with empathy and responsibility,
with liberty and justice for all.
Empathy Surplus Network USA is a 501(c)(3). Our mission is to support our members and volunteers in applying George Lakoff's science-based communication framework to frame and reframe ongoing public discourse around empathy, thereby uniting siloed human rights advocates and elected officials. Donations are exempt from federal income taxation under section 501(a) and described in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL compact resources
Pro-Empathy Freedom Declaration
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