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# 2019-12-13 - The Age of Empathy by Frans De Waal | |
I found this book in a free pile and am glad i picked it up. I found | |
it quite informative about empathy and mind-expanding in general. | |
Quite fitting that i should read this after reading Ishmael. In a | |
nutshell, the book contests the idea that we are naturally bad and | |
selfish to the core. It also provides a more nuanced view of how | |
empathy works and how it is organized within an individual. My notes | |
follow below. | |
# Chapter 1, Biology Left and Right | |
How people organize their societies may not seem the sort of topic a | |
biologist should worry about. I should be concerned with the | |
ivory-billed woodpecker [thought to be extinct], the role of primates | |
in the spread of AIDS or Ebola [we're primates too, right?], the | |
disappearance of tropical rain forests, or whether we evolved from | |
the apes. ... Every debate about society and government makes huge | |
assumptions about human nature, which are presented as if they come | |
straight out of biology. But they almost never do. | |
There is exciting new research about the origins of altruism and | |
fairness in both ourselves and other animals. For example, if one | |
gives two monkeys hugely different rewards for the same task, the one | |
who gets the short end of the stick simply refuses to perform. ... By | |
protesting against unfairness, their behavior supports both the claim | |
that incentives matter and that there is a natural dislike of | |
injustice. | |
[The author gives an example of feeding a group of chimpanzees in a | |
primate research center.] | |
My point is that there is both ownership and sharing. In the end, | |
usually within twenty minutes, all of the chimpanzees in the group | |
will have some food. ... It is a relatively peaceful scene even | |
though there is also quite a bit of jostling for position. | |
So don't believe anyone who says that since nature is based on a | |
struggle for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals | |
survive by cooperating and sharing. | |
Too many economists and politicians model human society on the | |
perpetual struggle they believe exists in nature, but which is a mere | |
projection. ... Obviously, competition is part of the picture, but | |
humans can't live by competition alone. | |
We live in a society that celebrates the cerebral and looks down upon | |
emotions as mushy and messy. [Never mind that emotions are just as | |
cerebral as intellect.] Worse, emotions are hard to control, and | |
isn't self-control what makes us human? [Never mind that thoughts | |
are just as hard to control as emotions. It's a rare bird who can | |
turn them off like the flip of a light switch. Or who can abruptly | |
choose to believe something completely different.] | |
Clearly, we often make snap moral decisions that come from the "gut." | |
Our emotions [or subconscious] decide, after which our reasoning | |
power tries to catch up as spin doctor, concocting plausible | |
justifications. With this dent in the primacy of human logic, | |
pre-Kantian approaches to morality are making a comeback. They | |
anchor morality in the so-called sentiments, a view that fits well | |
with evolutionary theory, modern neuroscience, and the behavior of | |
our primate relatives. | |
... interest in others is fundamental. Where would human morality be | |
without it? It's the bedrock upon which everything else is | |
constructed. | |
[Long-term spouses can have emotional convergence.] Daily sharing of | |
emotions apparently leads one partner to "internalize" the other, and | |
vice versa... | |
Our bodies and minds are made for social life, and we become | |
hopelessly depressed in its absence. This is why next to death, | |
solitary confinement is our worst punishment. Bonding is so good for | |
us that the most reliable way to extend one's life expectancy is to | |
marry and stay married. The flip side is the risk we run after | |
losing a partner. | |
Behaviorism is the belief that behavior is all that science can see | |
and know, and therefore is all it should care about. The mind, if | |
such a thing even exists, remains a black box. Emotions are largely | |
irrelevant. | |
John Watson was the founding father of behaviorism. He was so | |
enamored by the power of conditioning that he became allergic to | |
emotion. He was particularly skeptical of maternal love, which he | |
considered a dangerous instrument. Fussing over the children, | |
mothers were ruining them by instilling weaknesses, fears, and | |
inferiorities. Society needed less warmth and more structure. | |
Watson dreamed of a "baby farm" without parents so that infants could | |
be raised according to scientific principles. For example, a child | |
should be touched only if it has behaved incredibly well, and not | |
with a hug or kiss, but rather with a little pat on the head. | |
Physical rewards that are systematically meted out would do wonders, | |
Watson felt, and were far superior to the mawkish rearing style of | |
the average well-meaning mom. | |
Unfortunately, environments like the baby farm existed, and all we | |
can say about them is that they were deadly! This became clear when | |
psychologists studied orphans kept in little cribs separated by white | |
sheets, deprived of visual stimulation and body contact. As | |
recommended by scientists, the orphans had never been cooed at, held, | |
or tickled. They looked like zombies, with immobile faces and | |
wide-open expressionless eyes. Had Watson been right, these children | |
should have been thriving, but they in fact lacked all resistance to | |
disease. At some orphanages, mortality approached 100 percent. | |
Watson's crusade against what he called the "over-kissed child," and | |
the immense respect accorded him in the 1920s public opinion, seem | |
incomprehensible today... | |
Bonding is essential for our species, and it is what makes us | |
happiest. ... The pursuit of happiness written into the U.S. | |
Declaration of Independence rather refers to a state of satisfaction | |
with the life one is living. This is a measurable state, and studies | |
show that beyond a certain basic income, material wealth carries | |
remarkably little weight. ... time spent with friends and family is | |
what does people the most good. | |
Instead of fixating on the peaks of civilization, we need to pay more | |
attention to the foothills. The peaks glimmer in the sun, but it is | |
in the foothills that we find most of what drives us, including those | |
messy emotions that make us spoil our children. | |
Security is the first and foremost reason for social life. This | |
brings me to the second false origin myth: that human society is the | |
voluntary creation of autonomous people. The illusion here is that | |
our ancestors had no need for anybody else. They led uncommitted | |
lives. Their only problem was that they were so competitive that the | |
cost of strife became unbearable. Being intelligent animals, they | |
decided to give up a few liberties in return for community life. | |
Granted, it can be instructive to look at human relations as if they | |
resulted from an agreement among equal parties. It helps us think | |
about how we treat, or ought to treat, one another. It's good to | |
realize though, that this way of framing the issue is leftover from | |
pre-Darwinian days, based on a totally erroneous image of our | |
species. ... We descended from a long line of group-living primates | |
with a high degree of interdependence. | |
Here we arrive at the third false origin myth, which is that our | |
species has been waging war for as long as it has been around. | |
Although archaeological signs of individual murder go back hundreds | |
of thousands of years, we lack similar evidence for warfare from | |
before the agricultural revolution. | |
Present-day hunter-gatherers alternate long stretches of peace and | |
harmony with brief interludes of violent confrontation. | |
Chimpanzees engage in violent battles over territory. Genetically | |
