We live among people who differ in many ways not only from ourselves but from one another. This situation, globally as well as locally, often gives rise to fear and anxiety, misunderstanding and conflict, harm and violence. Our response, too readily, is fight, flight, or freeze, and our shorter-term tactics and longer-term strategies are insufficient. The course addresses this situation as it examines texts, perspectives, and experiences having to do with two subject areas: pluralism and empathy. We explore pluralism, interpersonally and socially, in experiences and engagements among differences in (a) religion and theology, (b) race and ethnicity, and (c) sexuality and gender. We explore pluralism within one's own psyche, in the interaction among coexisting developmental perspectives (that of the child, the adolescent, and the adult) and in the abiding contrast between a perspective we profess consciously and another we enact unconsciously. We explore the development of empathy from 'the default position' (characterized by egocentrism, presumed objectivity, unexamined simplification, and binary thinking) toward mutually beneficial ways of being and being-with others.

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