What is Empathetic Activism?
My bookshelf is lined with books instructing me on how to persuade people. From Robert Cialdini’s The Psychology of Persuasion to Daniel Pink’s To Sell is Human to Catherine Sanderson’s Why We Act, it feels like getting other people to do and believe what we want has been the great quest of my personal reading. And I am not alone. Indeed, it often feels like persuasion is a founding value of the 21st century, and the success of these books and the number of people who call themselves “activists” would support this claim. How long has the job description “activist” existed? I’m not sure, but I know that for me personally, my interest in activism stems from my professional background in marketing. And there have been marketers for as long as history records.
I’ve never been very good at marketing things that I don’t believe in, which is why I’ve spent most of my marketing career in cause-oriented organizations or at agencies that promote cause-oriented clients. I’ve tried to “sell” people on why the Huntsman Cancer Institute is so awesome, or why
people should donate to Deseret Industries to give people jobs. I’ve tried to color in the cartoon stereotypes of Latter-day Saint women by starting the Mormon Women Project, and persuade people of Utah’s radical roots by promoting Utah women’s history.
Over the decades I’ve been trying to persuade others, I’ve wrestled with the ethics of persuasion. Is it right to try to counteract the influencing principles already existing in another’s life, to trump them with my own influencing principle? Why do I feel so strongly about converting people to a belief or activity I support? Do I care for the right reasons? Or is persuasion a means to corrupting power? What would happen if everyone truly did feel like I do? Would the world truly be a quantifiably better place, or would something also be lost?
I’ve come to peace with these questions by practicing what I call empathetic activism, a specific approach to persuasion that I feel both honors what I believe is right while also holding respect for others. Several core principles guide my actions and efforts which I hope will become clear in what I write here.
My non-profit, Better Days 2020, recently wrapped up its celebrations of the 2020 suffrage anniversaries, and I am winding up the (virtual!) book tour for Pioneering the Vote: The Untold Story of Suffragists in Utah and the West. So I find myself at a crossroads. What will 2021 hold for me, as a marketer, non-profit leader, author? No matter which professional hat I wear this year, I know that empathetic activism will be at the heart of my activities. I am at my best when driven by the passion that activism channels.
