It's through the small things that we develop our moral imagination, so that we can understand the sufferings of others.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense.
A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.
It's in our ability to selectively engage and disengage our moral standards, and it helps explain how people can be barbarically cruel in one moment and compassionate the next.
When suffering happens, it forces us to confront life in a different way than we normally do.
Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it's accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another's eyes or heart.
It's from our sufferings that we form our consciousness.
When we watch stories, we learn empathy, we learn compassion, and hopefully we achieve some sort of understanding.
There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?
Very ancient parts of the brain are involved in moral decision making.
For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.