Our Four Empathy Activities
Governs the debate with empathy.
INGEST – INVEST – IMPLEMENT – INVITE – HUH?
INGEST
the science-based communication techniques of George Lakoff to feed our caring neural pathways.
invest
in science-based communication, because reframing IS social change.
implement
partnership applications of our science-based communication to change how we think and speak in the public square.
INVITE
others to learn Lakoff’s science-based communication techniques to protect and empower a caring society.
Govern the debate with empathy.
Framing human rights around empathy IS social change that expands our freedom.
Ingest the science and history of freedom.
Reframing around empathy IS social change that expands freedom, according to Dr. George Lakoff. Other scientists and historians concur. Here’s what they say.
Award-winning researcher Francesco Gino at Harvard’s Mind, Brain, Behavior Initiative, calls reframing around empathy “breaking the rules for positive change.”
At the 2026 Challenging Hate Conference at the University of Limerick, Ireland, Arun Bokde, a Trinity College Dublin neuroscientist, says, “Empathy is a disruptor. Perspective taking interrupts the dehumanization process underpinning hatred. Empathy forces the brain to recognize shared humanity, making dehumanization less sustainable.”
In 2024, Empathy Surplus sponsored a lecture in Wilmington, Ohio, by historian Dr. Timothy Snyder promoting his book On Freedom. Here’s what Dr. Snyder says about the importance of empathy. “A little leap of empathy is at the beginning of the knowledge we need for freedom. Empathy is not just some vague urging to be kind. Empathy is a precondition for certain knowledge of the world. The isolated individual, trying to contemplate the world alone, has no chance of understanding it.”
If we don’t ingest the science of effective communication and reframe public discourse around empathy, we’ll lose our freedoms, human rights, and our republic with all of its democratic institutions. Donate here and subscribe to our Substack here.
Dr. George Lakoff warned us that rejecting science-based communication adds to our empathy deficit.
Dr. George Lakoff and his Rockridge Institute warned America about our empathy deficit in 1998. Not only that, Lakoff warned us about the growing domestic threat of anti-empathy authoritarianism. Moreover, long before the January 2021 insurrection on the US Capitol Building, Lakoff pointed to expanding authoritarian infrastructure. Furthermore, Lakoff warned us that conservatism’s authoritarian focus, funded by unethical corporations, helped dismantle public government.
Rockridge published its “progressive handbook” called Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, in 2006. In it, Dr. Lakoff wrote, “A dark cloud of authoritarianism looms over the nation. And conservatism makes it difficult to address progressive issues without a politics of care. Moreover, authoritarian conservatives have taken over the reins of government and have inhibited caring political debate for many years. Consequently, progressive ideals of empathic government must return to center stage in our national political discourse for real change to happen.
Progressive pro-empathy governance is a civic task for caring human beings and their representatives
Reframing our world around empathy will be neither easy nor quick—it will take years of work. But we can prevail if pro-empathy voters articulate the progressive vision because progressive political leaders cannot do it alone. And even though representatives and candidates are smart and well-intentioned, their short-term pressures are significant. They will need the help of progressive Americans. And when we trumpet our values throughout the nation, our progressive political leaders will have the backing they need to reframe around a politics of care more freely.”
Two years later, in 2008, Rockridge Institute closed its doors because of insufficient progressive financial support.
The Empathy Surplus Network USA picked up the Rockridge Institute Mantel
The Empathy Surplus idea was launched in 2009 by our founder, Charles Watts, who had served on Dr. Lakoff’s Rockridge Nation online community advisory board. Today, through its Four Empathy Activities, the Empathy Surplus Network USA carries on Dr. Lakoff’s idea of ongoing thought leaders’ continuing education in a collective way. Donate here and subscribe to our Substack here.
The 1st Amendment encourages citizens to GOVERN civil discourse.
This pro-empathy governance work is important because democracy continues to be threatened in two ways. First, too many progressives don’t know that negating anti-empathy conservative language, i.e., using conservative language to argue against conservatism, only strengthens conservatism. Meanwhile, conservative think tanks offer ongoing continuing education to unethical businessmen and women and their representatives. Their main focus is to inhibit progressive nurturing parent core values of empathy for and responsibility to all human beings and advance conservative, strict father core values of authority, obedience to that authority, and harsh punishment when the authority is disobeyed.
And second, extreme anti-empathy conservatism corrupted corporations, and their cruel think tanks like ALEC and the Center for Christian Virtue, both with roots in Ohio, continue to threaten insurrection.
All conversations are moral and political. Let’s rehab the word “politics” into a caring politics.
Making friends is about mutual governance of the relationship. Will the friendship advance care or cruelty? If you have made and kept a friend, YOU are a politician. Are you a caring or cruel politician?
Remember Reagan’s assertion that “government is the problem.” He wasn’t talking about multi-national corporate government that wants to run and ruin our lives. He wasn’t talking about conservative think tank government, launched by US Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell’s memo that, five decades later, authored Project 2025.
Invest – Implement – Invite communities of practice. Join us and unite our siloed interests around our duty to care.
Framing and reframing constant public discourse advancing any human right takes empathy and determination. In 1945, after World War II, the Allied Nations sent delegates and consultants to San Francisco to write the United Nations Charter. Fifty individual Rotary Club members from every Allied Nation were recruited to serve as civil society consultants. These Rotarians rejected the opening phrase of the UN Charter Preamble, which read, “We the Member States of the United Nations in order to.” What they suggested was adopted, and it reads, “We the peoples of the United Nations determined…”
It’s not enough to agree with the 1760 legal concept of our duty to care. What unites siloed human rights advocates is our determined commitment to teach and promote our duty to care for humanity’s freedom and human rights. Our current empathy deficit exists because of our weak commitment to our other core values of responsibility and empathy.
We get stronger when we practice teaching and promoting together. Join us.
Click our logo below to financially support C.A.R.R.E. Education to Prevent Cruelty.
Free Compassionate USA Micro-Course Partner Since 2022
Thank you to scholarship sponsors.
* Rotary Related
-
Antiracist Alliance, White Plains, New York
-
Books N More, Wilmington, Ohio
-
Circular Development, Sugarcreek Township, Ohio
-
* Edward Jones Financial Advisor Jason Hillard, Wilmington, Ohio
-
Linndale Equipment, Wilmington, Ohio
-
* Practice with Purpose LLC, Legal Counsel, Dayton, Ohio
-
Shalom Massage LLC, Oakwood, Ohio
-
TGE Solar, Cincinnati, Ohio
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.
- George Lakoff's Website
- George Lakoff's Books
- George Lakoff's Facebook
- George Lakoff's Framing the Environment Videos
- George Lakoff's BluSky
- Long Framing Guide
- Short Framing Guide
#CareWing Pledge for the People of the World
I pledge my #DutyToCare for the people of the world
and for my neighbors in (your home country)
and to our human rights, which I defend and promote,
an expanding care wing, 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
USA NETWORK
Bi-Annual Communications on Engagement
Pro-Empathy Freedom Declaration
Please give us 5-star Google reviews with QR Code below or go to proempathy.us/review.
Privacy | Terms of Service ©2026 Empathy Surplus Project All rights reserved. Website developed, maintained, and secured in Ohio by REBEL-IST