speaking, however, our species is exactly equally close to another | |
ape, the bonobo, which does nothing of the kind. Bonobos can be | |
unfriendly to their neighbors, but soon after a confrontation has | |
begun, females often rush to the other side to have sex with both | |
males and other females. Since it is hard to have sex and wage war | |
at the same time, the scene rapidly turns into a sort of picnic. It | |
ends with adults from different groups grooming each other while | |
their children play. Thus far, lethal aggression among bonobos is | |
unheard of. | |
The only certainty is that our species has a potential for warfare, | |
which under certain circumstances will rear its ugly head. | |
Because of interdependencies between groups with scarce resources, | |
our ancestors probably never waged war on a grand scale until they | |
settled down and began to accumulate wealth by means of agriculture. | |
This made attacks on other groups more profitable. Instead of being | |
the product of an aggressive drive, it seems that war is more about | |
power and profit. This also implies, of course, that it's hardly | |
inevitable. | |
[Western origin stories are not] in keeping with the old way, which | |
is one of reliance on one another, of connection, of suppressing both | |
internal and external disputes, because the hold on subsistence is so | |
tenuous that food and safety are top priorities. | |
We can't return to this preindustrial way of life. We live in | |
societies of mind-boggling scale and complexity that demand quite a | |
different organization than humans ever enjoyed in their state of | |
nature. Yet ... we remain essentially the same animals with the same | |
psychological needs and wants. | |
False origin myths in the West: 1) Cut-throat competition is our | |
natural biological state. 2) Human society is the voluntary creation | |
of autonomous people. 3) Our species has been waging war for as long | |
as it has been around. | |
# Chapter 2, The Other Darwinism | |
Long ago, American society embraced competition as its chief | |
organizing principle even though everywhere one looks--at work, in | |
the street, in people's homes--one finds the same appreciation of | |
family, companionship, collegiality, and civic responsibility as | |
everywhere else in the world. This tension between economic freedom | |
and community values is fascinating to watch, which I do both as an | |
outsider and an insider, being a European who has lived and worked in | |
the United States for more than twenty-five years. The pendulum | |
swings that occur at regular intervals between the main political | |
parties of this nation show that the tension is alive and well, and | |
that a hands-down winner shouldn't be expected anytime soon. | |
This bipolar state of American society isn't hard to understand. | |
It's not that different from the situation in Europe... What makes | |
American politics baffling is the way it draws upon biology and | |
religion. | |
Evolutionary theory is remarkably popular among those on the | |
conservative end of the spectrum, but not in the way biologists would | |
like it to be. The theory figures like a secret mistress. | |
Passionately embraced in its obscure persona of "Social Darwinism," | |
it is rejected as soon as the daylight shines on real Darwinism. | |
Social Darwinism depicts life as a struggle in which those who make | |
it shouldn't let themselves be dragged down by those who don't. This | |
ideology was unleashed by British political philosopher Herbert | |
Spencer, who in the nineteenth century translated the laws of nature | |
into business language, coining the phrase "survival of the fittest" | |
(often incorrectly attributed to Darwin). ... In dense tomes that | |
sold hundreds of thousands of copies, he said of the poor that "the | |
whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the world of | |
them, and make room for better." | |
John D. Rockefeller even married it with religion, concluding that | |
the growth of a large business "is merely the working out of a law of | |
nature and a law of God." This religious angle--still visible in the | |
so-called Christian Right--forms the second great paradox. Where as | |
the book found in most American homes and every hotel room [the | |
Bible] urges us on almost every page to show compassion, Social | |
Darwinists scoff at such feelings, which only keep nature from | |
running its course. Poverty is dismissed as proof of laziness, and | |
social justice as a weakness. Why not simply let the poor perish? I | |
find it hard to see how Christians can embrace such harsh ideology | |
without a massive case of cognitive dissonance, but many seem to do | |
so. | |
The final paradox is that the emphasis on economic freedom triggers | |
both the best and worst in people. The worst is the aforementioned | |
deficit in compassion, but there is also an excellent side to the | |
American character--which is a merit-based society. Americans admire | |
success stories, and will never hold honest success against anyone. | |
This is truly liberating for those who are up to the challenge. | |
And so my [personal] political philosophy sits somewhere in the | |
middle of the Atlantic [between American and European values]--not | |
too comfortable a place. | |
The problem is that one can't derive the goals of society from the | |
goals of nature. Trying to do so is known as the naturalistic | |
fallacy, which is the impossibility of moving from how things are to | |
how things ought to be. Thus, if animals were to kill one another on | |
a large scale, this wouldn't mean we have to do so, too, any more | |
than we would have an obligation to live in perfect harmony if | |
animals were to do so. All that nature can offer is information and | |
inspiration, not prescription. | |
Information is critical, though. A view of human nature as "red in | |
tooth and claw" obviously sets different boundaries to society than a | |
view that includes cooperation and solidarity as part of our | |
background. Darwin himself felt uncomfortable about the "right of | |
the strongest" lessons that others, such as Spencer, tried to extract | |
from his theory. That is why I'm tired, as a biologist, to hear | |
evolutionary theory being trotted out as a prescription for society | |
by those who aren't truly interested in the theory itself and all | |
that it has to offer. | |
[Spencer] applied the naturalistic fallacy to a T. Why did Spencer's | |
ideas fall on such receptive ears? It seems to me that he was | |
offering a way out of a moral dilemma that people were only just | |
getting used to. In earlier times, the rich didn't need any | |
justification to ignore the poor. With their blue blood, the | |
nobility considered itself a different BREED. Not that they felt | |
absolutely no sense of obligation toward those underneath them, but | |
they had no qualms about living in opulence, feasting on meat, | |
slurping fine wine, and driving around in gilded carriages, while the | |
masses were close to starving. | |
All of this changed with the Industrial Revolution, which created a | |
new upper crust, one that couldn't overlook the plight of others so | |
easily. Many of them had belonged to the lower class only a few | |
generations before: They were evidently of the same blood. So, | |
shouldn't they share their wealth? They were reluctant to do so, | |
though, and were thrilled to hear that there was nothing wrong with | |
ignoring those who worked for them, it was perfectly honorable to | |
climb the ladder of success without looking back. This is how nature | |
works, Spencer assured them, thus removing any pangs of conscience | |
the rich might feel. | |
Since the goal of every immigrant is to build a better life, the | |
inevitable outcome is a culture revolving around individual | |
achievement. No wonder Spencer's message about success as its own | |
justification was well received. | |
Insofar as such arguments are based on what is supposedly natural, | |
however, they are fundamentally flawed. In Spencer's days, this was | |
exposed by the unlikely character of a Russian prince, Petr | |
