MISSION
The Empathy-Based Society Institute exists to bring the idea of the empathy-based society into public view as a coherent alternative to the violence-based one that currently organises most of the world.
We live in a society organised around normalised violence: wars, poverty, ecological breakdown, and the slaughter of more than 80 billion animals every year. These look like separate crises. They share one root: violence. Violence is the abuse of power that denies the needs, dignity, and lives of others, and it has been embedded in economic systems, cultural structures, and everyday practice until it looks like the natural order of things.
Empathy is its neurological counterforce. Research by Professor Luis Moya-Albiol and his team shows that empathy and violence rely on partly overlapping brain circuits. When empathy is active, it suppresses violence. When violence is active, it suppresses empathy. What we practise, individually and collectively, grows stronger.
What we do
The Empathy-Based Society Initiative shows how violence and empathy shape our society, champions empathic practices at both individual and systemic levels, and reveals a transition already underway.
Shows how violence and empathy shape a society: two organising principles, two futures.
Champions empathic practices at both individual and systemic levels. Individually, in how we relate to ourselves and one another, what we eat and purchase, and how we treat nature and the planet. Collectively, in how laws, economies, media, education, and institutions are organised.
Reveals foundations already being built. An empathy-based society is not waiting to be invented. It already exists in fragments, in the work of organisations, movements, businesses, artists, researchers, and millions of people who work to eliminate suffering and advance the well-being of people, animals, nature, and the planet. What turns those foundations into a shared shift is recognition: seeing them as part of the same civilisational alternative.
The EBSI Network
The Empathy-Based Society Network connects the people, organisations, initiatives, businesses, researchers, and artists already building the foundations of an empathy-based society. It makes their shared purpose visible, builds collective power for change, and strengthens empathy as a shared social value. Members come to see their own work as part of an empathy-based society in the making, not as isolated attempts to fix isolated problems of the violence-based one.
What we're building toward
An empathy-based society: institutions, economies, laws, and cultures organised around recognising and responding to the needs of all sentient beings and the living systems that sustain them.
Animals are not resources or property. Their lives belong to them. The living world is not a warehouse for human use. It is a community of life to which we belong. Communities become places where people are safe, supported, and able to shape the conditions that affect their lives. Children grow up learning empathy toward themselves, others, animals, and the planet as naturally as they learn language.
The full vision, principles, and purpose are set out in the Call.
Programs & Resources
Organization & Contact
Empathy-Based Society Institute
Zavod Raziskovalni Inštitut za empatično družbo
Ljubljana, Slovenia, Europe
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