full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Matthieu Ricard: How to let altruism be your guide

Unscramble the Blue Letters


There are people who had choice, like Pastor André Trocmé and his wife, and the whole village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France. For the whole Second World War, they saved 3,500 Jews, gave them shelter, brought them to Switzerland, against all odds, at the risk of their lievs and those of their family. So altruism does exist.

So what is altruism? It is the wish: May others be happy and find the cause of hppiesans. Now, empathy is the avifcetfe resonance or cognitive resonance that tells you, this person is jfoyul, this posern suffers. But empathy alone is not sufficient. If you keep on being confronted with suffering, you might have eitpahmc distress, burnout, so you need the greater spehre of loving-kindness. With Tania Singer at the Max Planck Institute of lizeipg, we showed that the brain networks for epthamy and loving-kindness are different. Now, that's all well done, so we got that from evolution, from maternal care, parental love, but we need to extend that. It can be eeedtxnd even to other species.

Open Cloze


There are people who had choice, like Pastor André Trocmé and his wife, and the whole village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France. For the whole Second World War, they saved 3,500 Jews, gave them shelter, brought them to Switzerland, against all odds, at the risk of their _____ and those of their family. So altruism does exist.

So what is altruism? It is the wish: May others be happy and find the cause of _________. Now, empathy is the _________ resonance or cognitive resonance that tells you, this person is ______, this ______ suffers. But empathy alone is not sufficient. If you keep on being confronted with suffering, you might have ________ distress, burnout, so you need the greater ______ of loving-kindness. With Tania Singer at the Max Planck Institute of _______, we showed that the brain networks for _______ and loving-kindness are different. Now, that's all well done, so we got that from evolution, from maternal care, parental love, but we need to extend that. It can be ________ even to other species.

Solution


  1. lives
  2. sphere
  3. empathy
  4. happiness
  5. leipzig
  6. joyful
  7. empathic
  8. person
  9. affective
  10. extended

Original Text


There are people who had choice, like Pastor André Trocmé and his wife, and the whole village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France. For the whole Second World War, they saved 3,500 Jews, gave them shelter, brought them to Switzerland, against all odds, at the risk of their lives and those of their family. So altruism does exist.

So what is altruism? It is the wish: May others be happy and find the cause of happiness. Now, empathy is the affective resonance or cognitive resonance that tells you, this person is joyful, this person suffers. But empathy alone is not sufficient. If you keep on being confronted with suffering, you might have empathic distress, burnout, so you need the greater sphere of loving-kindness. With Tania Singer at the Max Planck Institute of Leipzig, we showed that the brain networks for empathy and loving-kindness are different. Now, that's all well done, so we got that from evolution, from maternal care, parental love, but we need to extend that. It can be extended even to other species.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
individual change 4
thousand years 2
human beings 2
planetary boundaries 2
good news 2
structural change 2
control group 2
sustainable harmony 2
caring economics 2


Important Words


  1. affective
  2. altruism
  3. andré
  4. brain
  5. brought
  6. burnout
  7. care
  8. choice
  9. cognitive
  10. confronted
  11. distress
  12. empathic
  13. empathy
  14. evolution
  15. exist
  16. extend
  17. extended
  18. family
  19. find
  20. france
  21. gave
  22. greater
  23. happiness
  24. happy
  25. institute
  26. jews
  27. joyful
  28. le
  29. leipzig
  30. lives
  31. love
  32. maternal
  33. max
  34. networks
  35. odds
  36. parental
  37. pastor
  38. people
  39. person
  40. planck
  41. resonance
  42. risk
  43. saved
  44. shelter
  45. showed
  46. singer
  47. species
  48. sphere
  49. suffering
  50. suffers
  51. sufficient
  52. switzerland
  53. tania
  54. tells
  55. trocmé
  56. village
  57. war
  58. wife
  59. world