Contact, communication and compassion as stairways to peace: A holistic sociological perspective

This paper describes the attitudes of academic Israeli students of Jewish and Arab descent after having participated in diverse processes to promote cross-cultural empathic communication within special workshops and in regular academic courses. Grounded in a holistic planetary consciousness perspective, these experiences suggest that empathy, caring, loving and compassion, taken together as a synergistic gestalt of pro-social behavior, can indeed be trained. It is further suggested that such training is urgently needed to sustain life as we know it, and that it appears conducive to optimism, builds hope towards eventual peace and contributes to more effective and meaningful participation in the world for all those involved. Theoretically, this paper suggests an emerging sociological paradigm shift that embraces the subjective experience together with the structural analyses of planetary circumstances, the promotion of necessary institutional change and a committed activism towards a sustainable society. Such framework addresses and embraces the four dimensions suggested in Burawoy's 2004 ASA Presidential Address to the American Sociological Association for public and holistic sociology, and it resonates with Sorokin's Integralist perspective.   Key words: Holistic sociology, planetary consciousness, communication, empathy, compassion, peace.