Why strengthen compassion?

- [Narrator] In choosing this program, you've made a conscious choice to commit some of your time to strengthening compassion. I thought it might be helpful to reflect a little bit on why. Why strengthen compassion? Why commit our time and our energy and attention to this task? And I think sort of first and foremost, it's for the sake of compassion itself and how much the world right now needs compassion. A few years ago, I was reading an article in the New York times and a quote in that article really stood out to me. The journalist wrote about the only thing tanking faster than consumer confidence and the Greek economy would be the global compassion index if such a measure existed. And I think many of us feel this way, that somehow compassion is being challenged more now than ever. At least here in the U S where I live, I feel like we have a culture that celebrates cynicism and violence that glamorizes the…