Kropotkin. Though a bearded anarchist, Kropotkin was also a | |
naturalist of great distinction. In his 1902 book, Mutual Aid, he | |
argued that the struggles for existence is not so much of each | |
against all, but of masses of organisms against a hostile environment. | |
Kropotkin was inspired by a setting quite unlike the one that had | |
inspired Darwin. Darwin visited tropical regions with abundant | |
wildlife, whereas Kropotkin explored Siberia. The ideas of both men | |
reflect the difference between a rich environment, resulting in the | |
sort of population density and competition envisioned by Malthus, and | |
an environment that is frozen and unfriendly most of the time. ... | |
Instead of animals duking it out, and the victors running off with | |
the prize, he saw a communal principle at work. In subzero cold, you | |
either huddle together or die. | |
[Both Darwin and Kropotkin] believed that cooperative groups of | |
animals (or humans) would outperform less cooperative ones. In other | |
words, the ability to function in a group an build a support network | |
is a crucial survival skill. | |
In chimpanzees, both males and females actively broker community | |
relations. Males who act as arbitrator usually don't take sides and | |
can be remarkably effective at keeping the peace. In all of these | |
cases, primates show community concern. They try to ameliorate the | |
state of affairs in the group as a whole. [Thus showing that | |
conflict resolution is natural and requires no speech.] | |
Every society needs to strike a balance between selfish and social | |
motives to ensure that its economy serves society rather than the | |
other way around. All too often [the primacy of money] leads to | |
exploitation, injustice, and rampant dishonesty. In the past decade, | |
every advanced nation has had major business scandals, and in every | |
case executives have managed to shake the foundation of their society | |
precisely by following Friedman's advice [of profit first]. | |
The book of nature is like the Bible: Everyone reads into it what | |
they want, from tolerance to intolerance, and from altruism to greed. | |
It's good to realize, though, that if biologists never stop talking | |
of competition, this doesn't mean they advocate it, and if they call | |
genes selfish, this doesn't mean that genes actually are. Genes | |
can't be any more "selfish" than a river can be "angry," or sun rays | |
"loving." At most, [little chunks of DNA] are "self-promoting," | |
because successful genes help their carriers spread more copies of | |
themselves. | |
The animal kingdom is full of traits that evolved for one reason but | |
are also used for others. When it comes to behavior, too, the | |
original function doesn't always tell us how and why a behavior will | |
be used in daily life. Behavior enjoys motivational autonomy. | |
My main point is that even if a trait evolved for reason X, it may | |
very well be used in daily life for reasons X, Y, and Z. Offering | |
assistance to others evolved to serve self-interest, which it does if | |
aimed at close relatives or group mates willing to return the favor. | |
This is the way natural selection operates: It produces behavior | |
that, on average and in the long run, benefits those showing it. But | |
this doesn't mean that humans or animals only help one another for | |
selfish reasons. The reasons relevant for evolution don't | |
necessarily restrict the actor. | |
This is why the selfish-gene metaphor is so tricky. By injecting | |
psychological terminology into a discussion of gene evolution, the | |
two levels that biologists work so hard to keep apart are slammed | |
together. Clouding the distinction between genes and motivations has | |
led to an exceptionally cynical view of human and animal behavior. | |
Believe it or not, empathy is commonly presented as an illusion, | |
something that not even humans truly possess. | |
Modern psychology and neuroscience fail to back these bleak views. | |
We're preprogrammed to reach out. Empathy is an automated response | |
over which we have limited control. We can suppress it, mentally | |
block it, or fail to act on it, but except for a tiny percentage of | |
humans--known as psychopaths--no one is emotionally immune to | |
another's situation. The fundamental yet rarely asked question is: | |
Why did natural selection design our brains so that we're in tune | |
with our fellow human beings, feeling distress at their distress and | |
pleasure at their pleasure? | |
Aggression was my first topic of study, and I'm fully aware that | |
there's no shortage of it in the primates. It was only later that I | |
became interested in conflict resolution and cooperation. | |
Pure, unconditional trust and cooperation are naive and detrimental, | |
whereas unconstrained greed can only lead to the sort of dog-eat-dog | |
world that Skilling advocated at Enron until it collapsed under its | |
own mean-spirited weight. | |
If biology is to inform government and society, the least we should | |
do is get the full picture, drop the cardboard version that is Social | |
Darwinism, and look at what evolution has actually put into place. | |
Ideologies come and go, but human nature is here to stay. | |
Three paradoxes in American politics: | |
* Accepting Social Darwinism while rejecting biological Darwinism. | |
* Accepting Social Darwinism in spite of professed Christian values. | |
* The emphasis on economic freedom triggers both the best and worst | |
in people. | |
# Chapter 3, Bodies Talking to Bodies | |
[Laughter and yawning are infectious even across species.] Yawn | |
contagion reflects the power of unconscious synchrony, which is as | |
deeply ingrained in us as in many other animals. | |
This is precisely where empathy and sympathy start--not in the higher | |
regions of imagination, or the ability to consciously reconstruct how | |
we would feel if we were in someone else's situation. It began much | |
simpler, with the synchronization of bodies... | |
Some of these examples are more complex than mere coordination: They | |
involve assuming the perspective of someone else. Or, as in | |
Goodall's and my family's account, alerting another to the situation | |
of a third. The one thread that runs through all of these examples, | |
however, is coordination. All animals that live together face this | |
task, and synchrony is the key. It is the oldest form of adjustment | |
to others. Synchrony, in turn, builds upon the ability to map one's | |
own body onto that of another, and make the other's movement one's | |
own, which is exactly why someone else's laugh or yawn makes us laugh | |
or yawn. Yawn contagion thus offers a hint at how we relate to | |
others. Remarkably, children with autism are immune to the yawns of | |
others, thus highlighting the social disconnect that defines their | |
condition. | |
Imitation is an anthropoid forte, as reflected in the verb "to ape." | |
Spontaneous imitation: imitating another without gains in mind. | |
[Experiments show that ape imitation happens via identifying with one | |
another and absorbing body movements, not via knowledge (technical | |
know-how).] | |
In order to learn from others, apes need to see actual fellow apes. | |
Imitation requires identification with a body of flesh and blood. | |
We're beginning to realize how much human and animal cognition runs | |
via the body. Instead of our brain being like a little computer that | |
orders the body around, the body-brain relation is a two-way street. | |
The body produces internal sensations and communicates with other | |
bodies, out of which we construct social connections and an | |
appreciation of the surrounding reality. Bodies insert themselves | |
into everything we perceive or think. | |
The field of "embodied" cognition is still very much in its infancy, | |
but has profound implications for how we look at human relations. | |
Body-mapping is mostly hidden and unconscious... | |
Identification is even more striking at moments of high emotion. | |
Not only do we mimic those with whom we identify, but mimicry in turn | |
