Workshop: Preparing for Difficult Conversations – One Book One Marin 2018

Posted by on 20 January 2018

Inspired by this year’s One Book One Marin title, professional mediator Marissa Wertheimer will lead participants through a number of engaging, interactive exercises designed to help us cross “empathy walls,” and to have compassion and understanding in our conversations with others.

“An empathy wall is an obstacle to deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs or whose childhood is rooted in different circumstances. In a period of political tumult, we gasp for quick certainties. We shoe horn new information into ways we already think. We settle for knowing our opposite numbers from the outside. But is it possible, without changing our beliefs, to know others from the inside, to see reality through their eyes, to understand the links between life, feeling, and politics; that is, to cross the empathy wall? I thought it was.” – Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russel Hochschild

Online Resource Guide: Learn more about Strangers in Their Own Land, view interviews with Arlie Russell Hochschild, read reviews from across the political spectrum, and more! This LibGuide was created by David Patterson, Librarian at College of Marin.

Check out all our One Book One Marin programs here.