A new study from Yale University has found that the spread and intensity of gun violence in the United States mimics and behaves similar to a biological disease. The Yale researchers conducted an “epidemiological analysis” of a group of 138,163 people over an 8 year period (2006-2014) and were able to reliably predict who would become “a subject of” or “infected with” gun violence. The central conclusion of the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (3 January 2017), was that “Gunshot violence follows an epidemic-lik
e process of social contagion that is transmitted through networks of people by social interactions.” In other words, when someone you know is involved in an incident of gun violence, your risk of becoming involved in gun violence increases, at least temporarily.
The researchers were able to “trace the infection” of gunshot violence through a network of Chicagoans by following “chains in which one person becomes infected, exposing his or her associates, who then may become infected and spread the infection to their associates.” The authors found that such “cascades of gunshot violence episodes” continue to run through the network as long as there is someone associated with a shooter or a victim. In short, your risk of infection increases—just like a biological epidemic—the more you are simply exposed to the disease (i.e., it doesn’t matter whether you know the shooter or victim; if you know either one, your risk of being involved in an incident of gun violence is heightened).
Since gun violence spreads as a social contagion, it means that we have the capability to abate it. The authors conclude their analysis by offering insights into reducing gun violence such as treating it as a public health issue rather than a criminal justice problem. If we were to treat gun violence as a public health epidemic, it would force us to develop new strategies for reducing it other than the punish-the-offender approach. The study’s main finding that gun violence spreads like a disease through networks of social interactions means that fostering compassion throughout society can have a profound effect on reducing the number of the more than 200 people who are murdered or assaulted with a firearm every day in the United States. One way to combat violence in general is to strengthen compassion on the individual and communal levels. From explaining how to develop self-compassion to creating cities of compassion The Compassionate Achiever offers several ways to help inoculate you and your community against the social contagion of violence.
The Compassionate Achiever: How Helping Others Fuels Your Success is now available for pre-order from the following retailers:
AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | INDIEBOUND | BOOKSAMILLION | GOOGLE PLAY | iBOOKS
My New 4-Step Program for Cultivating Compassion
Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet and scholar, said that “There is a place where words are born of silence.” The silence of the Weaving Wise/Whys blog over the last few months I know has been deafening. Thank you for staying with the blog and for your patience though the silence. For out of the silence, my new book (The Compassionate Achiever) was born.
The Compassionate Achiever was also born out of my concern that many people seem to be unaware of or overlook the fact that compassion is an important factor in attaining success. When you ask people to list the qualities of a successful person, they usually mention grit, courage, perseverance, and intelligence but rarely do you hear compassion. One problem with such lists is that they are exclusively self-focused and don’t include any concern about others. Do we really want a world filled with self-absorbed achievers?
When you follow a compassionate path in whatever you may be doing in life, the byproduct is success for you and the people around you. Whether you are trying to get a promotion, reach a financial milestone, complete a degree, or help a child learn to read, compassion helps you to accomplish your goal more efficiently and effectively, and it makes the achievement more enduring, fulfilling, and rewarding. Compassion is win-win. It helps you to be successful, and it helps solve problems and create opportunities for others.
My hope is that The Compassionate Achiever helps to not only spread compassion but also alter the common perception of how to attain success. I’ve heard the adage that “it’s lonely at the top” over and over again throughout life but it’s never lonely at the top if you’re a compassionate achiever.
The Compassionate Achiever: How Helping Others Fuels Your Success is now available for pre-order from the following retailers:
AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | INDIEBOUND | BOOKSAMILLION | GOOGLE PLAY | iBOOKS
The host of iTunes top rated “New & Noteworthy” podcast, The Science of Success with Matt Bodnar, interviewed me for an episode called “The Surprising Power of Compassion.” Matt’s questions guided us through a discussion about how compassion can fuel creativity, build emotional resilience and help us achieve personal and professional goals. We took a ‘mindwalk’ with great thinkers ranging from Jean Jacques Rousseau to Charles Munger on compassion’s role in achieving success in the boardroom, classroom and living room.
The episode can be listened to at the following link:
http://redorbit.podbean.com/e/the-surprising-power-of-compassion-with-dr-chris-kukk/
Compassion, Neuroscience and Society: A Radio Interview in 4 SegmentsThe host of WS Radio’s The Enrichment Hour, Mike Schwager, interviewed me on January 28, 2016 for a show called “Weaving Compassion and Neuroscience into the Fabric of Society to Make a Better Future.” We talked about a wide range of topics and issues including education, neuroscience, self-improvement, counter-intelligence, Charles Darwin and my work with the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement on social-emotional learning. The interview is split into four 15-minute segments. Click here to listen to the interview.
Note: Scroll down when on this page to find the 4 segments of the complete interview.
Pope Francis and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (his nickname is Nino) both made headlines this month for their perspectives on science: one used science to support his argument and the other disregarded science to espouse his religious beliefs (HINT: justice appears to be blind to science). While the Pope’s scientifically supported and informed encyclical on climate change made a bigger media splash than Nino’s graduation speech that included a discussion about the start-date of humanity (which disregarded all scientific evidence), the juxtaposition of both comments in the media gave me hope that we (American society) have started to turn the proverbial corner towards a constructive rather than polarizing dialogue about science and religion.