strengthens the bond. Human mothers and children play games of | |
clapping hands either against each other or together in the same | |
rhythm. These are games of synchronization. And what do lovers do | |
when they first meet? They stroll long distances side by side, eat | |
together, laugh together, dance together. Being in sync has a | |
bonding effect. Think about dancing. Partners complement each | |
other's moves, anticipate them, or guide each other through their own | |
movements. | |
This connectedness is no secret. We explicitly emphasize it in an | |
art form that is literally universal. Just as there are no human | |
cultures without language, there are none that lack music. Music | |
engulfs us and affects our mood so that, if listened to by many | |
people a once, the inevitable outcome is mood convergence. The | |
entire audience gets uplifted, melancholic, reflective, and so on. | |
Music seems designed for this purpose. [There are always outliers, | |
such as deaf people or neuro-diverse people who perceive audio | |
differently than others. For these people, the mood may be quite | |
different.] | |
When Katy Payne offered us the image of a human mother resonating | |
with her acrobat child, she unwittingly used the same example as the | |
German psychologist responsible for the modern concept of empathy. | |
We're in suspense watching a high-wire artist, said Theodor Lipps | |
(1851-1914), because we vicariously enter his body and thus share his | |
experience. We're on the rope with him. The German language | |
elegantly captures this process in a single noun: Einfuehlung | |
(feeling into). Later, Lipps offered empatheia as its Greek | |
equivalent, which means experiencing strong affection or passion. | |
British and American psychologists embraced the later term, which | |
became "empathy." | |
Such identification, argued Lipps, cannot be reduced to any other | |
capacities, such as learning, association, or reasoning. Empathy | |
offers direct access to "the foreign self." How strange that we need | |
to go back one century to learn about the nature of empathy in the | |
writings of a long-forgotten psychologist. Lipps offered a bottom-up | |
account, that is, one that starts from the basics, rather than the | |
top-down explanations often favored by psychologists and | |
philosophers. The latter tend to view empathy as a cognitive affair | |
based on our estimation of how others might feel given how we would | |
feel under similar circumstances. But can this explain the immediacy | |
of our reactions? | |
Science is coming around to Lipp's position, but this was not the | |
case yet when Swedish psychologist Ulf Dimberg began publishing on | |
involuntary empathy in the early 1990s. He ran into stiff resistance | |
from proponents of the more cognitive view. Dimberg demonstrated | |
that we don't decide to be empathetic--we simply are. | |
Lipps called empathy an "instinct," meaning that we're born with it. | |
Gender differences usually follow a pattern of overlapping bell | |
curves. Men and women differ on average, but quite a few men are | |
more empathetic than the average women, and quite a few women are | |
less empathetic than the average man. With age, the empathy levels | |
of men and women seem to converge. | |
The evolution of attachment came with something the planet had never | |
seen before: a feeling brain. The limbic system was added to the | |
brain, allowing emotions, such as affection and pleasure. This paved | |
the way for family life, friendships, and other caring relationships. | |
The central importance of social bonding is hard to deny. We have a | |
tendency to describe the human condition in lofty terms, such as a | |
quest for freedom or striving for a virtuous life, but the life | |
sciences hold a more mundane view: It's all about security, social | |
companionships, and a full belly. ... Our nobler strivings come into | |
play only once the baser ones have been fulfilled. If attachment and | |
empathy are as fundamental as proposed, we had better pay close | |
attention to them in any discussion of human nature. | |
Before going any further, I must warn that reading up on the science | |
of animal empathy can be a challenge for animal lovers. To see how | |
animals react to the pain of others, investigators have often | |
produced the pain themselves. I don't necessarily approve of these | |
practices, and don't apply them myself, but it would be foolish to | |
ignore the discoveries they've produced. The good news is that most | |
of this research was carried out decades ago, and is unlikely to be | |
repeated today. | |
Oscar the Cat stares at us from a photograph of the prestigious New | |
England Journal of Medicine along with an admiring description by a | |
fellow expert. The author relates how Oscar makes his daily rounds | |
at a geriatric clinic in Providence, Rhode Island, for patients with | |
Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other illnesses. The two-year-old cat | |
carefully sniffs and observes each patient, strolling from room to | |
room. When he decides that someone is about to die, he curls up | |
beside them, purring and gently nuzzling them. He leaves the room | |
only after the patient has taken her or his last breath. | |
Oscar's predictions have been so dependable that the hospital staff | |
counts on them. If he enters a room and leaves again, they know the | |
patient's time isn't up yet. But as soon as Oscar starts one of his | |
vigils, a nurse will pick up the phone to call family members, who | |
then hurry to the hospital to be present while their loved one passes | |
away. The cat has predicted the deaths of more than twenty-five | |
patients with greater accuracy than any human expert. The tribute to | |
the tomcat states: "No one dies on the third floor unless Oscar pays | |
a visit and stays awhile." | |
Oscar therapy cat @Wikipedia | |
The sight of another person's state awakens within us hidden memories | |
of similar states that we've experienced. I don't mean our conscious | |
memories, but an automatic reactivation of neural circuits. Seeing | |
someone in pain activates pain circuits to the point that we clench | |
our jaws, close our eyes, and even yell "Aw!" if we see a child | |
scrape its knee. Our behavior fits another's situation, because it | |
has become ours. | |
The discovery of mirror neurons boosts this whole argument at the | |
cellular level. | |
The automaticity of empathy has become a point of debate, though. | |
For the same reason that Dimberg ran into resistance showing | |
unconscious facial mimicry, some scientists profoundly dislike any | |
talk of automaticity, which they equate with "beyond control." We | |
can't afford automatic reactions, they say. If we were to empathize | |
with everybody in sight, we'd be in constant emotional turmoil. I'd | |
be the last to disagree, but is this really what "automaticity" | |
means? It refers to the speed and subconscious nature of a process, | |
not the inability to override it. My breathing, for instance, is | |
fully automated, yet I remain in charge. This very minute, I can | |
decide to stop breathing until I see purple. [This is a profound | |
point that relates focus on the breath to a path toward | |
self-realization.] | |
The ability to control and inhibit responses is not our only weapon | |
against rampant empathy. We also regulate it at its very source by | |
means of selective attention and identification. If you don't want | |
to be aroused by an image, just don't look at it. And even though we | |
identify easily with others, we don't do so automatically. For | |
example, we have a hard time identifying with people whom we see as | |
different or belonging to another group. ... Identification is such a | |
basic precondition for empathy that even mice shown pain contagion | |
only with their cage mates. | |
If identification with others opens the door for empathy, the absence | |
of identification closes that door. | |
Empathy can also be nipped in the bud. People who are perfectly | |
attached and sensitive in one context may act like monsters in | |
another. | |
But even if empathy is hardly inevitable, it is automatically aroused | |
with those who have been "preapproved" based on similarity or | |
closeness. With them, we can't help resonating. | |
... the face remains the emotion highway: It offers the quickest | |
connection to the other. Our dependence on this highway may explain | |
why people with immobile or paralyzed faces feel deeply alone, and | |
tend to become depressive, sometimes to the point of suicide. | |
# Chapter 4, Someone else's shoes | |
American Psychologist Lauren Wispe offers the following definition: | |
The definition of sympathy has two parts: first, a heightened | |
awareness of the feelings of the other person, and, second, an urge | |
to take whatever actions are necessary to alleviate the other | |
person's plight. | |
Thus, while empathy is easily aroused, sympathy is a separate process | |
under quite different controls. It is anything but automatic. | |
Nevertheless, it is common in both humans and other animals. | |
Ironically, this has been clear for a long time, but developments | |
have conspired against it becoming widely known. First of all, until | |
recently empathy was not taken seriously by science. Even with | |
regard to our own species, it was considered an absurd, laughable | |
topic classed with supernatural phenomena such as astrology and | |
telepathy. A trailblazing child-empathy researcher once told me | |
about the uphill battle to get her message across thirty years ago. | |
Everything connected with empathy was seen as ill-defined, | |
bleeding-heart kind of stuff, more suitable for women's magazines | |
than hard-nosed science. | |
With regard to animals, the same resistance still exists. | |
targeted helping: assistance geared toward another's specific | |
situation or need. [Basically the platinum rule: Do unto others as | |
they would have done unto them.] I believe that apes are masters at | |
this kind of insightful help. | |
Preconcern is an attraction toward anyone whose agony affects you. | |
It doesn't require imagining yourself in another's situation, and | |
indeed the capacity to do so may be wholly absent... | |
With preconcern in place, learning and intelligence can begin to add | |
layers of complexity, making the response even more discerning until | |
full-blown sympathy emerges. Sympathy implies actual concern for the | |
other and an attempt to understand what happened. The observer tries | |
to figure out the reason for the other's distress, and what might be | |
done about it. Since this is the level of sympathy that we, human | |
adults, are familiar with, we think of it as a single process, as | |
something you either have or lack. But in fact, it consists of many | |
different layers added by evolution over millions of years. Most | |
mammals show some of these--only a few show them all. | |
... which is the sort of perspective taking often referred to as | |
"theory of mind." Rock seemed to have an idea (a theory) of what | |
might be going on in Belle's head. | |
I like to call it [sympathy] "cold" perspective taking, because it | |
focuses entirely on how one individual perceives what another sees or | |
knows. It doesn't concern itself much with what the other wants, | |
needs, or feels. Cold perspective-taking is a great capacity to | |
have, but empathy rests on a different kind, geared more toward the | |
other's situation and emotions. | |
It is this combination of emotional arousal, which makes us care, and | |
a cognitive approach, which helps us appraise the situation, that | |
marks empathic perspective-taking. Only when both processes are | |
combined can an organism move from preconcern to actual concern, | |
including the targeted helping typical of our close relatives [other | |
primates]. | |
There is in fact so much evidence for altruism in apes that i will | |
pick just a handful of stories to drive my point home. | |
Commitment to others, emotional sensitivity to their situation, and | |
understanding what kind of help might be effective is such a human | |
combination that we often refer to it as being humane. I do believe | |
that our species is special in the degree to which it puts itself | |
into another's shoes. We grasp how others feel and what they might | |
need more fully than any other animal. Yet our species is not the | |
first or only one to help others insightfully. Behaviorally | |
speaking, the difference between a human and ape jumping into water | |
to save another isn't that great. Motivationally speaking, the | |
difference can't be that great, either. | |
Psychologists may want a rational evaluation, but children have a | |
hard time extracting themselves from a confrontation with a | |
salivating predator. Only by age of seven or eight do they manage | |
such distance... Instead of staying neutral, children tend toward | |
empathy. This primal connection takes over if anyone they feel close | |
to gets in trouble... Children read "hearts" well before they read | |
minds. | |
low-cost altruism is when one isn't going much out of the way for | |
someone else but still offers substantial help. Under hardship, the | |
cost of civility goes up. | |
Perhaps it is time to abandon the idea that individuals faced with | |
others in need decide whether to help, or not, by mentally tallying | |
up costs and benefits. These calculations have likely been made for | |
them by natural selection. Weight the consequences of behavior over | |
evolutionary time, it has endowed primates with empathy, which | |
ensures that they help others under the right circumstances. The | |
fact that empathy is most easily aroused by familiar partners | |
guarantees that assistance flows chiefly toward those close to the | |
actor. Occasionally, it may be applied outside this inner circle, | |
such as when apes help ducklings or humans, but generally primate | |
psychology has been designed to care about the welfare of family, | |
friends, and partners. | |
Humans are empathic with partners in a cooperative setting, but | |
"counterempathic" with competitors. Treated with hostility, we show | |
the opposite of empathy. Instead of smiling when the other smiles, | |
we grimace as if the other's pleasure disturbs us. When the other | |
shows signs of distress, on the other hand, we smile, as if we enjoy | |
their pain. ... So human empathy can be turned into something rather | |
unattractive if the other's welfare is NOT in our interest. | |
If helping is based on what we feel, or how we connect with the | |
victim, doesn't it boil down to helping ourselves? If we feel a | |
"warm glow," a pleasurable feeling at improving the plight of others, | |
doesn't this in fact make our assistance selfish? The problem is | |
that if we call this "selfish," then literally everything becomes | |
selfish and the word loses its meaning. Yes, we derive pleasure from | |
helping others, but since this pleasure reaches us VIA the other and | |
ONLY via the other, it is genuinely other-oriented. | |
# Chapter 5, The elephant in the room | |
With an anatomy so different from ours, the ease with which elephants | |
arouse human sympathy poses yet another version of the correspondence | |
problem. How do we map their bodies onto ours? | |
Advanced empathy is unthinkable without a sense of self, which is | |
what mirror tests get at. Human babies don't recognize themselves in | |
a mirror right away. A one-year-old is as confused as many animals | |
about the "other" in the mirror, often smiling at, patting, even | |
kissing their reflection. They usually pass the so-called rouge test | |
in front of the mirror by age two, rubbing off a dab of makeup that | |
has been put on their face. They don't know about the dab until they | |
look into the mirror, so when they touch it, we can be sure they | |
connect their reflection with themselves. | |
Around the same time children pass the rouge test, they become | |
sensitive to how others look at them, show embarrassment, use | |
personal pronouns, and develop pretend play in which they act out | |
little scenarios with toys and dolls. These developments are linked. | |