The Pope used science to explain why and how we are where we are in terms of humanity’s effect on Earth. Pope Francis states on pages 18–20 of his encyclical Laudato Si’ (Praise Be):
“A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level
and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events…It is true that there are other factors (such as volcanic activity, variations in the earth’s orbit and axis, the solar cycle), yet a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity…Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”
Pope Francis, similar to the Dalai Lama, sees science and religion as complementary to each other; a complement that can inform society.
The Nino sees religious ideology and doctrine as overriding scientific evidence. In contrast to the Pope, Nino excluded science in his graduation remarks to make a religious argument for when and where we, human beings, came from. In his speech, according to The Washington Post, at an all-girls Catholic high school in Maryland, Scalia said:
“Class of 2015, you should not leave Stone Ridge High School thinking that you face challenges that are at all, in any important sense, unprecedented,” he said. “Humanity has been around for at least some 5,000 years or so, and I doubt that the basic challenges as confronted are any worse now, or alas even much different, from what they ever were.”
Nino’s start-date for humanity of 5,000 years is very close to what creationists believe was the beginning of all life on Earth. Creationism, which isn’t a part of Catholicism, denies all scientific evidence from evolutionary biology, archaeology, chemistry, physics, etc. … to make the claim that Senator Ted Cruz and some other important leaders do that the world is only 6,000 years old. The first sprig of the human family tree sprouted, according to evolutionary biology, approximately 6–7 million years ago with homo sapiens evolving about 200,000 years ago. I was under the impression that justices were in the habit of weighing all evidence when making decisions.
The Pope uses science to explain the world as it is and Nino excludes science to explain the world as he sees it. While Pope Francis and Justice Scalia share the same religion (Catholicism), they significantly diverge in opinion when it comes to the role of science in public discourse. Both men are Catholics with a capital C; okay maybe one is a ‘bit’ of a bigger C since, after all, he is the leader of the Holy See. Both are leaders; while one is the head of the Catholic Church, the other is a Supreme Court Justice. Both men may have started their religious lives on one Catholic path of understanding, but that path has significantly diverged in the forest of science.
The Pope’s respect for science will be useful for handling and possibly overcoming the effects of both El Niño and the Nino. The Pope’s ideas about how to ‘take-on’ climate issues such as El Niño have the byproduct of ‘taking-on’ Nino’s ideas about diminishing science’s informative role in society. A person does not have to choose between a religious life and scientific thinking. Society becomes stronger when we combine science with the humanities and weaker when we exclude one for the other.
‘It’s My Own Invention’
~Title of Chapter 8 in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass
As artificial intelligence (A.I.) develops, humanity’s strengths and weaknesses will increasingly be reflected in the machines we create. I couldn’t help but think of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass as I exited the theater after watching Alex Garland’s A.I. masterpiece, Ex Machina. Ava (Garland’s A.I. character) is the personification of Carroll’s words, especially the exchange between Alice and the White Knight over his horse’s anklets:
‘You see,’ he went on after a pause, ‘it’s as well to be provided for EVERYTHING. That’s the reason the horse has all those anklets around his feet.’
‘But what are they for?’ Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity.
‘To guard against the bites of sharks,’ the Knight replied. ‘It’s an invention of my own.’
Artificial intelligence is helping us (human beings) with “everything” from cooking and calculating to driving and flying. We are increasingly using A.I. because, in part at least, it can help us “guard against” our own mistakes in driving, flying, etc … for to err is human. A.I. is an ‘invention of our own’ to help us provide for everything we need (or want) and to guard against the bites of our own mistakes. However, what if, as some notable leaders in business, science and technology recently remarked, our own invention has a strong and devastating bite?
Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk all recently warned of the threat that artificial intelligence poses to human existence. While Musk characterized A.I. development as “summoning the demon,” Gates posted the following answer to a question on a Reddit forum: “I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don’t understand why some people are not concerned.” Dr. Hawking told the BBC in December 2014 that “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
Gates, Hawking and Musk all temper their ‘danger-Will-Robinson’ remarks, however, by explaining the potential benefits of A.I., if people are able to control and manage it well. As the Future of Life Institute (FLI), which received a $10 million donation from Musk, recently wrote in an open letter signed by Hawking, Musk and many other well-known scientists and technologists: “Success in the quest for artificial intelligence has the potential to bring unprecedented benefits to humanity, and it is therefore worthwhile to research how to maximize these benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls.” The FLI is calling for an interdisciplinary approach to the development of A.I. because how and what we choose to emphasize in its evolution will determine whether A.I. provides greater benefits than pitfalls. As Ava sarcastically said in Ex Machina, “I’m interested to see what you’ll choose.”
We need to emphasize the moral, ethical and social-emotional aspects of learning just as much as—if not more than—the technological and intellectual factors in A.I. development. Values such as compassion, empathy, gratitude and forgiveness should be woven into this new version of the body electric, which Walt Whitman used as a symbol for the oneness of all people. If we do not choose to emphasize EQ (emotional quotient) as much as IQ (intelligence quotient), then I do not know how we avoid the pitfalls of A.I. Cognitive intelligence without emotional intelligence tends to lead to unstable and even psychopathic behavior; such a combination has been used to describe serial murderers. Do we really want our technological “anklets” to become man-eating sharks?
As we step through the looking glass of A.I., it is wise to remember William Durant’s words regarding the collapse of civilizations: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.” A.I.’s role in the fate of our civilization will be determined by how much human compassion or indifference we emphasize in our body electric. The next chapter in the story of humanity could be titled: ‘When Ava Met Alice.’
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