Children passing the rouge test use more "I" and "me" and show more | |
pretend play than children failing this test. | |
Since all of these abilities emerge at the same time as mirror | |
self-recognition, I'll speak of the co-emergence hypothesis. | |
Advanced empathy belongs to the same package. Why should caring for | |
others begin with the self? There is an abundance of rather vague | |
ideas about this issue, which I am sure neuroscience will one day | |
resolve. | |
Like apes, [the elephants] used the mirror to inspect parts of their | |
bodies that they normally never see. They opened their mouths wide | |
in front of the mirror, feeling into them with their trunks. The | |
great thing, compared with dolphins, is that the elephant is an | |
animal that can touch itself. [An elephant named Happy passed the | |
test. Two more elephants failed the test.] This is less surprising | |
than it may seem because for even the most intensely tested primate, | |
the chimpanzee, the proportion of individuals passing the rouge test | |
is far from 100 percent, and in some studies it is less than half. | |
But the funniest opening line came from a widely carried Associated | |
Press piece: "If you're Happy and you know it, pat your head." | |
... as it turns out, all mammals with mirror self-recognition possess | |
a rare type of brain cell. | |
A decade ago, a team of neuroscientists showed that so-called Ven | |
Economo neurons, or VEN cells, are limited to the hominoid (human and | |
ape) brain. VEN cells differ from regular neurons in that they are | |
long and spindle-like. They reach further and deeper into the brain, | |
making them ideal to connect distant layers. ... In the dissection of | |
the brains of many species, these cells were found only in humans and | |
their immediate relatives, but were absent in all other primates, | |
such as monkeys. The cells are particularly large and abundant in | |
our own species, and are found in a part of the brain critical for | |
traits that we consider "humane." Damage to this particular part | |
results in a special kind of dementia marked by the loss of | |
perspective-taking, empathy, embarrassment, humor, and | |
future-orientation. Most important, these patients also lack | |
self-awareness. | |
In other words, when humans lose their VEN cells, they lose about | |
every capacity that's part of the co-emergence hypothesis. It's | |
unclear if these particular cells themselves are responsible, but it | |
is thought that they underpin the required brain circuitry. | |
... the latest discovery by Allman's team is that VEN cells are not | |
limited to humans and apes. These neurons have made their | |
independent appearance in only two other branches of the mammalian | |
tree, which happen to be the cetaceans (dolphins and whales) and | |
elephants. | |
[The author studied consolation in monkeys.] But to our surprise, we | |
found nothing! Whereas reconciliation, in which former opponents | |
come together, occurs in all monkeys studied, consolation is totally | |
absent. | |
There are other indicators of a lack of empathy in monkeys, such as | |
the "exasperating" stories of baboon watchers in the Okavango Delta | |
of Botswana about adults ignoring the fear of youngsters facing a | |
water crossing. Standing panicky at the water's edge, young baboons | |
risk getting killed by predators, yet their mothers rarely return to | |
retrieve them. They just keep traveling. It's not that a baboon | |
mother is entirely indifferent: | |
"She appears genuinely concerned by its agitated screams. But seems | |
to fail to understand the cause of this agitation. She behaves as if | |
she assumes if she can make the water crossing, everyone can make the | |
water crossing. Other perspectives cannot be entertained." | |
All of this suggests intact emotional contagion but an inability to | |
adopt another's point of view. This is a familiar deficit in many | |
animals as well as young children. | |
The limited sensitivity of monkeys to others seems due more to | |
cognitive than emotional factors. Monkeys do feel the distress of | |
others but have no good grasp of what's going on with them. They | |
can't step back from the situation to figure out the other's needs. | |
Every monkey lives in its own little bubble. | |
Monkeys are able to use a mirror to locate food. Many a dog can do | |
the same... It is specifically the relation with their own body, | |
their own self, that they fail to grasp. | |
On the other hand, the standard claim that monkeys see a stranger in | |
the mirror is questionable. They treated their mirror image quite | |
differently from real monkeys [behind plexiglass] and did so within | |
seconds. They didn't need any time to notice the difference. | |
Apparently, there are many levels of mirror understanding, and our | |
[possessive] monkeys never confused their reflection with another | |
monkey's. ... For me, the most telling finding of the whole study was | |
that when there was a stranger on the other side, mothers held their | |
infants tight, not letting them wander around. During mirror tests, | |
on the other hand, they let their kids roam freely. Given how | |
conservative mother monkeys are when it comes to danger, this | |
convinced me more than anything that their reflection was no stranger | |
to them. | |
... a recent study has shown mirror recognition in magpies. | |
Follow-up research with Nathan Emery at Cambridge University led to | |
the intriguing claim that "it takes a thief to know a thief." Jays | |
apparently extrapolate from their own experiences to the intentions | |
of others, so that those who in the past have misappropriated the | |
caches of others are especially keen on keeping the same thing from | |
happening to themselves. Perhaps this process, too, requires the | |
ability to parse the self from the other. As the ultimate bird | |
thief, the magpie may have an even greater need to guess the | |
intentions of others. Curiously, their self-recognition may | |
therefore relate to a life of crime. | |
What makes information-sharing interesting is that it relies on the | |
same comparison of one's own perspective with that of someone | |
else--detecting something that others need to know about--which also | |
underlies advanced empathy. | |
If i point out an animal in the distance and say "zebra," and you | |
disagree, saying "lion," we have a problem that, at other times, may | |
get us into deep trouble. It's a uniquely human problem, but so | |
important to us that the diectic gestures and language evolution are | |
closely inter-twined. | |
# Chapter 6, Fair is fair | |
We walk on two legs, a social and a selfish one. We tolerate | |
differences in status and income only up to a degree, and begin to | |
root for the underdog as soon as this boundary is overstepped. We | |
have a deeply ingrained sense of fairness, which derives from our | |
long history as egalitarians. | |
[Unlike other apes,] Our species has a distinctly subversive streak | |
that ensures that, however much we look up to those in power, we're | |
always happy to bring them down a peg. | |
Even Sigmund Freud recognized this unconscious desire, speculating | |
that human history began when frustrated sons banded together to | |
eliminate their imperious father, who kept all women away from them. | |
The sexual connotations of Freud's origin story may serve as a | |
metaphor for all our political and economic dealings, a connection | |
confirmed by brain research. Wanting to see how humans make | |
financial decisions, economists found that while weighing monetary | |
risks, the same areas in men's brains light up as when they're | |
watching titillating sexual images. In fact, after having seen such | |
images, men throw all caution overboard and gamble more money than | |
they normally would. In the words of one neuroscientist, "The link | |
between sex and greed goes back hundreds of thousands of years, to | |
men's evolutionary role as provider or resource gatherer to attract | |
women." | |
Frank believes that a purely selfish outlook is, ironically, not in | |
our own best interest. It narrows our view to the point that we're | |
reluctant to engage in the long-term emotional commitments that have | |
served our lineage so well for millions of years. If we truly were | |
the cunning schemers that economists say we are, we'd forever be | |
hunting hare, whereas our prey would be stag. | |
It's the choice between the small rewards of individualism and the | |
large rewards of collective action. Productive partnerships require | |
a history of give-and-take and proven loyalty. Only then do we | |
accomplish goals larger than ourselves. | |
The difference is dramatic. In 1953, eight mountaineers got into | |
trouble on K2, one of the highest and most dangerous peaks in the | |
world. In -40 degrees Celsius temperatures, one member of the team | |
developed a blood clot in his leg. Even though it was | |
life-threatening for the others to descend with an incapacitated | |
comrade, no one considered leaving him behind. The solidarity of | |
this group has gone down in history as legendary. Contrast this with | |
the recent drama, in 2008, in which eleven mountaineers perished on | |
K2 after having abandoned their common cause. One survivor lamented | |
the drive for self-preservation: "Everybody was fighting for himself, | |
and I still don't understand why everybody were [sic] leaving each | |
other." | |
The first team was hunting stag, the second hare. | |
Trust is defined as reliance on the other's truthfulness or | |
cooperation, or at least the expectation that the other won't dupe | |
you. Trust is the lubricant that makes a society run smoothly. If | |
we had to test everyone all the time before doing something together, | |
we'd never achieve anything. We use past experiences to decide whom | |
to trust, and sometimes rely on generalized experience with members | |
of our society. | |
The main message of this study, and many others, is that our species | |
is more trusting than predicted by rational-choice theory. | |
Confidence in others may be fine in a one-shot game with little | |
money, but in the long run we need to be more careful. The problem | |
with any cooperative system is that there are those who try to get | |
more out of it than they put in. The whole system will collapse if | |
we don't put a halt to freeloading, which is why humans are naturally | |
cautious when they deal with others. | |
Strange things happen if this caution is lacking. A tiny proportion | |
of humans is born with a genetic defect that makes them open and | |
trusting to anyone. These are patient with Williams syndrome, a | |
condition caused by the nonexpression of a relatively small number of | |
genes on the seventh chromosome. Williams syndrome patients are | |
infectiously friendly, highly gregarious, and incredibly verbose. | |
Even though it is hard to resist these charming children, they lack | |
friends. The reason is that they trust everyone indiscriminately and | |
love the whole world equally. We withdraw from such people since | |
we don't know whether we can count on them. Will they be grateful | |
for received favors, will they support us if we get into a fight, | |
will they help us achieve our goals? Probably none of the above, | |
which means that they don't have anything that we're looking for in a | |
friend. They also lack the basic social skill of detecting the | |
intentions of others. They never assume wrong intentions. | |
Williams syndrome is an unfortunate experiment of nature that shows | |
that just being friendly and trusting, which is what these patients | |
excel at, is not sufficient for lasting ties: We expect people to be | |
discriminating. That a small number of genes can cause such a defect | |
tells us that the normal tendency to be circumspect is inborn. Our | |
species carefully chooses between trust and distrust, as do many | |
other species. | |
Large cities are obviously a different story. Think back to 1997, | |
when a Danish mother left her fourteenth-month-old girl in a stroller | |
outside a Manhattan restaurant. Her child was taken into custody and | |
placed in foster care, while the mother ended up in jail. For most | |
Americans, she was either crazy or criminally negligent, but in fact | |
the mother merely did what Danes are used to. Denmark has incredibly | |
low crime rates, and parents feel that what a child needs most is | |
fresh air. The mother counted on safety and good air, whereas New | |
York offered neither. The charges against her were eventually | |
dropped. | |
The faith that Danes unthinkingly place in one another is known as | |
"social capital," which may well be the most precious capital there | |
is. In survey after survey, Danes have the world's highest happiness | |
score. | |
But an even simpler solution is to avoid those who are short on | |
gratitude. If one can choose between multiple partners, why not just | |
go with the good ones, who can be trusted to respect past exchanges | |
rather than those lousy freeloaders whom we can all do without? We | |
are like the clientele of a market where we pick and choose our | |
partnerships, squeezing and smelling them the way the French do with | |
cantaloupes. We want the best ones. | |
Have you ever noticed how often politicians lift infants above the | |
crowd? It's an odd way of handling them, not always enjoyed by the | |
object of attention itself. But what good is a display that stays | |
unnoticed? | |
One school of thought proposes that our ancestors became such great | |
team players because of their dealings with strangers. This forced | |
them to develop reward and punishment schemes that worked even with | |
outsiders whom they had never met and would never see again. It is | |
well known that human strangers brought together in the laboratory | |
adopt strict rules of cooperation and turn against anyone who fails | |
to comply. This is known as strong reciprocity. | |
If humans show strong dispositions towards fairness in one-shot, | |
anonymous encounters, this hardly means that these dispositions | |
evolved to function in one-shot, anonymous encounters any more than | |
we would argue that children's strong emotional reactions to cartoons | |
show that such reactions evolved in the context of cartoons. | |
Fairness is viewed differently by the haves and have-nots. We're all | |
for fair play so long as it helps us. There's even a biblical | |
parable about this, in which the owner of a vineyard rounds up | |
laborers at different times of the day. Early in the morning, he | |
goes out to find men, offering each one a denarius for their labor. | |
He goes again in the middle of the day, offering the same. At the | |
"eleventh hour" he hires a few more with the same deal. By the end | |
of the day, he pays all of them, starting with the last ones hired. | |
Each one gets a denarius. Watching this, the other workers expect to | |
get more since they had worked through the heat of the day. Yet they | |
get paid one denarius as well. The owner doesn't feel he owes them | |
any more than what he had promised. The passage famously concludes | |
with "So the last will be first, and the first will be last." | |
Again, the grumbling was one-sided: It came from the early hires. | |
The potential for green-eyed reactions is the chief reason why we | |
strive for fairness even when we have the advantage. | |
Privileges are always enjoyed under a cloud. Human history is filled | |
with "let them eat cake" moments that create resentment, sometimes | |
boiling over into bloody revolt. The main reason humans seek | |
fairness, I believe, is to prevent such negative reactions. | |
> If you want peace, work for justice. --H.L. Mencken, Sage of | |
> Baltimore. | |
What confuses some is that fairness has two faces. Income equality | |
is one, but the connection between effort and reward is another. Our | |
[possessive] monkeys are sensitive to both, as are we. | |
Richard Wilkinson, the British epidemiologist and health expert who | |
first gathered these statistics, has summarized them in two words: | |
"inequality kills." He believes that the income gaps produce social | |
gaps. They tear societies apart by reducing mutual trust, increasing | |
violence, and inducing anxieties that compromise the immune systems | |
of both the rich and the poor. Negative effects permeate the entire | |
society... | |
The context of an industrialized multilayered society is new but the | |
emotional undercurrent of these encounters is a primate universal. | |
Modern society taps into a long history of hierarchy formation in | |
which those lower on the scale not only fear the higher-ups but also | |
resent them. | |
Robin Hood had it right. Humanity's deepest wish is to spread the | |
wealth. | |
# Chapter 7, Crooked timber | |
Asked by a religious magazine what I would change about the human | |
species "if I were God," I had to think hard. Every biologist knows | |
the law of unintended consequences, a close cousin of Murphy's law. | |
Any time we fiddle with an ecosystem by introducing new species, we | |
create a mess. | |
We have seen in Romanian orphanages what happens when children are | |
subjected to the baby-factory ideas of behaviorist psychology. I | |
remain deeply skeptical of any "restructuring" of human nature even | |
though the idea has enjoyed great appeal over the ages. | |
Humans are bipolar apes. We have something of the gentle, sexy | |
bonobo, which we may like to emulate, but not too much; otherwise the | |
world might turn into one giant hippie fest of flower power and free | |
love. Happy we might be, but productive perhaps not. [Sounds OK to | |
me!] And our species also has something of the brutal, domineering | |
chimpanzee, a side we may wish to suppress, but not completely, | |
because how else would we conquer new frontiers and defend our | |
borders? | |
So strange as it may sound, I'd be reluctant to radically change the | |
human condition. But if I could change one thing, it would be to | |
expand the range of fellow feeling. The greatest problem today, with | |
so many different groups rubbing shoulders on a crowded planet, is | |
excessive loyalty to one's own nation, group, or religion. Humans | |
are capable of deep disdain for anyone who looks different or thinks | |
another way, even between neighboring groups with almost identical | |
DNA, such as the Israelis and Palestinians. | |
Asked why he never talked about the number of civilians killed in the | |
Iraq War, U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld answered: "Well, we | |
don't do body counts on other people." | |
Empathy for "other people" is the one commodity the world is lacking | |
more than oil. It would be great if we could create at least a | |
modicum of it. ... If I were God, I'd work on the reach of empathy. | |
Empathy is multilayered like a Russian doll, with at its core the | |
ancient tendency to match another's emotional state (emotional | |
contagion). Around this core, evolution has built ever more | |
sophisticated capacities... Concern for others (consolation). | |
Perspective-Taking (targeted helping). | |
I derive great optimism from empathy's evolutionary antiquity. It | |
makes it a robust trait that will develop in virtually every human | |
being so that society can count on it and try to foster and grow it. | |
It is a human universal. In this regard, it's like our tendency to | |
form social hierarchies, which we share with so many animals, and | |
which we don't need to teach or explain to children: They arrange | |
themselves spontaneously into pecking orders before we know it. | |
Have you heard of an organization that appeals to empathy in order to | |
fight the lack of it? That the world needs such an organization, | |
known as Amnesty International, says a lot about the dark side of our | |
species. | |
In and of itself, taking another's perspective is a neutral capacity: | |
It can serve both constructive and destructive ends. Crimes against | |
humanity often rely on precisely this capacity. | |
Torture requires an appreciation of what others think or feel. | |
[Examples of torture techniques, they all rest] on our ability to | |
assume their [the victim's] viewpoint and realize what will hurt or | |
aggravate them the most. Cruelty, too, rests on perspective-taking. | |
The comparison with snakes is apt, since psychopaths seem to lack the | |
Russian doll's old mammalian core. They do possess all of its | |
cognitive outer layers, allowing them to understand what others want | |
and need as well as what their weaknesses are, but they couldn't care | |
less about how their behavior impacts them. | |
A lot of trouble in the world can be traced to people whose Russian | |
doll is an empty shell. Like aliens from another planet, they are | |
intellectually capable of adopting another's viewpoint without any of | |
the accompanying feelings. They successfully fake empathy. | |
To actually kill someone is, of course, quite different from watching | |
a movie about it, and in this regard the data tell us something few | |
would have suspected: Most men lack a killer instinct. | |
It is a curious fact that the majority of soldiers, although well | |
armed, never kill. Killing or hurting others is something we find so | |
horrendous that wars are often a collective conspiracy to miss, an | |
artifice of incompetence, a game of posturing rather than an actual | |
hostile confrontation. Nowadays, this is not always realized, given | |
that wars can be fought at a distance almost like a computer game, | |
which eliminates most of these natural inhibitions. But actual | |
killing at close range has no glory, no pleasure, and is something | |
the typical soldier tried to avoid at all cost. Only a small | |
percentage of men--perhaps 1 or 2 percent--does the vast majority of | |
killing during a war. | |
So anyone who would like to use war atrocities as an argument against | |
human empathy needs to think twice. The two aren't mutually | |
exclusive, and it's important to consider how hard most men find it | |
to pull the trigger. | |
Mencius, a follower of Confucius, saw empathy as part of human | |
nature, famously stating that everyone is born with a mind that | |
cannot bear to see the suffering of others. We care more about what | |
we see firsthand than about what remains out of sight. Mencius made | |
us reflect on the origin of empathy, and how much it owes to bodily | |
connections. These connections also explain the trouble we have | |
empathizing with outsiders. Empathy builds on proximity, similarity, | |
and familiarity, which is entirely logical given that it evolved to | |
promote in-group cooperation. | |
The firmest support for the common good comes from enlightened | |
self-interest: the realization that we're all better off if we work | |
together. If we don't benefit from our contributions now, then at | |
least potentially we will in the future, and if not personally, then | |
at least via improved conditions around us. Since empathy binds | |
individuals together and gives each a stake in the welfare of others, | |
it bridges the world of direct "what's in it for me?" benefits and | |
collective benefits, which take a bit more reflection to grasp. | |
Empathy has the power to open our eyes to the latter by attaching | |
emotional value to them. | |
One of the most potent weapons of the abolitionist movement were | |
drawings of slave ships and their human cargo, which were | |
disseminated to generate sympathy and moral outrage. The role of | |
compassion in society is therefore not just one of sacrificing time | |
and money to relieve the plight of others, but also of pushing a | |
political agenda that recognizes everyone's dignity. Such an agenda | |
helps not merely those who need it most, but also the larger whole. | |
One can't expect high levels of trust in a society with huge income | |
disparities, huge insecurities, and a disenfranchised underclass. | |
And remember, trust is what citizens value most in their society. | |
author: Waal, F. B. M. de (Frans B. M.), 1948- | |
detail: http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/empathy/ | |
LOC: BF575.E55 W3 | |
tags: book,inspiration,non-fiction | |
title: The Age of Empathy | |
# Tags | |
book | |
inspiration | |
non-fiction |